Nobody calls anybody anymore. Yesterday, I held my cellphone in my hand, overcome by this urge to talk to somebody–to hear somebody’s voice. I could no longer stand the status updates, the automatic thumbs-up I give with a click of my mouse. I wanted some *real* socializing, for Goodness’ sake. But I couldn’t dial the phone, because I was thinking that it might not be a convenient time for my friend to pick up the phone, or it might take up too much of my friend’s time. Maybe I should text her first, just to see if she wanted to talk. Maybe she was in the middle of something. Maybe she wasn’t in the mood to talk.
And then a cold feeling sank into my chest. Really? A simple phone call now requires so much thought, so much deliberation, so much politeness–I actually had to mentally assess, go through a series of considerations, before I made that call?
In the end, I didn’t make the call. I sat back, and felt like I lost something.
And then I started thinking about social media like Facebook or twitter–not the first time. From time to time I will become determined to stay away from it–because I know what it’s doing to my relationships with people. Despite the massive convenience in communications and media sharing–it does nothing but separate us, no? We all know this. And not just social media. A text. An e-mail. What happened to authentic, organic, face-to-face communications? What’s become of us? Why do we filter our lives, our friendships, our very selves–through these online services and technological devices? Sure, they’re convenient, but what is this emptiness that I feel? This numbness that takes over once in a while?
Okay–given that I am an introvert, you may say I am over-reacting and I just need to get out more. I probably do need to get out more. But man! These social medias. I say this all the time. All it does is feed our ego. I mean–we choose a pretty picture of ourselves as our profile picture, we choose the banner photo to represent an aspect of ourselves, we edit our About page to signify our character and our tastes, and we update our status to put ourselves out there–what for? Self-documentation? Nope. For an audience. For our friends to click “like” or “comment”. Why do we bother tweeting if no one is reading our tweets? It’s all ego. Everything is ego.
Do you think we’re so busy “being ourselves” online–we forget how to be ourselves in real life? Do you feel like I do–when it’s quiet, there’s this mild unrest, this disorientation–a kind of displacement that unsettles you lightly, a little something that nags at you without you knowing what it is?
Maybe we are all gradually losing touch with reality. My mother told me a friend of hers bought an iPad Mini for her two-year-old son. Two-year-old! An iPad Mini! How is that baby’s muscle, coordination and spatial perception and whatnot–going to develop!? Sometimes I think our stupid generation is breeding a stupider new generation of awkward incompetents.
I can’t. I just can’t.
