“Unaffected”

In launching my new blog, “UNAFFECTED”, I’m setting a stretch goal for myself, one I am unsure I can achieve . I want no one, ever, to like or comment on any of my posts.

Countercultural, I get it.  Everyone in the online world is a “like” accumulator, no matter where we look.  That’s what makes my strategy so unique.  If I can achieve this, if I can get neutrality on everything I write, I can start pushing the world away from its current polarization.  Instead of writing something provocative that attracts the love of half the population (evidenced by “likes”) and the scorn of the other half (evidenced by bitter and biting comments left at the end of the piece), I aim to produce writings that my followers read and have zero reaction to.

Polarization is rampant in our current age.  If you agree with me on a topic, you are obviously thoughtful, educated, open-minded and liberal in your views.  If you disagree with me, you are a bigoted, brainwashed idiot.  Whatever happened to feeling dispassionate about something?  Why can’t we find areas where we are accepting of any viewpoint or outcome? Consensus building can start in areas like these, where we can listen or read and not react by either throwing our support behind the author and idea, or condemning it as anti-something.

I decided to do this to tame the rhetoric I see every day on my social media feeds.  Since my habit is to immediately jump into Facebook, Twitter and Instagram each morning as soon as I wake, I was finding myself with an emotional edge that affected me throughout my day.  I tried to stay off social media, but I can’t do it.  The allure of voyeurism is too great.

So my solution is to start a movement to fill social media with content that doesn’t influence our psyches.  “UNAFFECTED” will only speak to topics that have no potential for conflict, such as clean water is better than polluted water, 1000 degrees Celsius is hot, cancer is bad, having hair doesn’t improve your IQ, and other unprovocative topics.  Reading this kind of content will leave people unaffected (!) and allow them to continue with their days without the distraction of having read something memorable. 

Just in case my content occasionally veers off-course and causes someone to react, I have decided to arm the “like” button on my website with an automatic trigger that will (1) remove the content instantly, and (2) send a system-generated email to the person who “liked” the original post apologizing for the tantalizing content.

I hope others will join me in this quest and that my follower base will be dispassionate but loyal.

For your indifferent reading enjoyment, on Friday I will offer my first “UNAFFECTED” post entitled “Why Round Wheels Are Better Than Square Ones”.  Please look for it, but whatever you do, don’t like it!