With the overrated friend list and followers indicating ‘How popular you are’ and the number of likes shaking my self-esteem, I have scores to settle with social media for constantly making me feel I am not good enough.
Do you feel the need for internet validation for being ‘good enough’? How good is actually enough? Where to draw the line exactly? Is it raising the bar indefinitely?
So, in simpler terms, your selfie is not as good as that friend’s because she has got more likes. She uploaded a picture with her but not you. Maybe you aren’t liked enough. He didn’t like your profile picture. Maybe you are not pretty enough. They checked in; they hang out without you. Maybe you are not fun enough to be around. She puts up snap chat stories every day. Why is your life so dull? She is online even at 3 a.m. Why don’t you have anybody to talk to? And on and on you go fragmenting yourself into a worthless piece of crap.
What kind of acceptance are we seeking? With the social network expanding at a breakneck speed, is there any end to it?
IT’S ALL SUPERFICIAL
When was the last time you saw a friend upload a picture eating alone or crying till her eyes swelled or an ugly click from a boring Sunday? Or the last time someone updated their status to ‘I am shattered to smithereens’ and if they did, did you not judge and scoff at them for being attention-seeking gits? It’s true. The discrepancy between our real life and how we pose on social media is the size of the Grand Canyon. But we’re all doing it.
Everybody is caught in the rut to project themselves as gleeful as possible and why not, it is the socially acceptable temper. But what is disconcerting is, why are we entertaining this validation? Why don’t we log out and get a life?
Why should the purpose of looking good for a party be a great selfie to upload online? Why should you check in simply to make an asinine point that you are having the time of your life? Why is there a constant pricking to take pictures and upload it on social media every time you go out to validate the experience as an enjoyable one? Why should the number of ‘likes’ and followers sponsor your confidence?
Why should the purpose of looking good for a party be a great selfie to upload online? Why should you check in simply to make an asinine point that you are having the time of your life? Why is there a constant pricking to take pictures and upload it on social media every time you go out to validate the experience as an enjoyable one? Why should the number of ‘likes’ and followers sponsor your confidence?
Social media is responsible for making us sulk way more than it should. Be it your friends posting pictures of a vacation or your ex hooking up, or your friend snap chatting about the picturesque salad for breakfast, it throws you into FOMO, hard to recover from. It’s high time we accepted that people’s lives in the news feed will always be picture perfect and it is futile to even compare and desire such a life.
Now, I’m not trying to be condescending but these things shouldn’t define you. Your timeline is no measure of how happy or happening your life is because it’s a series of life events with carefully deleted lousy moments.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS MAKING US UNSOCIAL
What frightfully bothers me is that social media is replacing real rapport with cloying and superficial social concern just as a cell phone has replaced the need to remember people’s contact numbers. It is degrading the value of social interaction. People have lost the drive to get to know each other.
Maybe we should spend less time choosing filters to put on our pictures, or what angle will make us look thinner in a selfie and exchange a couple of kind words with people around. Maybe it would leave better impressions on people if we made efforts to tell them that they are beautiful than perfunctorily liking pictures.
But it’s not the fault of social media. It is, after all, made up of algorithms without feelings. It is our over indulgence that is to blame. It is the hyperbolic importance that we have misplaced in social media that is responsible.
MODERATION IS THE KEY
There is only one solution to it: Moderation. Stop drowning into your phone every time a family dinner becomes boring. Keep from continuously clicking pictures at a party or a reunion. Try to drink from the moment than fanatically capturing moments to upload online. Make an effort to know that friend better. Try building deeper real life connections than entertaining small talk online.
Log out of Facebook to find out what and whom you actually like. Sign out of Instagram and start sharing with the nearer ones. Our obsession with broadcasting our lives has robbed us of the liveliness of the moment.
So, log out because it’s all about fake fun, pretend friends and misleadingly embellished lives. Is it good enough for YOU?
