Take a breather before reacting to social media postings

SHAH ALAM - Approaching the 15th General Election (GE15), voters need to be more careful when it comes to consuming online information especially on social media to avoid being roped into believing fake news about any individuals and political parties.

Social media songwriter and musician who wanted to be known as Takahara Suiko said there would always be a ‘smokescreen’ of news on social media.

“There was a time, I was writing songs about what Twitter was mad about on that day and there is always a smokescreen of two news that come in tandem.

“The first one is the real news and the second one is the smokescreen to cover up the first news,” she said as a panellist in Sinar Daily's Wacana English Edition programme entitled “GE15: The Young and New Changemakers”, which was aired on Sinar Daily’s digital platforms, recently.

This, she said, made her realise that she needed to filter the information she read online.

Commenting further, she said for the last several years, she has decided to sit back and watch the news unfold itself instead of quickly reacting to it.

“(If) A news comes up today, I would wait until tomorrow to see what else comes up and because I think they know how social media works.

“Social media is very fast and people get mad easily like when they see one thing, they’ll get mad,” she said.

She added that as a ‘quite’ controversial person on the internet, she noticed that people would just forget about the matter after a few days.

Hence, she said it was best to let the matter unfold itself after giving it a few days to cool off.

“It is best to sit back and consume things slowly because you can't just swipe things and get mad every hour.

“You got to stop. We got to stop and take a breather,” she added

She also said that although it is hard to break free from the norm of consuming social media, it is important to take a step back and take it (the information) one by one.

“That is my approach for now and I am certain that it is not everyone’s approach because it is difficult to get out of that psychological thing with social media because you are used to it.

“For you to take a step back and consume things one by one takes a lot of effort and I don't think people are willing to do that within the next few days,” she added.