A Bit Anti-social

I was exploring the wonders of youtube earlier today with a focus on all the excellent talks and discussions of real value available and wondering how I could ever find time to listen to it all. And, of course, there isn't time because the material is virtually endless. So the sensible question becomes how to find time to properly listen to a little of what is of most value, and even that's difficult to answer. But once you realise there's nothing really lost here, just great possibilities of opening yourself up to ideas that otherwise you'd have had no chance of being exposed to, then it's all good.

Except for what's bad. Incredibly under even the best material there often, indeed usually, appear comments of extraordinary stupidity to the point that scrolling down on almost any page turns out to be a mildly depressing experience - unless the comments have been disabled, when it's possible to breathe a sigh of relief. Somehow I can't get away from the nagging thought that this is the great window into what people are really like: small-minded, nasty, ill-informed. More than a bit creepy.

But, I console myself with the notion that what this mindless commentary represents is a false picture of our species: a self-selecting sample of brainlessness with way too much time on its hands. I'm told that this is what constitutes a large part of the brave new world of social media. Thank goodness I've opted to be anti-social.