Goodbye social media!

Aug 13, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – I have finally decided to give up social media. Yes, I’m signing off. Not just signing off, but in the way a man signs off a will—serious, permanent, and possibly with someone in the background asking, “Are you sure about this?”

I am sure. Because if I scroll one more time through the toxic swamp that Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram have become, I may start believing that Guyana is actually run by a secret society with access to Wi-Fi. You see, it’s no longer a “social” network. It’s more like a chemical spill—dark, polluted, and spreading fast. There are scams lurking in every corner, scams that make Ponzi schemes look like innocent school bake sales.

And the conspiracies—dear Lord, the conspiracies! Once upon a time, conspiracy theories had a certain charm. You’d hear a fellow at the rum shop whisper, “You know they putting something in the water to make you vote for them.” Now, it’s online, with pie charts, bad grammar, and ten-minute videos narrated by someone who sounds like they’re broadcasting from under a bed. Apparently, in the last month alone, I’ve learned that COVID was invented by aliens in Lethem, the Demerara Harbour Bridge is a CIA listening post, and one influential Instagram account is convinced that the price of bora is linked to global warming.

Journalists who actually went to school to learn how to verify facts are now competing with people whose main qualification is knowing how to talk into a phone camera. A reporter spends three weeks investigating a corruption scandal and still cannot break the story Meanwhile, on social media someone announces, “Girl, I just feel like something shady going on,” and suddenly she’s the Walter Cronkite of TikTok. These influencers treat information like it’s Play-Doh—mash it, stretch it, mix in some glitter, and serve it up for likes. Misuse, massage, mishandle—it’s practically a job description. Some even turn their pages into a form of digital blackmail. “Pay me, or I’ll ‘expose’ you.” Expose what? Your late GPL bill? The fact that you bought the cheap curry powder?

In the old days, we had boundaries. Rumours lived in whispers. Now they live forever online, with screenshots. You could once recover from a bit of neighborhood gossip; now you need a PR team and possibly a lawyer. I’ve even seen people post private WhatsApp chats to “prove” a point, which is like bringing your dirty laundry to Stabroek Market and ironing it on the street.

So, I’m done. I’m out. I’ve reverted to my trusted, more reliable sources for information—television and newspapers. Yes, they make mistakes. Yes, sometimes the reporter mixes up their ‘their’ and ‘there.’ But they have something influencers don’t: editors. Editors who don’t let you publish a story without at least two sources. Television, too, has its flaws. Occasionally, the newsreader looks like they’ve just been told their salary will be paid in installments. But at least, when a story is broadcast, someone, somewhere, has checked and rechecked it. They’re not relying on “a guy I met online who sounds convincing.”

Print and TV also give you context—an in-depth look at the issue. Social media gives you thirty seconds, then another video about a parrot dancing to chutney music. By the time you finish, you forget whatever you were watching an exposé.

And to the local “big names” online—the self-appointed kings and queens of content who think journalism means filming yourself in sunglasses outside the Brickdam Police Station while announcing you have “exclusive information” about a minister’s cousin’s neighbour’s dog—I salute your confidence, if not your credibility. And the audience laps it up—every screenshot, every blurry “secret recording,” every cryptic post about “watch yuh enemies, even if they smiling.” We’ve become a nation of digital peeping Toms, convinced that if you haven’t been “called out” online, you’re not living an interesting life. Well, count me as boring. I’m going back to the days when a scandal had to be earned. When you had to actually do something shocking to get in the papers, instead of just having an old photo resurface of you holding a Banks beer in a questionable shirt.

So yes, I’m out. No more viral drama, no more online morality courts, no more waiting for influencers to drop “Part 2” of a story that was already false in Part 1. I’ll be with my newspapers and my TV news, enjoying the slow, steady heartbeat of information that’s been fact-checked by someone other than a cousin who “once worked in an office.”

Social media can keep its chaos. I’m going back to sanity.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• Facebook, Peeping Tom, social media, TikTok

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