Have you ever noticed how people feel the need to always post pictures on their social media in order to document their whereabouts and let the world know what they are doing and where? Have you also noticed how that very same action is not only done for places you visit once in a while or in a lifetime but for things in our daily lives?
It has become a social norm to take pictures of places we go or things we do and post them up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. We go somewhere, we admire it for a mere two minutes, and then find ourselves taking a "selfie" with the place behind us, or posing with a landmark of that place or something that will identify that area. Forget places, we have even managed to make it normal to take pictures of things we eat, pictures of our freshly painted nails, cars, clothes, animals, restaurant names... The list goes on...
We find ourselves more engrossed in documenting and sharing our lives with others to a point where we sometimes are blinded by the true purpose of things or are taken away from enjoying what we are doing. The impact of social media on ourselves is far greater than some of us can imagine. It has made us "sharing fanatics" because we cannot go a day without sharing our problems, our achievements, our whereabouts, our relationship statuses, our food choice, and our pets (to name a few) with the world. We want people to notice us. We want them to "like our pictures or statuses". We want them to know how we are feeling today. We want them to know. It's as simple as that. We want the world to know our business. We crave the attention. We want to show everyone that we are enjoying life, or we are having a bad day or we saw something interesting today or we are just plain bored with our lives.
But seeking this attention is done is the utmost subtle way. The absolute main feature of social networking sites is to interconnect with people through websites rather than face to face. It's a way of communicating and networking with loads of people from the comfort of your home. It's just easier access to get yourself known to the world. Therefore, sharing things online is not abnormal because that's what these websites are meant for. They are built on the basis of sharing information with others. But where is the boundary to that sharing? Sometimes I feel like people just put things up online just for the sake of doing it, not because it is something fascinating or rare. It makes us more attached to our devices. We become one with our devices rather than one with nature. We are taken away from our social surroundings and thrown into a online surrounding (if that makes sense?).
Don't get me wrong, sharing things online is a wonderful thing because you can show your family and friends who are in another part of the country or world the things your up to and show them all the cool things you do. But some people on the internet take things to a whole new level and I always just wonder what goes through their mind. Not only people on the internet, it's just everywhere I look, people are glued to some sort of device, whether it be a phone or an mp3 player (are those still in?), an iPad or laptop - people are always connected to the internet world.
Here's an example of how attached some of us are to sharing our boring lives with the world.
For about a month and a half, I felt like I was from a different time altogether because I had a phone that had the basic features; texting and calling. Now, if you've read my posts before, you'd know I'm a social networking freak because I have every account possible for sharing things irrelevant to other people's lives. Although my phone was a touch screen, it was one of those earlier models, where the phone was still a brick (compared to the slick phones now). The internet was atrocious, and I couldn't get any apps on it. Texting was a whole other story. I had to use T9 (predictive text). My brain was fried by the end of the first week of using it because I actually had to sit there and literally spell the word out loud in order for it to appear on the screen. ANYWAYS, the point of this story is, when I was using this archaic phone, I always found myself thinking "Ou! I should instagram this" or "Damn! I need to post this on Twitter!" or "I need Tumblr to keep me occupied in this awkward situation." And it was unbelievable. Every time I caught myself thinking these things, I would feel ashamed because I realized I had become SO attached to those things that it was just a norm for me due to the fact I had a phone that allowed me to access them. And the worst part is, I didn't even get to go cold turkey on it because I found another way to get that information: my laptop became my best friend for a good while. I had neglected it before, unless I needed it for work. Soon after I moved on to the iPad. It was like I needed my fix of knowing other people's business and sharing mine. I couldn't just ignore it and not visit it for a couple of days. It was crazy... It still is actually!
The moral of this endless story is that we need to take a step back from our interweb lives and just try to remain in the moment of the situation. We need to just relax and not always have this urge to share things with everyone. Enjoy the things around you. Though pictures speak a thousand words, enjoying the things that are in the picture are far more important than actually taking the picture. So just admire what's around you with your eyes and memory, not with a camera or a bunch of words on a status.
Phewwww! Didn't mean to make this an essay! And I apologize if I go round and round in circles but I think the point was made, if not in the first paragraph, definitely in the last!
"I don't know the monsters you knew but I'm trying to forget the ones I met too.
Baby you could help me, baby I could help you"
