I spend an obscene amount of time on social media. No, I’m not a “content creator” in that I spawn videos of topics I wish to draw attention. I an a peruser of those though as well as just regular folks, like me, that want to express a view, well, just because. I often find people that whole-heartedly agree with me and of course, some that do not. Thats okay because I don’t claim to always be right, but I need more than “you’re wrong” to begin rethinking any position. My social medium of choice is X, and has been for a long time. It’s interesting to get the take of so many people on subjects that, well, don’t really mean anything.

It;s kind of funny to. me how many people take what they say on this platform as serious and expect anyone else to actually, well, care about what they think. Personally, I’m surprised when any of my posts are liked or even taken very seriously. It’s not that I don’t mean what I say, I just don’t care what others think about what I think about. So why do I participate? It’s something to take up a little time during the day and I get to see what some people are focused on on any day. Recently, at east in my feed it’s been two topics. I bet you can guess one. The other has been about our Attorney General, Pam Bondi. Wow, this woman generates a lot of hate from people. Why? I’m not entirely sure: some are upset about the Epstein files, others just seem to upset she hasn’t arrested everyone that ever offended President Trump.

Of course, politicians attempt to press their advantage(?) with an audence whenever they can and try to get folks to believe that they have the best for America at heart(guffaw!). There are always those that allow others to think for them, but in my experience, those people don’t exist in great numbers, at least on X. In fact, I think politicians believe in social media activity is the way to activate and convince voters. But not all voters participate in social media. I have a very small circle of friends and of the dozen people I regularly associate with I am the only one that has an account on X. Yes, we are all adults, professionals, and “likely voters”.

I;m not saying that socuial media, in this instance, X, has no influence on politics, just not as much as some, mainly the media, want us to be;ieve. Before I go any further though, I wanted to discover how many people regularly log into X. So I asked…Grok:

”How many active users are there on X?” Well, the answer is somewhere around six hundred million, world-wide. This includes people that log into daily, at least once per week, or once per month and perform some function (scrolling is a function). So, we can’t be sure how many active users are real participants. US active users are even fuzzier: between fifty-six and ninety nine million Americans qualify as “active users”. Out of those, around eighty percent are of voting age. So the number of active users that could be influenced seems to be quite a few and refutes my above statement – at least somewhat. The actual number of engaged users is either not ever published or unknown (I believe the former).

Even though it appears to us that there is a significant amount of engaged users on X, the reality is that it’s probably a small percentage of those that have accounts and even smaller of those that are considered active users. So why spend so much time on any of these platforms if they amount to not much influence on anything? I think it’s because we can sit back on our keyboards and say almost anything and not have to suffer consequences like we’d have to if it were said in person. I actually chose a topic to see if I would receive any backlash for what I said. Now, before I go too far, let me state I have less than five hundred followers on X so my reach is miniscule. Still, it shouldn’t prevent getting a reaction from a post I make. i do receive reactions on various posts, some of them could be considered sensitive, possible even contentious topics. What I chose I thought I’d garner at least a few nasty responses, but no, nothing. Maybe those that wanted to reply thought I was looking for a fight. I wasn’t. What I posted, I really think is true. Several years ago, I think I may have been mobbed. I know people who’ve been mobbed for a lot less (several years ago). Today, it looks like the day of the angry “Twitter mob” has either subsided or is completely gone.

That’s a good outcome because even if someone has an opinion that others may find reprehensible, unless it is illegal, should be tolerated, especially in a place that acts like a town square. Well, of course the real reason I didn’t get any replies is that no one cares. Yep. for all the ti,e we spend creating clever two hundred eighty character posts (for non verified users) and those that post their /“hard hitting” video content, it’s amazing how little most people care about what other people think. So, does X or any other social media platform provide any value to the community at large? I tend to believe that most people are self absorbed and always have been. Some, however, will join a crowd no matter where it’s headed. Thus, those previous mobs. My guess is that most of the people involved had no idea who or what they were protesting. Kind of like today. Ask people on the street protesting against, say, ICE, why they’re there and many couldn’t really say other than “ICE is evil” or something like that.

So, other than posting about things most others could care less about, what’s the advantage of being on any social media platform? Well, some do become popular and actually make money from their endeavors, but most of us are just taking up time we might have used to be productive.

Maybe I should go paint that room.