It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. ~ Confucius

Hate won’t make you happy

We all live a chunk of our lives on our phones, an ever increasing amount. This also often means a significant amount of time involved with social media. One of the things we have all encountered online is the extreme amount of hate filled speech on these sites. It’s not unusual to do something as innocuous as posting about going on vacation somewhere, or to post a photo you’re really proud of only to receive abuse. I’ll never forget while I was living in the Mojave Desert, where we regularly got unbelievable sunsets, and one night I posted one really amazing photo I captured. Out of nowhere, someone who wasn’t even a follower of mine simply comments, obviously fake. There’s no reason for that response, no point in that person posting it other than just being contrary.

Part of the problem is the keyboard warrior effect. You see you can say all kind of mean, nasty stuff when you’re safe at home behind a keyboard typing anonymously with no chance of every encountering the person face to face. This anonymity allows hurt people, angry people and people who are just bad people to be able to rain hate and pain down on others with no consequences.

This of course ramps up so much higher when sensitive topics like abortion, religion or politics are involved. Especially sad for me it seems that even science has become one of these topics. The rise in conspiracy theories has made this especially bad.

This was posted in the last few days about hurricane Helene, the idea that a sitting member of congress can post something so stupid, and worse, for it to get support and traction online really makes me sad.

The hate flows in all directions, the right hurls hate and the left and the left hurls it back. Atheists hurl insults at Christians, who hurl insults at Muslims, who hurl insults at atheists and round and round we go. Honestly I’ve grown incredibly tired of it all.

When I was first on social media I made a point of being connected to people with a range of religious and political beliefs, trying to avoid the echo chamber effect where all you ever hear are things you agree and/or believe in already. I kept this policy for a long time, however I’ve changed. I’ve now become a prodigious blocker/unfriender/muter. My whole social media philosophy has changed to a focus of keeping my social media a happy and friendly place. I have a variety of levels of social media, Instagram is the least filtered for me. I’ll basically follow anyone on Instagram and allow anyone to follow me there. It’s the one site I’ve allowed my underage nieces and nephews to follow and interact with me online.

On the other end of the spectrum I hold Facebook really close to the vest. I keep my friend list around 100, I mean seriously who has 100 close acquaintances? I also routinely go through and clean it out of anyone who doesn’t at least semi-regularly interact with me on the site. Finally, I hold a firm firewall between my private Facebook page and my work life. I have a rule that no one I work with can be a friend on Facebook. But the real fertile ground of my mad blocking has been Twitter and now Threads.. Twitter (X) has faded out as the site has become such a mess that I hardly spend anytime on it. But on Threads, I’m a blocking machine. And it’s not just people who disagree with me politically. I block anyone who posts hateful rhetoric, hurtful responses, conspiracy theories or jokes of really bad taste. I essentially keep my Threads timeline focused on science, art, writing and photography and yes a bit of political echo chamber as well. I no longer want to go on social media and see posts that aggravate me.

Part of what you do have to do with all social media is to train the algorithm of the site you’re on. For instance on Instagram, I make an extreme effort to train the system to put lots of laughing babies in my feed. Basically, anytime there’s a video in my feed of a laughing baby, I stop on the post, I click on it, I make sure to like the post. The system then continues to send me more and more of these types of posts. I do the same thing for flower posts, which means that now my suggested posts have a high percentage of laughing babies and flowers which makes my experience there much happier. It’s not a perfect approach, there’s always going to be a share of paid for and promoted marketing posts, but I’ve definitely made that feed better.

The simple fact is hate will never lead to happiness. Hate is a poison that you share with the object of your hate. In an increasingly self-centered and hate filled world it’s important to limit the amount of hate you deal with and possess. In our current existence, unfortunately the very thing many people spend a tremendous amount of time on, social media, is also an overwhelming source of hate. So whether it’s online, or in person, do what you can to reduce the amount of hate in your life. Hate will never lead to happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane