Reactionary Reflection

The pervasive use of short form blogging on social platforms, such as Twitter, irrevocably changes our long-term perceptions of past events. Users of such services are likely to consume a significant amount of “news” via these casual outlets, as they check their Twitter feed multiple times a day, sometimes many times an hour. The social nature of these networks makes them inherently more appealing, as we are likely to be influenced by socially relevant information.  In the past, society looked towards an omniscient voice of reason, most likely a highly influential newspaper or television news network. We had fewer choices and therefore a more uniform impression of current events. Democratic places, like Twitter, allow us to insert our own skewed opinions into the public sphere. This form of self-publishing is virtually unedited, unfiltered, and replete with inaccuracies. Moving forward, it is likely that we will remember historical events based on our friends’ reactions to them, as oppose to the events themselves. We will reflect upon the past based on the small opinion pieces we read, leading to drastically disparate views of what occurred, depending on the angle we chose to view it from during those times. As our varied sense of the past meshes into a future, the purity of a strictly objective record of what was will absorb into the social norms of that era, as these two channels are no longer distinguishable.