Morning Coffee – 02/15/2016
An interesting thing happened when I looked up the definition of the word ‘Support’. I found that there are two commonly used definitions.
Support
1. bear all or part of the weight of; hold up.
2. give assistance to, especially financially; enable to function or act.
Now, even on first glance, it’s obvious to me that these two definitions are drastically different when it comes to their applications in the world. When you publicly declare (i.e. via Facebook Share) that you ‘support’, or ‘do not support’ something, it is important to stop and think for a moment what you are trying to accomplish.
Here are two examples of an average post/share to illustrate my point:
A. Check out this band, I just bought their album and it is great! (www.randomband.cf)
B. This article is so dumb and I totally do not agree! (www.randomarticle.cf)
Now if we apply both definitions to (A.) we see that we achieve our intention to publicly declare our support for something. By buying their album, we have given them nominal financial support (#2.), and in turn have become part of their fanbase and have burdened some of the promotional load (#1).
Applying both definitions to (B.) is where this becomes interesting. Simply stating our contrary belief to another is enough to ensure that we are not in support of the opinion in question, and we are not holding up their end in any way (#1). However, by sharing the specific article, we have now accidentally assisted the article by placing it within a public forum. Whether or not we agree with the article, we have put the article in front of a larger audience than had we not posted it publicly (#2). In many cases, the articles are financed by ad-revenue, focused on unpopular opinions, and rely on annoying ‘click-bait’ titles to garner large traffic. They are paid according to their traffic, to which we have also helped contribute (#2).
This is not always the case, I understand. All I am saying is that we should be more aware of the ways we are choosing to support, and not to support. Because sometimes, we don’t even realize which side we are on.
=CF=
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