It occurred to me today that everyone has a voice, and I don’t like it.

I don’t know how it used to work. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention much. But, I have noticed how it is working now, and it is not a good thing, IMO.

Before I go off on the way things are (and what I dislike), maybe we should look back for a bit.

The advent of the printing press is said to have assisted in the dissemination of information. Previous to this, books were of significant value, since each individual copy of a book represented the work of the individual who had to copy the original book, by hand, for someone else to have a copy. The only books that were ever copied were those that contained information of the utmost importance.

As a matter of fact, Johannes Gutenberg, who introduced the printing press to Europe, rarely printed books. The only book he ever reproduced repeatedly was the Bible.

Herein, there is a system of control. Things that ought not be printed certainly aren’t going to be printed because the work involved in doing so is significant, to the point where the effort to be wasted is valued more than the drivel to be printed.

And society seemed to work well like that for a while. It got to be a little easier for those who wanted to print something to have it printed for others to read, as time went by. The advent of the internet has allowed for a boon in self-publishing, where people can take upon themselves the work of writing and publishing a book, without having to have a publishing company agreeing to do that work.

But, throughout the time that has passed between Gutenberg and now, the amount of effort necessary to have your thoughts printed has gone down, and the tools for making something publicly available have fallen into the hands of the common people.

Any Tom, Dick, or Sally can publish information these days –> it’s called… THE INTERNET! And, because it isn’t as hard as it used to be, we’ve opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of the written word.

I shudder to think how many books it would take to contain the daily posts of every Facebook user? How many books to record all of the tweets from Twitter?

Additionally, these social media posts are ideal for your average American because they are A) short, especially designed for people who can read but don’t like to do so, B) posted by people who we either know, or we feel like we know, or we blindly trust because the social media platform tells us to, and C) the posts tend to correspond automatically with what we already believe to be true, so we aren’t ever moved by intelligent argument or witty repartee to accept a viewpoint other than our own.

I guess I’m an elitist. I don’t know when it happened that I became an elitist. I’m not even sure that I’m upset about being an elitist. I think that there are people who are better equipped to create and publish material for public consumption than others.

In other words, I have certain people who I believe should have a voice, and others that shouldn’t. When people from the latter group speak, I are more likely to ignore them. When people from the former group speak, their words have weight and consequence.

Do we really want EVERYONE to have a voice? The obvious answer is, “Yes, of course we do. This is America.” But, let’s take that out as far as it will go.

***The guy on Twitter who is trying to insert himself into a conversation but can’t spell any of the big words (more than three letters) in his comment –> he gets to have a voice.

***That woman on Facebook whose heart is filled with hate, who never has a nice thing to say to anyone, who you would mute if you didn’t have to remain in contact –> she gets a voice.

***The people in positions of power over us who use that power to do stupid things or hurtful things and we are all currently powerless to stop them –> they get their voices.

***The people who spread lies on purpose to see which gullible individuals will be caught up in the lies –> they get their voices.

I’m not sure how you would ever get the cat back in the bag on this one, since we are now at the point where everyone who can type can express themselves and those expressions often get the same audience. I don’t think that’s right; it shouldn’t be the case that everyone gets the same audience. People without the credentials shouldn’t be able to spread their viewpoints as widely as those who are proven to have legitimate opinions.

This goes back to the publishing process that existed prior to the internet and social media. People who had illegitimate things to say thirty years ago were going to have a hard time finding a way to widely sew those seeds since publishing companies weren’t likely to sell those printed words back then.

I guess, philosophically speaking, multiple viewpoints are often a good thing. The power that the internet and social media could have in bringing together multiple viewpoints for a discussion of different ideas could usher in societal breakthroughs, but I don’t see that happening now. What I see is that this powerful tool is more often being used for ill than for good.

The other issue here is an audience issue –> when people use the internet and social media to disseminate their opinions and ideas, it becomes the responsibility of the audience to intelligently consider the sources of those opinions and ideas, rather than just allowing themselves to be spoon-fed. But, your average lazy American probably isn’t going to do that work, and the people who publish lies on the internet know this.

And, I don’t like it.