Youth Gun Violence..Evil or Apathy, What is the Cause?

My sixy something, baby boomer Mother asked me (a forty something Gen Xer) the other day what I thought was the issue with kids and gun violence, what was the cause?  She is genuinely concerned and the national news frightens her. Truth is, it frightens me too. Is it an overtaking of evil in our society as the right wingers like to howl about, God's judgement on abortion and gay right? Or could it be simply, bad parenting? (Which of course is an evil in itself).

I personally lean towards the answer being neglectful parenting and a glorification of violence, not just in our media these days, but also from religious leaders, christian politicians and average, hardworking citizens that call for gun freedom above all else and endless war and conquest. Also, we as conscientious citizens of this great country, doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the gun violence. No new laws getting passed, not even much conversation about it. What message are we sending the children of this nation? By this national sin of omission, we're telling them that they aren't worth the trouble of passing some laws that would keep assault weapons from being easily purchased and brought to schools for intended massacres. They can blame it on females getting abortions or LGBT partners getting legally hitched, but it's not any of those things. The problem is that good people are doing nothing. We are shouting loud and clear that the lives of school age children mean nothing. This in turn causes the children to devalue their lives and the lives of the people around them. I think it's a plausible answer. That mixed with parents that are more involved in their social (and social media) lives than being an involved parent.

Is evil overtaking the nation or is apathy? Every day that passes that we are not screaming for sane gun legislation, making phone calls, sending emails, protesting at our state capitols, doing everything that we can, then we perhaps are contributing to this deadly apathy epidemic.

Sane gun laws? It's a start. Giving a shit, it's a necessity.

Buh Bye Facebook?

Could it really be that after five and a half years of liking, sharing, posting and obsessively checking my newsfeed that I've finally grown weary of Facebook and their shenanigans? I'm a disgruntled FB page owner and user. FB has offered many wonders over the years.

For example:

• Finding people from my past (I think they borrowed that trick from Classmates.com)
• Reading about people's illnesses and trials
• Looking at pictures of food that other people eat
• Watching relationships form and fail
• Finding that special someone (Yes it does really happen)
• Observing grown ass people publicly bash their former spouses in front of their children on their public walls (then getting unfriended by aforementioned people when you tactfully point the fact out to them that it is wrong to do this in front of your children
• Meeting like minded individuals and enjoying their company until they completely flake out because you post something they don't like

The happy list goes on and on. For me, overall, Facebook has been a consuming beast. It steals my attention from projects and other areas of my life that need tending to. I find myself simultaneously drawn to and sickened by Facebook's magnetism.

I'm working on cutting back. I've done a hatchet job on my friends list, paring down from over 300 to just 100 and it's going to get one more cut before I'm done. I've kept mostly the people that I care about and/or really know on a personal level, those who I enjoy interacting with the most and then a small handful of people who I simply like to observe because they either amuse or horrify me with the crazy shit they post. My goal is to cut back to 2 hours a day and I plan to use a log to jot down my times in and a timer to remind me to get off. I eventually, maybe after the first of the year, plan to whittle it down to half an hour a day. I don't think I can ever leave (plenty of room at The Hotel California..), I have too many business related contacts, people that I care about in my grief group, and at least one page that directly affects my income, but I do believe that I can cut back to where Facebook has less of a pull in my life. I want to be more productive with everything I do, not just on Fb, but in the physical, outside world.

Concerning being a disgruntled FB page owner, I had around 18 active pages (some my creation and some I am an Admin on) at one point. I was a pageaholic. Two political pages, one grief page and affiliated group, my blog page that was meant to be the Facebook presence for this blog, a really kick ass Beatles page, about five or six more Beatles pages that I helped manage, an inspirational page, a progressive Christian page, a cat themed quote page and more. I've shut down and dropped off of most of the pages and intend to cut more. Working on figuring out right now which ones are the most important. Facebook has been hiding posts from hobby/inspirational/non-profit pages in an effort to get desperate page owners to pay to "boost" (pay to be seen) their posts.

My fellow page owners have sometimes tried paying to be seen and found it largely ineffective. Many pages have quit producing their wonderful material and are dropping like flies on Facebook. I am one of them. When you work for years to build a large audience and then Facebook holds your page hostage, allowing only 1-5 percent of your people to see your page, it gets frustrating. I, for one, will not pay to be seen, that's the general consensus among my fellow page owners. Currently, many of the people who do see page posts don't bother to hit the like button or share (which is how pages are seen and grow best organically).

I see Facebook trending towards lots of paid "sponsored" ads in the newsfeed and a very small percentage of hobby pages showing up unless you create a special newsfeed for them. So, this is the gist of what's going on with Facebook pages, like mine. We're just tired of trying to entertain, inform, inspire people and having Fb hide our attempts at this free service that many of us provide the FB masses. The diverse and unique content on the newsfeed was one of the elements that initially made Facebook so much fun. I would encourage anyone who likes FB to write to them, let them know you're not happy with what's going on. It's only going to get worse over time as more and more sponsored ads flood the newsfeeds of every user. Oh, and be sure to give your favorite pages some love, in the form of liking, commenting and sharing the things they post. Many pages on FB are a labor of love that someone takes their time to create content for, for free, for your enjoyment. Please let them know they are appreciated, so they don't lose interest like I did.

Sorry Facebook, it's looking like our love is growing cold. Greed is a huge turnoff and you're just not meeting my needs no matter what I do. It may be time to say buh-bye. :(