The 8 Rules To Surviving Social Media

1. Be mentally healthy

Mental health is everything. The best way to be mindful is to attack the mental health of another while claiming you are the victim. If you do it right you might even make them go all the way. And you can really milk it when you read their eulogy at the church. You will look so sensitive you might even get some sympathy sex out of it.

2. Be steadfastly heroic

Children are important. Old people are important too. But nobody is more important than you. You supersede all others. This does not make you a narcissist. It makes you a hero. This world was made for you. Old folks are easy to get rid of. Kids are even easier. These people are just background actors in your charismatic close-up. Never let the living get in the way of your deadly destiny.

3. Be responsibly free

Censorship is dangerous. Unless you are doing the censoring. Then it is necessary. Any coward who disagrees with you is dangerously wrong. They need to be confronted with courageous censorship. You are only doing what needs to be done to protect everyone, including those you are censoring. Intelligent people proudly block out all contrary thought. Only then can you truly think freely.

4. Be ready for battle

Words mean what you want them to mean. The idea that words should retain their functionary meaning is moronic. In this battlefield of feelings, there should be no room for tone. Or intent. Or satire. Or humour. Or confusion. Or context. Or anything. Etymology is for imbeciles. You own all language. Words are yours to weaponise as you wish. Attack! Attack! Attack!

5. Be relentlessly compassionate

‘Compassionism’ is the way forward. It may not even be a word but it is the new political doctrine. Show the world how compassionate you are. Use the word hugely. If anyone points out that your behaviour is the anthesis of what it means to be compassionate, annihilate them. Viciously. Relentlessly. Barbarically. But compassionately.

6. Be more intelligent-er

Stupid people contradict themselves. Wise people contradict everyone else. You are never wrong. Even when you are. You have never been wrong. Even when you were. You will never be wrong. Even when you will be. That’s real intelligence.

7. Be ready to embrace emotion

Never hesitate to accuse another without foundation. Due process is a scam. Everybody is guilty of something. Nobody is innocent of anything. Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean they didn’t do it. Just because they didn’t do it doesn’t mean you are wrong. People are what you accuse them of being. If you feel they did it then they absolutely did it. Emotion is the new evidence.

8. Be full of feeling

Facts are for fools. Never let facts get in the way of your feels. If people expose your lies with their facts then attack them with your feels. Feelings trump everything. If you feel something is real then, goddamn it, it is real. Even if it isn’t. Feeling is the new fact.

Happy hunting, hyenas.

Terry McMahon is a filmmaker and can be found on Twitter @terrymcmahon69

Previously: Terry McMahon on Broadsheet

Illustration via Kaspersky

Related posts:

Ah Here Apollo House, Simon Coveney and Lying for a Living A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be A Class Reunion

35 thoughts on “Social Media Rules”

  2. Yep

    Terry, you must see the irony? You label people psychopaths. Is that not a misuse of a very important word. You also label people trolls who have made valid critiques of your pieces….you must be taking the proverbial or you just lack any self-awareness…

    Funny piece though. .tbf

  11. Spaghetti Hoop

    It’s a bit bitter, no?
    Would’ve worked as a comedy piece if a little more tongue in cheek and accepting.

    1. missred

      Yeah agreed, it’s tipping too much into the passive-aggressive. I was expecting self-awareness, but that sadly isn’t too common in himself’s posts

  15. Broadbag

    9. Quit but don’t actually quit.

    If people say things you don’t like about your erudite musings feel free to throw all your toys out of the pram, hell, why not tip the pram itself over and set it on fire while you’re at it, while loudly and definitively announcing to all and sundry that you’re quitting social media for good and that’s that! Wait a few weeks and then meekly return but post even more drivel more frequently.

  18. millie st murderlark

    Take it all with a pinch of salt.

    Life is WAAAY too short to be taking social media seriously.

    1. Spaghetti Hoop

      Well said Millzer. If we survived the school playground, we can survive social media. I only see the craic in it tbh.

  20. rotide

    Couldn’t work out what number 2 had to do with social media, then lost interest halfway through wondering what the point of it all was. Figured it must be a Terry piece, was not wrong.

  21. Niamh

    Guys you have to trigger-warning-for articles by Terry Mahon by declaring the presence of Terry Mahon FROM THE START ‘k?

      1. Niamh

        I don’t know how I missed that, but I did.

        I need it in block capitals. Like a warning on a bag of peanuts that it contains nuts.

        2. Cian

          “Like a warning on a bag of peanuts that it contains nuts.”

          “Like a warning on a bag of peanuts that it contains nuts.”

          “Like a warning on a bag of peanuts that it contains nuts.”

          W.T.F.?? There’s a clue in the name!

Comments are closed.