Social media killed the man

Norrah: It reminds me of this part of Judaism that I really like. It's called Tikkun Olam. It says that he world's been broken into pieces and it's every body's job to find them and put them back together again. 

Nick: Well we're the pieces. Maybe we are not supposed to find the pieces. Maybe we are the pieces. (Nick and Norrah's Infinite Playlist, 2008)

Tikkun Olam literally means "to repair the world." How badly the world needs to heal from it's brokenness right now. And how unfortunate that so many people don't see how broken it really is. We are all, in part, to blame for this tragedy. Some wreck havoc on their fellow men, others choose to look away, or deny that something is happening, while some would stand, watch, like, comment, and share it.

With the advent of social media, you'd think it would be much easier to connect with people and band together to do something about our broken world, but no. We post and share so many things in social media trying to find some validation that our thoughts matter, or that we are not alone in thinking or feeling this way. Likes and comments and shares somehow become the measure of our worth. And after the hype has died down, we're back where we started - scrolling down our feed for the next "act of kindness" that will "restore our faith in humanity." The cycle continues and nothing ever gets done. We'd rant about it online (just look at what I'm doing right now) and people would echo our pleas, but tomorrow will be a new day and there will be something more interesting to talk about, and we all will have forgotten that we were ever frustrated.

It's crazy to think that this is all "normal." In a world where there are so many avenues to connect, how disconnected we must be to have to constantly remind the world that we are alive, and that we are of consequence.

Had I not posted my thoughts tonight, would anything be different? Probably not. You'd probably scroll down your feed and hit "See more" on a different post, share a funny video, or like a friend's status update. But there's also a probability that maybe, just maybe, someone (Hey, you!) will read this and think, "The world is broken, and so are we, but I want to help fix it." So to anybody out there that cares, let's put the pieces back together, one piece at a time. :)