Black Intellegentsia and social media

 Prompted by weariness with the pedestrian fare found on social media, a group entitled "Black Intellectuals" seemed to be the ideal landing spot. However, unless I am missing something, it is also bereft of content. There is a lot of news directly impacting Black folks throughout the Diaspora. But "Black Intellectuals" are not discussing any of it either critically or in depth. In fact they seem to be "missing in action."

I used to be in a group that will remain anonymous because a member there is also a member of Black Intellectuals. We used to have always lively, often raucous, sometimes bitter conversations about topics that engaged Black men of all races. It had over ten thousand members during its height of all political persuasions. 

The group's owner was around my age in his mid-sixties but unlike me, retired. After a series of posts Meta's online reputation management (ORM) system and/or human censors found objectionable, the group had to literally reinvent itself. Most if not all of the original members with the exception of myself and the group's owner left. 

Now the group is comprised primarily of disaffected Millennials. The group's content delimited to sports, the occasional scantily clad female, seasoned with a liberal dose of trite scandal: popular culture masked as news. The same with another group that is supposed to target seniors in their sixties. According to the group's administrator "over 60 and fab" is supposed to facilitate "love connections." 

But in practice the group was little more than a used car showroom for some attractive "involved" or married  women "kicking the tires" by posting self-congratulatory pictures of themselves soliciting complements like they were still the belle of the ball or, worse, back in high school (some in college) when all the handsome, buff jocks were chasing them (neither very hard nor very fast before they caught up, however). 

The remaining men and women were embittered, lonely, old folks desperately seeking love in a veritable sea of vanity that may have islands of unrealistic expectations upon which they can cling tenuously, resting briefly before washing back out to sea helplessly on a 100 foot wave of dashed hope by another merciless Tsunami. One would think that someone, whether male or a female, well south of the half century mark would be devoid of all conceit, vanity, and duplicity - like some women in "60 and fab" who loudly but falsely proclaim, "I ain't looking for nobody... I don't need a man to be happy..." 

And though some members were well-educated, credentialed, and highly accomplished, those voices were drowned out by fear of personal attack. There was not a literate voice among the rest whose posts were worth reading or engaging. Facebook has 3.065 billion daily active users. In that vast number has to be a considerable amount of "Black Intellectuals" who want to engage, share, and build a coalition of consciousness that debunks the archetype of social media being a cesspool, the lowest common denominator, of social discourse. Where are the modern day, "Talented tenth?"