This is my social experiment, can you guess from the photos
that I just posted that I’m not happy? No? Me either, in fact I almost
convinced myself that I was the happiest person in the world. In actual fact I’d
say that today I am feeling mediocre at best. So what can you tell from these
picture of me winking at you with a cheeky grin on my face? Perhaps I feel
confused (second photo), or I feel flirty (all of the above photos). Can you for
instance tell that I’m hungry or tired or just been crying at the latest
episode of The Good Wife. No! In fact you can tell very little from the photos
in this post, apart from what I had engineered you to think about ‘me’.
I’ve become acutely aware of social media as a source of
creating ones identity. We can use our Facebook, Instagram’s, twitters to emit
parts of us that we don’t like and create an image of ourselves that we want to
project to the world.
We can edit our faces, so we look more tanned, less tired
and give a little bit of authenticity to our not-so-real smiles. We can go on a
night out and take a thousand photos of an otherwise ordinary evening and make
it look like we are having ‘the time of our life’.
It’s easy to pretend when we’re just our computer screens.
Then there are those that whine all over Facebook, that we
quickly hide from our feed because it doesn’t fit the ‘happy-go-lucky’ world
that we’ve created online. And whilst we find those people irritating and
somewhat undignified for airing their dirty laundry publically and without
discretion, we know too, that we’re feeling the exact same.
Still we continue because we want everyone to believe that
we are the perfect person living in a perfect world and any trouble that comes
our way we brush aside with a smile. We want our friends to adhere to this same
policy because we don’t want to have to be reminded that this perfect world
doesn’t exists, that we aren’t all coping, that we’re not all happy and some of
us are struggling.
This is the point where you stop reading.
It’s way too depressing for you.
Right?
We all live our life by inspiring quotes and clichés such as
‘we’re only human’, when in reality we don’t accept nor act as though this is
the truth.
We can spread our incredible lives, our true joys and
happiest moments (and there are many of them because life is fruitful) across
our internet personas but how many of us, are willing to do the same when we’re
just not okay?
Are you brave enough to admit that you messed up, that you
made a mistake, that you’re not where you want to be, you’re going through a
break up and it’s hard, your relationship with your kids is difficult, you’re
struggling with alcohol, sexuality, life?
Even better, are you brave enough to tell your friend that,
it’s alright because I’m the exact same.
Hiding behind our edited photos and perceived wonderful life
creates an illusion, a façade that we have 400+ friends, when in reality the
majority of people on Facebook, are lonely and that’s why they’re on there.
I think it’s time we took away the taboo that is
“unhappiness” or even “depression” because it’s not infectious, it’s real and
ignoring it doesn’t help anybody. We’re
living in a separate reality that has been created by our desperation for
perfection but take away that unhealthy obsession and what we’re left with is
this reality. In turn that will leave us to focus upon what we have, how we’re
really feeling and hopefully lead towards a happier life.
Represent who you really are on social media today, not just
the best edited version of you.
