And we meet again, awesome readers!
So as some of us have figured out by now, the internet is here to stay. And even with all that’s going on with Zuckerberg and our privacy, it’s pretty safe to say that social media isn’t going anywhere fast either.
But everything has a purpose, right? If it wasn’t for the internet and social media, HOW WOULD WE KNOW STUFF?
How would we keep in touch with people we haven’t seen since forever? Definitely not by the art of old-fashioned letter writing. Have you seen the price of postage stamps lately?
How would we follow the news? Not by reading newspapers. Haven’t you heard? We can’t trust the printed word.
Seriously. The internet in general and social media in particular has maintained a strong relation with society. (Sound familiar?)
Naturally, this got me to thinking about our classic writers and how social media may have changed the way they thought about the world, their place in it, and their work.
For example, here’s what some of them may have said (some under their pen names) had social media been invented a few centuries earlier …
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
One touch of social media makes the whole world kin.
Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)
It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we post on Facebook.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their shares.
Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)
‘Tis likes and shares that make the world go round, my baby.
Emily Brontë (1818 – 1848)
I have seen status updates in my life, that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water and altered the color of my desktop.
George Eliot (1819 – 1880)
Life began with waking up and loving my Facebook stream.
Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888)
She is too fond of Facebook, and it has turned her brain.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)
Whenever you find yourself sharing what everyone else is sharing, it is time to pause and reflect.
Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends on Twitter and #5amwritersclub.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
First you look at Facebook, then Facebook looks at you, then Facebook takes you.
William Faulkner (1897 – 1962)
The past is not dead. In fact, it lives on forever on the internet.
Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
There is nothing noble in posting superior status updates to your fellow man; true nobility is posting superior updates to your previous status updates.
George Orwell (1903 – 1950)
Who controls our privacy controls the future. Who controls what we see in our streams controls our thoughts.
J.D. Salinger (1919 – 2010)
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of liking my posts to make me happy.
Harper Lee (1926 – 2016)
You never really understand a person until you consider what they post on social media.
Your turn. What do you imagine some of your greats would have said had social media been around during their time?
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“I never travel without my Reddit. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” – Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnestly Engaged. (title modified, of course)
Hmm…
John Bunyan: “In a certain place where there was a den, I lay down and read 50,000 tweets. (Sorry, publishers, even with Biblia.com, there was no time to finish that allegorical novel.)”
Back to the hack-writing mines I go…