Social Media Problems Are Not Actually Problems.

I’m in love social media. I admit it. It’s become an obsession. I think a LOT about my Instagram feed. I try out new platforms like Periscope (Thursdays at 8, just like the Cosby Show!). The ping of Likes and New Followers gets a distinctly Pavlovian response out of me.

I’m also baffled by it a lot of the time. I mean, how do I drive traffic from one platform to another? How do I get people to share my posts? Why do I have so many followers in Iran? Why does anyone like Snapchat?? These questions plague me. 

But every now and again, I’ll remember that I’m in my forties. I'm supposed to be an ADULT.  And I’ll look in the mirror to see 50’s Dad staring back at me.

In those moments, he reminds me that these obsessions are not problems. Not the problems of a grown-ass man, at any rate. At least not until my soft, coddled generation came along. Back in his day, the only guy who was as worried about his followers was Hitler, and look what happened to HIM!

He’s right, of course (although I wish he’d quit bringing up Hitler in every argument). For centuries, he points out, men my age were hitching their pants up to their chins and raising a family, or coming home from their third war to start a railway, or dead from old age. A quick scan on Main Street (the hipster epicentre of Vancouver) on a Sunday afternoon for men of my age bracket reveals bearded man-boys on longboards wearing skinny-jean-shorts, with their infant children strapped to them while they film themselves with a selfie stick on their way to their pop up craft beer store/daycare centre. (This may be a composite description.)
My generation will not go quietly into that dark night of adulthood. Not without posting a lot of pictures of it, anyway.