Self censorship and its impacts on thinking

As one person had once put it, self-censorship is like violence against the mind. I for one would have to agree.

The ironic thing about the interconnectivity of the internet and the social networks that it brings along with it is a tidal wave of share information. When Facebook was in it's infancy, you'd only have a few circles of friends and they would represent the closest of your friends, then you would reach out to old acquaintances that you might have lost touch after middle of high school. When young, you could write about anything and you wouldn't give it a second thought. Social networks at one point were "fun."

Then came people of influence or judging people by what they post in to the mix of social networks. When everyone is watching everyone at some point, the things that do get posted onto social networks becomes sterile. As of late the only things that are of any notes are of people getting engaged, married, having kids, baby photos, food and the like. Posts of what people honestly feel and think have for the most part disappeared from the posts of social networks. The same goes for when family, friends of family and even some colleagues starts to appear on to one social network-- the choking scent of bleach and lysol starts to creep in. The problem is that you just can't everything with everyone.

Infinite loops and unfinished thoughts

There are thoughts that you can't share with everyone because it will end up rubbing someone the wrong way. The fear of writing something down, kills the hashing out process of thinking through an idea and all that remains is that unhatched seed of an idea that doesn't go away, but cannot be explored further without the medium of writing it down. One of the greatest cleansers of the mind is to keep a journal of thoughts to off load things out of the mind. But this makes the assumption that you are able to complete your throughs to a satisfying degree on your own. What if you need the opinion of a few others is needed to close the thought? Somethings without closure can sometime be left spinning in the mind for a long time, like that last word to a crossword puzzle, what you should do in some business situation or what not.

That in essence is the problem that current social networks today have changed the way that we interact with people, we've grown too accustomed to dropping things into an ocean of ideas and expecting the right ripples to come back to us. It just doesn't work like that anymore-- there is too much that you can't say and you simply just can't be yourself (not to mention what the NSA might be watching of you). Which is to say that from what I see of social networks now as a facilitator of self repression or violence of the mind which is unhealthy. For those that do not take heed properly and post whatever they choose can lead to real world consequences.

Sharing is slowly getting smarter with lists and circles. But I think the next killer app is something that lets you control who gets to see what.