Admit it- we’ve all, at some point in our lives, done things on Facebook to keep up with the semblance of ‘having fun’ – put up pictures to get back at an ex or make them jealous, updated statuses to prove to the world just how many liberals reside altogether in us and engaged in endless keyboard activism simply to win a mass nonsense debate with some friend or family member.
All of this for some imagined reaction from people you’re ‘far too busy’ to catch up with IRL!
Messed up? More. Much more than that.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Our generation is claimed by a disease of ‘wanting to be seen,’ no matter what we do. So, a cup of coffee, a bus ticket or even an in-the-moment high-five deserves pixelated space in the online gallery that documents our life. Heck, even the loss of a loved one is summed up in a few characters, as if one is overwhelmed by the physical effort it takes to type and NOT by all the irrationality it took to override the pain and grieve on social media!
Suggested read: Choosing between miracles and loneliness- why we are unhappy!
While one may make one’s peace with juvenile attempts at plotting online revenge on exes, lame activity of forming online minute-to-minute updates of travels or even the lame-r effort of a bride posting her ever-shifty emotions live on her wedding day (no matter that they are the same level of irksome as duckfaced selfies or pictures of one’s breakfast and lunch!) , it is impossible to imagine reducing a complex human tragedy into a Facebook status! And yet, it is all out there- spread out in cyberspace for some inconsequentially significant validation of our pouts, breakfasts, heartbreaks and even grief!
It does not matter whether the real life behind those updates su*ks- what matters is that we continue to steer our lives in directions that shall fetch maximum likes, comments and shares! We do not care if a visit to the art gallery we’d dreamt of visiting ever since we were kids births a conversation about Rossetti with some stranger whose eyes match the hue on the canvas but take care that we click enough pictures in there to post online, so people can validate our pursuit of art and culture via clicks! We do not care if our travels abate or inflame our feelings for exploration but ensure that no picturesque landmark skips the shutterbug invasion, so our Facebook friends can seal our travel investment with their approval!
Heck, we even update blue-sy posts on heartache and more, right after a breakup, because hey, the tug of war for sympathy likes is still on, right?
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
We have forgotten how to make our own happiness and grief our private pursuit so much so that an absence of likes on social media makes us feel blue. We are living our lives through other people so much so that we’ve forgotten what it is like to be alive, for ourselves, in ourselves and with our own selves.
Maybe it’s time we admit that we are a bored generation.
A generation duped by the feeling that curating an online tragedy of throwback Thursdays or even happy humpdays shall be the best homage to one’s life- when life is no more. A generation bound in tech shackles that demand chronicling every mundane and/or magical detail of one’s life just so the other can click like, and then, you can do the same for them- and THAT makes both of you feel free. Even happy. Howsoever fleetingly. Falsely.
Maybe it’s time we admit that it is our own doing. That we’ve made a hoax of a sharing mechanism and inflated it to such gargantuan proportion of significance in our lives that we do not share to relive our experiences with loved ones but live to share them online!
And maybe, just maybe, it is time we log out of the need to put everywhere our feet take us on an online map and trace all the worthwhile destinations on the atlas of our insides. We have overlooked stars and planets in there we could grow old in, because we were glued to the screen, thinking about everybody else!
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Facebook
Disqus
Google + 
