Digital Insanity.

Though I'm not a particular fan of Facebook, I can't deny that it's part of my life. In a few short years its gone from internet backwater to global trendsetter and hub of activity. Truly bizarre. I find myself drawn to check it though, and I'm generally unsatisfied by what I find on it, and wonder why I come to it in the first place.

And it's not as if I visit this rest stop on the information superhighway for enlightenment; Virtually of the place is seemingly updates about how their Trix were at breakfast, political memes with cookie-cutter messages like “Freedom Ain't Free”, “or “Obama's a Kenyan Marxist!”, or something that has to do with guns and how the various government brown-shirts are coming for them because some obscure talk show host said so.

Lately though, I've encountered a barrage of other sorts, this time the “equality” moniker that so many users seem to have adopted in the last week. You've all seen it, because I'd gather unscientifically that somewhere around 88% of Facebook users have switched to this symbol as their avatar, done so under the guise of supporting “equal rights” in the ongoing row at the US Supreme Court over Prop 8, same-sex marriages, and the DOMA act. So in place of a duck-lipping female posing in her flash-stained, dorm room mirror or a guy dressed in a warrior-Viking costume he fashioned out of empty boxes of Olympia Beer, you instead have what amounts to a simple picture, of an equal sign.

What is this madness, and where are the duck-lips I lust over? Is nothing sacred anymore? God damn it, some things deserve answers! No, minimalism hasn't swept across the US in a great fervor. From what I've gathered, the movement's point is apparently that, having your moniker be a colored version of an equal sign in a pink hue makes you a champion of individual rights and freedom, an individual who is sensitive, and caring, and a hell of a great person and all around snappy dresser.

But are you really? Or are you just someone who has adopted this as your flavor-of-the-week cause du jour, you doing it because everyone else is and it seems trendy? Because that seems to be what a lot of the US is anymore, trendiness, in everything. And it's kind of a sad state of affairs. Instead of people actually being engaged on issues, actually being involved, they feel that simply joining the trend, and switching their Facebook avatar to an equals sign makes them seem as if they are above the fray.

Because amidst all the hullabaloo and avatar changing and general fervor, things have still gone on. The government's still continued to pull shenanigans, all with citizens foisting nary an outrage, too busy changing their avatars to compete with their Facebook friends for the title of “most tolerant”.

In the last week, the “Monsanto Protection Act” was jammed through our legislative body, without an expansive avatar campaign and signed into law by the President on Tuesday. The act, which was an anonymous rider on a spending bill, wasn't debated by anyone or objected to, and as a result of being signed into law, Monsanto and other giant agricultural monoliths are shielded from federal court prosecution or lawsuits in the event something harmful is found in their genetically-modified seeds. I suppose getting poisoned by corporate barons in the name of profits isn't that important anyway. What could possibly go wrong with Flounder-infused tomatoes? Yes. They exist.

The bottom line is, you changing your avatar isn't going to change anything. The 9 justices aren't going to take note of someone's Facebook avatar being changed when they pen their decision, and you changing your avatar isn't going to help someone's plight in anyway. It's just another trend, like skinny jeans and yelling “Yolo!” after doing something completely asinine. Something to make you feel great about yourself without actually doing anything.