viewBox="0 0 352.7 352.7"

BLOG

Observations, musings and rubbish from the mind of an IVO (International Voice Over)

November 11, 2019 10:02 am

Don’t get me started…

Dont Get Me Started

Social Media.

Technology.

The 21st Century.

I was reading somewhere that one of the worst things you can do first thing in the morning is to check your ’phone, tablet or computer, even if, like me, you work almost exclusively from one of the aforementioned devices.

The irony is, although I can’t actually remember where I read the article, there’s a good chance it appeared via some pop-up – on the book-of-face.

Said book-of-face is, according to the information I perused, one of the very worst places to go to when you lift your head off the pillow, partly because you’re immediately assaulted by an onslaught of information – much of which is totally irrelevant in your world – but also because most people don’t need to/shouldn’t have their brain engaged in top gear the moment they awaken.

However and, possibly, sadly, many people in this 21st Century world which revolves around social media do just that.

It’s no longer the radio/alarm-clock which wakes you – it’s invariably the phone alarm, which then leads to you checking facebook, twitter, texts, email, Instagram, Snapchat etc.

And so your movements throughout the rest of the day are, to a greater or lesser extent, dictated by an electronic device of one sort or another, encouraging you to look to see if any story or activity you might be interested in or ‘following’ has been updated, if any photos have been added, or another cute kitten video has been posted and so on.

The thing is, we’ve reached a point where we have almost no choice but to keep up the “following” of technology, updates, roll-outs and what today is often considered progress, almost for fear of being left out.

Is that what it is?

Are we being “left out” if we don’t check social media – on whichever platform – on even a semi-regular basis?

More specifically, the question is; are we choosing to remain ignorant of everything going on in the world – far or near – around us if we don’t “keep up”?

Somewhere, there is a bunch of people – not an entire corporation, just a handful of humans – who are counting very large sums of money made from folks like us who have a need to feed on the latest, biggest, most controversial, funniest, saddest “event” or what used to be called “news story” every few hours or so.

And should “they” therefore be held responsible for such content to which we repeatedly expose ourselves (and our children – the next generation) on a regular, if not daily, basis? 

No more so than any CEO of a large corporation taking obscenely large bonuses whilst making the minions work for less and less, and even worse, have their jobs cut entirely, I guess. 

But there seems to be an ever-increasing imbalance in our cyber world of many herds of sheep and just a few ruthless shepherds. 

Meanwhile, social media sheepdogs keep us in check…

About Greg: Greg is an international voice-over artist who voices pretty much everything from radio and TV commercials – including continuity, branding and imaging – to corporate videos, documentaries, narratives, explainers, games and much, much more.