Rodney Ohebsion

Instagrammers, Facebookers, and Tweeters

Let me explain to you how a lot of social media works. I'll give you a two paragraph breakdown. The first paragraph will focus on the typical procedure involved for a person when they post material on social media. And the next paragraph will get into the typical reaction of someone who comes across the material that the first person posted. So, yeah. Two paragraphs. We're gonna have a dandy time with this. Here's my guide to how a lot of social media works. Here's a good description of the process.

There's a woman armed with an iPhone and an obsession with herself, she takes 622 selfies over the course of a week, she basically has a quadruple master's degree in makeup and clothes and lighting and angles, she accumulates her 622 carefully crafted selfies, she slides her finger and goes through all of those photos, and she deems one as being worthy of release to her adoring public, all of whom are eagerly anticipating her next Instagram post.

So, she posts one photo that week. And it goes out to her supposedly adoring public. The thing is, they're not that adoring. I've observed women looking at the Instagram photos of their "friends." Most of the time, their reaction is like this. A woman sees another woman's selfie on Instagram, and then the first woman rolls her eyes, and she's like, "Who in the hell does this bitch even think she is, posting this picture and acting like she's all that, like she's the queen bee, I mean, seriously, look at this skinny uberhoochie, she's got massive quantities of hoochieness emanating from the very depths of her being, and of course, she accentuates that hoochieness by constantly showcasing her stage four thigh gap, this woman, she's on that diet where you spend most of the day eating rutabaga skin and shooting heroin, and whenever she's not eating vegetable skin or doing opioids or stepping on a scale to confirm that she weighs a buck and a nickel, she's busy doing her hair and her makeup and planning these photos where she gets the angles and lighting right, ‘cause she thinks she's some sort of celebrity like Kendall Jenner, I mean, really, who does this woman think she's fooling, I know for a fact she's dating some guy who's an assistant manager at IHOP, because, I mean, I was there for breakfast last Sunday, I ordered a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity, and there was the boyfriend of this Kendall Jenner wannabe woman, this boyfriend of hers, he was assistant managing the IHOP, and he was handling the quality control, and making sure that the Rooty Tooties were in fact Fresh ‘N Fruity."

So, there you go. I hope you got quite a bit out of those last two paragraphs. I gave you a good, thorough, accurate description of one of the primary activities that take place on this fantastic invention we call "social media." It's a medium through which one person says, "Look at me," and another person thinks, "Who does this bitch even think she is?"

And here's another prominent activity on social media. Some people use social media to go the Thomas Paine route. As in, they formulate and distribute their own version of Common Sense. And they do it with considerably more intensity than Paine did it. After all—Mr. Paine only put out a couple of political pamphlets. But these modern day Thomas Paines—they post their ideas for political reform every single day on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram. Also keep in mind that Paine had some moderate political views. Unlike the people on social media. These are people who strive to maximize H&H: Hostility and Hyperbole. If someone is a Facebook liberal, CNN and MSNBC will not have enough H&H for his taste. If someone is a Facebook conservative, Fox News will not have enough H&H for his taste. In other words, these Facebook pundits—even when they watch the network that favors their own party, they're not really feeling it. They think, "These views are for political pansies! This freaking channel—it doesn't have enough righteous indignation, and it doesn't constantly beat you over the head with the idea that the other party promotes legislation aimed at turning America into a 3.8 million square mile manure factory."

You go on social media, and these H&H specialists constantly assault you with their extreme political positions. They do it every day. And then every once in a while, they go non-political for a post. They show a picture where they're hugging a cat or dog. And the caption is, "I love my kitty cat, he's so precious, yes he is, look at the way he licks himself." And then the following day, they make a post where they're all like, "This lunatic President of ours, if he says one more thing that I don't like, then me and my cat are gonna pack some clothes and some Meow Mix, and we're moving to Canada!"

We've got a bunch of people making political posts like that on social media. And as an added bonus, we have the President himself constantly saying who-knows-what on Twitter. The President of the United States of America, the leader of the free world, is a tenth degree black belt H&H specialist. And he's the most prolific trash-talker on all of social media. His Twitter is mostly him trashing people—and then sometimes for a change of pace, he throws in a legitimate presidential statement, or a narcissistic remark, or something about lowering taxes.

If you read three days' worth of Trump's tweets, you'll get something like this: "Screw this guy, screw this other guy, make America great again, merry Christmas, I can't stand that lowlife degenerate asshole scumbag on CNN, I'm a very smart guy & my IQ is approaching four digits, I enjoy lowering taxes, I don't enjoy movies that star Mediocre Meryl Streep, Obama's presidency was an abysmal failure economically and a tremendous success Islamically i.e. Hussein is a Muslim spy who tapped my phones, Sloppy Steve Bannon tried to sell me a bag of drugs, Psycho Joe Scarborough tried to sell me a thermos full of urine, I just had a tremendous meeting with the President of Austro-Hungary, I just stuck my tremendous middle finger up at Sneaky Dianne and Crooked Hillary, I'm a really fantastic President, all of my critics are lightweights and losers, screw this guy, screw this other guy, look at how great the economy is, don't listen to fake news."

The article you just read is an excerpt from the book What I Think of Various Places and People