The Sins of Social Media

OK, a close friend of mine was upset about something, I think we were talking about South Africa of the way the rich countries exploited the riches of Africa, the way Europe treats Turkey joing their boys club....my friend said, "F##king White People" I was not surprised my friend would say that as this person spends a lot of time analyzing political things.

I often disagree with race baiting, becasue it does not really help anybody...it's not enlightenment, but rather a realist approach to moving the debate forward....

But then I started to think, most of the crimes, atrocities and massacres committed by powerful people (Whites, Chinese, Romans, Germans...etc. ) have been committed prior to the existence of social media, there are no High resolution footage or links on youtube video about those killings. In a way social media is changing things....look no further than the Gaza and Lebanon war, while Israel largely won those conflicts, the images of the killing of civilians and demolished homes, make their win look like a loss...as they lost the image war. While those Israeli attacked are not new to the region, this time around every second, every bit of those attacks were documented and broadcast by the same people on the scene....no editor room guy telling what images can make them or not...

Social media is making things a lot more real... we felt as we are all being attacked, we connected with the civilians, and no IDF video is good enough to tell us otherwise....you simply cannot escape it....

Just imagine if people had footage of the Indian massacres, of the African slaves on life feed, the Jewish victims of the Nazi aggression....etc. I think things would be different. That's why I think social media and user generated content is changing the game...and remember that Iranian Lady Neda Soltan, she became the face of the Iranian revolution brought to you by Youtube.