There is no greater threat to America—and quite possibly the world—than social media.
Do not roll your eyes. Do not dismiss this as some out-of-touch old person yelling at clouds over some new-fangled contraption that he just doesn’t fully understand.
I know social media. I’ve made a lot of money off of social media. I use it every day. I’m on basically every platform all the time.
It’s killing us.
If you doubt this, allow me to demonstrate the manner in which these platforms are murdering common sense, intelligent thought and reason.
For the past several days, there has been unchecked outrage sweeping across the southeastern United States. Major political figures have weighed in. It has cost people thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Poverty? Rising prices? The illegal arrests and imprisonments of American citizens? The Trump administration trying to hide the Epstein files?
All worthy choices … but no.
Instead, the outrage was triggered by a failing restaurant chain changing its logo and decor.
No, really. That’s it.
Cracker Barrel took the old dude off the sign, painted the walls and took down some of those weird photos and random saws.
And people lost their ever-lovin’ minds.
Before the paint had even dried on the renovations, Cracker Barrel’s stock price had nosedived and conservatives were convinced that this was all a personal, woke attack on them and their Jesus and probably college football by an out-of-touch lib CEO who doesn’t know what she’s doing.
(Just a quick aside here: Cracker Barrel’s CEO is a 52-year-old woman who has quite literally worked her way up from the bottom. Julie Felss Masino graduated from Miami University with a communications degree in 1993, took a job as a salesperson at Macy’s in New York City and entered a low-level management training program. Over the course of the next two decades, she worked her way up from sales manager at Macy’s and assistant buyer at J. Crew to vice president at Starbucks, before being named president at Sprinkles Cupcakes and then Fisher Price. For the five years prior to being named CEO at Cracker Barrel in 2023, she was CEO for this little restaurant chain named Taco Bell. But yeah, Bert and Genie, who you graduated with, have some ideas on marketing to give her.)
For the past week, everyone’s social media feeds have been spilling over with ridiculous stories proclaiming that “(moronic right-winger) calls Cracker Barrel rebrand ‘woke’,” and “(moronic right-winger) says he’ll never eat at ‘woke’ Cracker Barrel again!!!!”
And just like that, a simple business decision was turned into a political statement. All with the goal of doing one thing: spreading anger and division.
Never mind that none of this was a political, or even social, statement. It was business. Masino wasn’t trying to go “woke”—whatever the hell you think that means. She was trying to save your beloved Cracker Barrel.
Because while y’all are professing love for ol’ Uncle Herschel today, you hadn’t been visiting him much the last several years. The restaurants and attached stores had seen steadily declining traffic and stock prices, since 2019, had fallen a staggering 73 percent.
In response, the chain announced nearly two years ago that it was going to make sweeping changes to its branding and its interiors, and sent out press releases saying it was going to listen to customer feedback and lighten the interiors and increase lighting.
But you didn’t know any of that, because those simple announcements, which used to come to you on newspaper pages, where you’d catch them as part of a daily routine to keep yourself better informed, weren’t fed to you by the outrage algorithm that keeps social media alive and well.
Right now, millions of people in this country believe that a liberal, Ivy League CEO went woke, probably because she hates Trump, and took down the relics of the South at their beloved restaurant because some snowflake got offended. Because that completely erroneous set of details is what’s been fed to them.
This is social media.
It has killed the legitimate news industry and, as a result, made it incredibly easy for liars to achieve unimaginable success. It has encouraged the congregating of idiots and then helped their ranks grow by giving false relevancy to their idiotic ideas. It has stifled intelligent debate, rewarded offensive and abusive behavior, made stars of talentless dolts and absolutely annihilated the American attention span.
Perhaps worst of all, though, it has crushed our children. It has sent rates of anxiety and depression among children through the damn roof. It has increased bullying and teen suicide rates. It has been more detrimental to kids’ mental and physical health than any other singular factor.
The fact is, social media is very quickly destroying every person it touches. And we’re just watching it happen.
