Imagine for a moment what it must feel like to be on life support. Your arms and legs have been chopped off, a machine works your internal organs, and even your thoughts are manipulated so your brain stays alive.
Are you still YOU?
Something changed for me a few months ago and I believe it was something to do with social media. I consider it similar to being on life support.
I used to post a number of times each day on groups and pages mostly on Facebook. I used Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Promoting my blog which featured life experiences, poetry, and art. This was fun for me.
Social media bombarded me with adverts telling me how I could do better, and how I should promote my blog and sell more art. I often felt I was being led down paths where finding easier options would only drain me of my creativity, something that I treasure in my life and would not want to lose.
Even programs like Grammarly butting into my word flow and telling me how to reconstruct each sentence. Please don’t misunderstand me it helps you when you forget to put in a comma or miss a question mark. Good writers always need another pair of eyes, but please let me do this for myself.
Facebook changed and all of a sudden my route to work and how I managed things did not function like before. What used to be easy and sensible became difficult and confusing. I was not deterred, Facebook had made changes in the past and It had never taken me very long to get the hang of it.
Not so this time. Whatever they did resulted in me losing my motivation and somehow the fun stopped. Maybe I should have listened to those adverts. I felt I was missing something and I could not put my finger on it.
My groups were not engaging so well anymore and topics of conversation seemed flat and irrelevant. In the past, I had been sharing posts and monitoring reactions. Communication was working well, it was believable and real.
What had changed to make me think that everything I was writing, was now falling on deaf ears?
The internet was swarming with information and I felt I was now drowning and allowing myself to sink.
I have Word Block!
I told my friends, and I wondered if they had noticed my lack of presence online. Word block? try and define it because it is not in the dictionary. I use it as an excuse when I cannot find anything to say or to be more precise when there is nothing to craft some emotion with. Writing is a skill used to evoke the reader’s interest and maybe inspire them to be interested. I hope you are following and I have not lost you yet.
‘Do not worry,’ said Canva. When you have word block try AI. Artificial intelligence will do it all for you. WTF!
My friend also stepped in here and actually said I can write your blog articles in a couple of minutes, Just give me a title. I do not want it done for me as it takes away my creative journey and that is the best bit. Canva wants to write my poetry for me I laughed, but then it won’t be my poetry will it?
Are social media content and blog articles written by robots now? Call me old-fashioned but I will have to draw a line here. I admire progress but take away my creativity and you are cutting off my arms and legs and putting me on life support. AI can produce art too, whoop dee doo!!!!!! There are people out there feeling excited about this but I am not getting a good feeling.
There is more to writing and art than sharing information, it goes deeper. I began to wonder if the words I had been reading online lately were written and manufactured by a machine. I started to do some research and the results are scary. Students are using it to help them write essays. Companies use it to construct business plans. Will screenwriters and authors soon be putting down their pens in favour of machines telling their stories, Hold on, whose stories will they be? Are we looking towards a future where none of us think for ourselves?
If we are denied using our intelligence and our unique thoughts, creativity will have no importance. A creative process should never be replaced by machines. Creativity is a human expression that is important for our health. Suppressed creativity or the dismissive attitude towards creative skills having any solid worth, leads to social disorders including crime and mental health.
We are creating a future of fewer jobs that give us purpose. Society is running around in a circle not knowing which way to go. Everything is done for us followed by a lie that says it will make life easy and simpler. You just have to look at self-service tills in supermarkets to understand what a joke it all is.
Just so you know, this article is all in my own words. It may not be pitch-perfect but it has been written from my heart and written with unique thoughts. I hope it makes you think or even leave a comment, I would honestly appreciate that.
