I have been called many things in my years on social media, but "weapons grade smartass" is still my favorite.

Said by someone who I eventually pissed off, someone who subsequently “unfollowed” me or “unfriended” me, whatever it is you do when you hear dissonance in your echo chamber. I guess I was either too liberal or too conservative that day.

Hey, if you can’t hack it….

Social media creates intellectual clones. Everybody follows everybody else who is just like them. You get one big circle jerk.

Hey, at least your views are validated, though! On the internet, it seems like they’re important.

I try to break free of the echo chamber. I follow many liberals and conservatives, all of whom are gross. My skin is red and sore from all the showers I’m forced to take dealing with such subhumans. They’re worse than Canadians.

When I was young, like in my 20s, I hoped that people would one day think for themselves. In the age of social media, that is clearly impossible and will never happen in a zillion years. Social media is conformity’s bitch.

“Mind control”, “tracking devices”….these are terms bandied about by lunatic conspiracy people. Yet our phones track us everywhere we go, both online and geographically, and everybody on the internet is divided into precise groups which believe certain things precisely about very specific issues.

I’m not really pissed about all this, mind you, just bemused. A consuming fire is always entertaining to watch. One aspect of it all that I really love, though, is instead of sneakily planting tracking devices, like, under our skin or in our bloodstream, they have figured out a way for us to actually desire the tracking devices themselves, and even pay for them with our own money (or in the case of Millennials, with their parents’ money).

You gotta love it. Nothing says America more, baby.