BUT THEN AGAIN: Communication breakdown

Social media has changed the way we share and discuss breaking news, and Jim isn’t too happy about it.

This is more about Facebook than it is about Joe Paterno or Whitney Houston.

I really have no opinion about JoePa one way or another. I respect his winning record and certainly think his legacy could have ended better. Whitney Houston? A terrific talent squandered. When I worked in pop radio, I played her records and listened to her magnificent voice hundreds, no, probably thousands, of times. She was one of a kind. But her legacy, too, was tarnished.

What does this have to do with Facebook?

Social media has become the way we know, the way we tell others and the way we share what we think about it. We find out faster, we let everyone in our circle know, and we let our feelings be known more than possibly at any time in human existence. Our communication is at an all-time high. Too bad most of what is communicated is drivel.

Maybe it’s because most of my “friends” on Facebook are from NEPA. “Friends” is in quotes as I wouldn’t know most of these folks if I tripped over them. Nor they me, I suppose. But the outpouring of sentiment on the passing of Paterno was (is?) to the point where I had to take a break from my all-important status check ins for a while. It was so over the top at one point that I swear I saw a depiction of Jesus, John Wayne, Elvis and JoePa marching towards the pearly gates arm in arm. I could be wrong.

Now, just weeks after seeing Houston dissed as a crackwhore, she is being made to be the same sort of mythical heroine. She was great, no doubt. Keyword, was. And heroine was, in her case, missing the final “e”.

No disrespect intended to the memory of these two people. My problem is with how we honor and, in my view, dishonor them with these vulgar displays of misplaced sentiment. Then, of course, comes the inevitable backlash, where just to be contrarian, others will chip away at the departed, fault finding and minimizing them.

Possibly it all seems like too much to me because I am of the age where I knew of a time before social media. When news was delivered via radio, TV, newspapers and magazines, and we talked about it. We didn’t post or tweet about it. It seemed, I don’t know, more respectful. More thoughtful. Better, somehow.

I don’t think my Facebook buddies miss me too much.