Ye olde social media, circa 1972

The other day, I was looking through some of the old editions of the Tribune Phonograph that we have archived at the office. Brandon has a couple set aside for his work on the history corner, so I decided to flip through one of them. This particular hardcover volume bound the numerous issues from 1972 into one place, and as such, was a bit unwieldy due to its size. The scent of aged paper wafted up as I turned the yellowed pages, looking through the work of my predecessors.

Familiar sights were to be found: area news on city council meetings, a story on Colby Cheese Days, a sports section. But something caught my eye. There were entire columns, pages worth of them, dedicated to reporting the social goings-ons of the citizens of various area communities. So-andso’s cousin visited over the weekend, someone had a party and these people were in attendance.

The very concept of this content existing was foreign to me. As I skimmed through the columns, I was admittedly a bit baffled by what I was reading. It seemed so strange to me, for various reasons.

Were people reporting to the columnists every time they had tea with their grandma, or were the people writing these columns just extremely nosy? And if the former, why did they want the entire community to know that they hung out with their friends last Saturday? Not to mention, did the readers actually want to know this information, or was this maybe just a way to fill space? But surely you couldn’t keep printing it if nobody wanted to read it, and a quick look through various other volumes of the Tribune Phonograph made it clear that this was indeed an integral part of the newspaper at the time.

The thought of it initially made me chuckle in bewilderment. I wouldn’t say that I’m a particularly private person, but the idea that people would go out of their way to supply personal information about the time their Uncle Joe visited them over the weekend just seemed so unusual. To go through such effort almost seemed to border on overly egotistical, a mindset I could not quite wrap my head around.

What a strange world to live in, I thought to myself. It’s easy to fall into the trap of generational division. Human society is ever evolving, ever changing, but individuals themselves can oftentimes find themselves stuck in a singular mindset. People have a penchant to dismiss what has come before or to bemoan the current state of affairs as they wax nostalgic over how much better things were before.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

Most times, like in my consideration above, it is a benign feeling causing no harm. Is 80’s rock music really better than 2000’s pop? Were football players better in the ‘50’s because they were tougher, or in the 2010’s because they were more skilled, or are either of those two statements even true? These are questions of opinion and the outcome of such arguments ultimately won’t result in anything worse than some damaged egos.

And yet, this isn’t always the case. Some issues really are important and because these generational divides are so ingrained into our way of thinking (partially because of all of these seemingly benign arguments enforcing this), we are putting up yet another artificial barrier towards understanding. Dismissing opinions, or alienating a group of people outright, because they are considered “old-school” or because it is different from what it was “back in my day” is an easy and dangerous slope to slide down.

After closing the volume and sitting back at my desk, I finally realized how silly my bewilderment truly was. This was not some crazy concept from a time gone by, where society was so much more egotistical and people loved to snoop on each other with fervor. Because, of course, we do the same things now, just in a different way. Instead of sending a notice to our local newspaper that we had a great time at our friend’s bonfire, we just post pictures of it on our Instagram. I wondered how people could even bear to read these columns, but I’ve seen people spend hours scrolling through their Facebook feeds. It’s the same thing; just different.

I suppose that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because “different” so often is synonymous with “bad” and conversations and thought processes rarely make it any deeper into their analysis than that. Which is understandable. The human mind is set up to make complex systems simple, to categorize and find order. But that can also lead us astray, if we aren’t careful.

Would I have ever shared that information with my newspaper? No. But I also never post anything on social media either. That’s my personal preference. But I’m glad I can now appreciate what the newspaper was providing at the time, rather than disregarding it. Not only because it served as a small reminder that I need to beware of quick judgements, but also because it just shows how much we have in common.

That’s something to build on, I think.