I LOST MY FOMO!

My interest in social media has been waning lately.
Mainly because I am banned from most of them, I guess!

I log on, check email notifications and the newsfeed.
I do not miss being engaged in contentious arguments.
Sometimes it felt as though Twitter, in particular, had become a rabid hyena colony full to the brim with salivating predators waiting to chew your face off if you dared show it in their vicinity. Amid a smattering of adverts, a friendly or amusing tweet was like a diamond encrusted oasis in a corpse littered desert. I don’t imagine that Elon will change much. Twitter culture comprises of chortling victors and bitter losers jousting in an ugly display of pointless competition.
A voice for co-operation and tolerance is quickly regarded as weak and worthy of distain.

Facebook was like a rarely visited Mausoleum dotted with tumbleweed. My account was so shadow banned that it did not even throw a shadow on the newsfeed, let alone an actual post. Facetime and messenger were OKish but I haven’t missed them much.

I liked Discord for about a year but it did not like me. This grannie is too radical for gamers!

The newer social media sites provide some fine examples of theory, racism, hatred and fear to scroll by ad tedium. I seldom find anything there that engages my enthusiasm.
Yes, social media has been a nasty experience that released a rage or two from me from time to time, I can tell you.
None of us are innocent, I am sure.
So I won't be hanging myself for it any time soon.

It is very hard to keep your cool when all around you are in turmoil - who was it who wrote about that?

It was Rudyard Kipling in his poem:

If...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

—0—

So where was I going with this thought-form?

Back to the communications drawing board?
Into a new hobby?

Or, maybe, a CONFESSION!

I confess to being more interested in watching paint dry than following current affairs. I have lost my FOMO (fear of missing out) somewhere between pandemic and war. I could not care less about Fauci and his prickly Ouchie. If I so much as get a whisper of Zelensky I get hives, now known as Monkey Pox or Shingles (have they decided which yet?). Schwab and Co can throw a full blown Davos orgy with members of the EU, NATO and Pussy Riot for all I care. I won’t want to see the video.

((((shudders))))

Any good news?

Yes.

My neighbour has erected a new fence which appears to be a species of plastic hedging. I had no idea such a thing existed. But there it is.

That sums up phoney for ya.

You see? It is everywhere.