Stop Making Stupid People Famous
Stop Making Stupid People Famous

Today’s communication technology provides an environment where users can share their thoughts and works of art either instantaneously or retrospectively. This environment, called social media, alongside being entirely virtual and user-based, adds a different dimension to interaction by bringing the masses together. Both scientific research and personal observations indicate that day by day users spend […]

Today’s communication technology provides an environment where users can share their thoughts and works of art either instantaneously or retrospectively.

This environment, called social media, alongside being entirely virtual and user-based, adds a different dimension to interaction by bringing the masses together. Both scientific research and personal observations indicate that day by day users spend more time in social media, meet their life necessities like obtaining information and entertainment, in brief, they build up their own world in this virtual reality. Sometimes they can even be uncertain and forget the boundary between real and virtual life. In fact, within this virtual world, which threatens todays traditional media, they can even reach out and get in contact with celebrities who they admire or hate. In social media, while free exchange of information can be provided more easily than traditional media, users can actively share everything they own. In other words, the users can personally be both visual and written source and commentators of the news.

These are the main features of the social media world and it does not seem scary till this point. Plus, so -called ‘phenomena’ ‘s who are not even qualified are being reproduced as ‘role models’ which is irritating all by itself. For instance, in social media, even if you don’t have a tangible  success history or career you can still have more followers and fans  than the people who actually have it. You can achieve this by creating channels on YouTube, uploading makeup videos, or by doing all kinds of twaddle by sharing photos on Instagram and making political analyses on twitter, or generally exactly the opposite just by using slang humour. Social media is a free environment where everyone is responsible of themselves, but, without being able to distinguish the popularity with being prestigious, idolization of the wrong role model by the users causes the real the danger.

For example, someone, who brings in a difference with his sexual orientation, has been sharing irrelevant posts with morality of the society and is becoming one of Turkeys most spoken person lately. Sometimes we can see this name as a guest or sometimes as host on TV shows. In fact, this person can make an incredible income by making pointless, immoral sharing’s which do not contain any information.

Again, a woman whose only qualification is being a famous TV program presenter’s wife, unfortunately can be chosen as role model by young girls, by only sharing her exaggerated and mannerlessly life that is contrary to community morals. A young unequipped man, whose insults to the Turkish Police during the 2013 Gezi Park protests came into light recently can attract a great deal of attention of children between the ages of 7 and 15 with the videos he is shooting. I think it will make sense if I say these examples are unfortunately too many to be counted. These people are becoming popular just by taking advantages of the fake sides of social media, they cannot be content with only the show part of the matter but also, they can stick their noses into the matters where they shouldn’t dare. They can even write a book or shoot a film with the mentality of relying on the number of their followers and expecting that some of them of them would be buying anyway. Worrisome and dangerous dimension of the matter is most clearly revealed by the fact that they can sell much more than the people who have dedicated their life to literature and those whose main income is writing. Movies that have nothing to do with art can have more success than movies that own many artistic manners.

There are also people who consider these names, just because of their fame, like as they were very important people, and they are at least as guilty as them in the eyes of the society. I do not understand why a publisher with a literary ethic publishes the books, ignoring his image and only to earn more money, or why a producer helps those names to enter the music and movie sector. I do not even want to consider, that those people are invited to universities as lecturers and that on these events a massive crowd participates. Terrible!

Social media is a free environment and people whose past consists only of social media should continue their life there. The question is, if in a society filled with individuals who are unaware of the political and technological developments of today’s world and which are focused on the lives of these names, how they might be useful to anyone or himself, his close environment or to his country. There are many people around that do not know anything about the events in Syria, Myanmar, but who know everything about social media phenomena from A to Z and we have to do something to fix this. This sociological situation is a necessity for art, literature and politics. If necessary, the leaders of the country have to work on this issue. With a society that exemplifies the wrong, uneducated people, countries cannot reach the path they are aiming for. We should take the people who are in the field of science, literature, arts as model. For example, our children should take a sportsman as a model rather than a YouTuber, or a young scientist who has contributed to humanity rather than a popular woman in Instagram. It should not be difficult.