No such thing as a slow news day

 In the real world, there are slow news days, and that's a good thing. A slow news day means we did less damage to the planet, other humans and ourselves than usual. It means nothing got blown up, no one shot a slew of innocents, no one well known got arrested, no public utterances reached the level of outrageousness, and no major investigation yielded fruit. But there can be no such thing as a slow news day on social media. 

If nothing catastrophic has occurred once people wake up to a new day, social media will birth something to talk and obsess over. It could be a rehashing of a retired newsy bit, the exposure of an old post from a digging expedition, or the magnification and elevation of something minor but new in people's news feeds. The social media appetite, once whetted, must be fed daily and continuously. If there's nothing legitimately newsworthy, a trumped up issue will suffice.

The bad thing about trumped up issues is while they may come and go quickly in social media conversations, the effects and ramifications of their momentary virality can be long-lasting or permanent stains on the lives of individuals who were thrust onto first page news without warning. One can go to bed in obscurity and unsuspectingly awaken to an unfairly altered reputation with little recourse.

There is a reciprocal and reflective relationship between mainstream media and social media. Social media users take their cues and conversation starters from MSM, then MSM in turn creates follow-up stories about these conversations and follows trails based on what users are seeming to want more of. If someone has been made into social media news, mainstream media will give the story air and search result permanency. It's a never-ending, insidious cycle.

An example of how this plays out is a scenario I recently got wind of involving two fairly well-known actors.