Social media is not all that Social.
Many things in life are top-notch. We are not in peril the way some of the imagery and plotlines flying around the various mediums would let you believe!
Life is not about to explode as we know it.
If you were to listen to the news, dip into Twitter and get lost in the crazy. If you raid your Facebook and death scroll through your Instagram, you would think the world was awful, and you were wholly inadequate.
I am here to tell you that it is not, and you are not. Do not let that pack of social media lies turn your world upside down.
It is that kind of game on social media and in media in general. The force-feeding of death, bread and circuses are enough to make you want to chuck it and say that you are not living the best life. But please remember, it is all designed to keep you in a state of anxiety and to keep you locked in, soaking up advertisements and splaffing out your money on mundane crap.
Shock and awe makes money for the invested.
Trust me on this one. Don’t fall for it. Most of the shit you see as you scroll through the guff on the internet is either someone’s wish list for their own life or someone shouting crazy shit at the world like the guy you knew who lived down the road from your childhood home. The guy who would bark at the moon.
Every street and childhood had one of these geezers, the crazy ones. Not the Steve Jobs, think different, crazy ones… these were the original, crazy ones. I mean the bat-shit crazy ones. The crazies the dogs barked at for no obvious reason. The crazies where the leaves on trees at their house turned that colour and fell off the stem way before autumn.
The bad people nasty people that hate for the sake of hate.
Out in the open in real life, you would see them and you could avoid their dangerous stupidity, but for some fecking reason, they flood into our social media feeds!!
A friend of a friend or some old school chum who has gone off the rails. A mad auntie who has been down a rabbit hole of wonderland and came back so well informed that they could do open heart surgery with absolute confidence. Because, yeah, they have done their research on facebook like all doctors do.
Maybe it is just me because I follow some dumb political sites. Still, in my defence, I didn’t want to live in a social media echo chamber, so I spread out my wings and connected with some fecking far out there stuff… I mean, different planet stuff.
People are a bit… let’s just say, out there with their views. But views are like assholes, we all have them, and often they stink. For that, social media stinks to high heaven.
Seriously though. It is all smoke and mirrors. Take it from one that throws out some of their personal stuff on social media. You can paint whatever picture you want to whoever you want. I try to keep it accurate, but I balance the editing process to make sure it tells the story that I want to tell.
The reality of it all…
Your life is wonderful the way it is, and you should explore more of what makes you the person you are. Be the person that looks in the mirror and gives two thumbs back in appreciation. Be that person. The person that will conquer their own world and make a positive difference on people.
You should also keep your perspective on social media and take steps to limit your exposure to your consumption of the content. Even the social media companies know how addictive and corrupt the stuff they allow to be published actually is. So much so that they are avoiding the conversations with the same enthusiasm displayed by the tobacco companies in the early 1980s, and they are getting away with that same narrative. (who knows for how long — it is going to get messy so watch this media space)
Don’t be a donkey or a (vaccination) sheep as they scream on my threads. Manage what you read online with the same protective swagger you would promote if you were an adult walking past the crazy on the street corner of your childhood home.
If you can not be half-arsed with the conversation with that said crazy, then take another route…
Unplug yourself.
Take the road less travelled and switch it all off for an extended period of time and sit down and read a good book or something like that!!
Enjoy some real life and have fun.
‘If you have a parrot and you don’t teach it to say, ”Help, they’ve turned me into a parrot”, then you are wasting everybody’s time.’
Anon — taken from my Twitter feed.
Originally published at http://getrichslowlylife.com on October 2, 2021.
