Jason Buffington .com

Last week, I shared “When you argue with the town fool, the town gains a second fool.” I mentioned this is particularly true in social media.  Here’s 3 pro tips about social media and politics:

1. Never in the history of ever did someone change their mind because of a meme or factoid  

Never!   This is especially true when you re-post something that says you’re a bad or ignorant person if you agree with [whatever].   OH, golly … ok, I’ve changed my mind.

NO, that does not happen.

In fact, when you insult people’s intelligence – you cause folks to dig in and start to resent you instead of just your topic.

2. Regarding re-posts or re-shares: PLEASE STOP

For anyone who already agrees with you … great, all y’all feel smarter or more righteously pious

For anyone who doesn’t agree with you … constantly re-posting will not change their view – we covered that

For the rest of us, it’s divisive … and cluttering up our feeds when we want to see updates on your family in Facebook, your career on LinkedIn, or where you went last weekend on Instagram.  On none of those platforms, do we care about half-truth rhetoric.

Please stop

Here’s why (#3) – Social media is designed to elicit a reaction, a like, a comment, a click. 

If you do 4 posts today:

• An update on your family/career
• A prayer request on something medical
• A recipe for the world’s best cobbler
• And a political re-post

Chances are, the only one that I’ll see is the politics.  Because the machine knows that the best it might get from your family photo or cobbler recipe is a [like], but it might get debate and more re-posts from the politics … and they get paid by those propaganda machines … so they will make sure the politics are seen instead of the others. 

Social media is not free – these are run by for-profit mega corporations with 100’s of thousands of employees with servers and electric bills.   And they aren’t getting paid when you [like] cobbler or because your kids’ photo was cute.  So, since you are not paying for it, then you are the product being sold – and your re-posts and clicks are not only paying their bills … but programming our minds … and further dividing our country.

So, how do we get better as a society?  Stop re-posting political junk!

Here’s a challenge for you – take a break for one week.  For one week, every time that you want to hit that re-post/share button, don’t – and keep count; then count what else was still posted in your feed.  The ratio might surprise you.

Again, the rhetoric will not change any viewpoints – but it will continue to separate families and break friendships

Also … the less junk that you re-post … the more likely that I’ll hear about your life update or finally find the world’s best cobbler recipe.

So please … stop re-posting politics.

See ya next Monday.