Social media has taken over our lives. Staying updated about
the whereabouts of our family and friends from miles apart, being a part of
their happiness even if you aren’t there in person, are all advantages that
make us crave more and more for some online time.
However, there is a severe downside to all of this. And I am
not saying this with the perspective of straining your eyes while continuously glaring
into the mobile or not spending enough time with family and friends because you
are happier in the virtual world. Social media has not only changed our
lifestyle and the way we perceive happiness (number of likes/upvotes) but also
altered our personality to the point that we are losing ourselves to our
virtual self.
Imagine you chatting with an acquaintance or someone who still
isn’t in your ‘close friends’ group. The natural instinct while chatting with
such a person is to appear cool, witty, one who thinks on his/her feet and is a
natural conversationalist. It won’t be a surprise if we type-untype a sentence
couple of times till we are sure we are coming across as someone we strive to
be; not the person we are. As opposed to this, in a personal meeting setup, we
don’t tend to over-analyze, overthink about every sentence before saying it. We
may get ridiculed for saying pretty dumb things sometimes but don’t you think
that is totally worth than sounding like someone you are not?
We Indians have always been a hypocritical lot. There are a
lot of memes going around these days about our hypocritical society. ‘We can
pee in public, not kiss in public’ being the most popular one. This ‘digital
persona’ of ours is probably the hyper sensationalized version of this hypocrisy.
Spend more and more time on social media and you come across a lot of examples where
fake flamboyance and showiness have taken over genuine emotion.
Starting with the current trend of ‘Mother’s day’ and ‘Father’s
day’. I am all for appreciating what our parents have done for us all our life.
I am sure everybody has stories about his/her mother and father sacrificing something
to keep their child happy and content. Their contributions should definitely be
appreciated. But won’t it be better to show your appreciation by taking them
out for dinner, or cooking something they like than posting a photo on facebook
saying ‘I love you mom/dad’? Most of the parents aren’t even on facebook and
won’t even see these messages. So who are we posting this for? Our parents, to feel
good about our self, or for our social image?
Another story I heard was something on the same lines. A boy
was really impressed when his girlfriend mentioned that she wanted to visit an
old-age home. After arriving there, all she did was click a few selfies with
the members there to post on her social media page. After getting what she
wanted, she left. Her digital image would show her to be a compassionate, noble
soul who spends her free time working for the betterment of the society. So
much disparity between the real her and the digital her!
It is not just on Facebook that this ‘trying to set my
image’ trend exists. I am on Quora which is a question-answer social network
with a huge population of intellectuals. Talks here include anything under the
sun; but even they aren’t without their own share of hypocrisy. When asked
‘What would you do if you have 1 lakh excess amount’, someone replies ‘I would
teach a child’. Such a noble thought! But has anyone ever thought that it does
not take a lakh Rs. to teach someone and if someone is really serious about
this, they can do that in less than a 1000 Rs. As someone rightly pointed out
in the comments section, primary education is almost free in government
schools. If someone is genuinely interested in doing what they say they want to
do, they would have had all the necessary information to take this step anytime
in the present or future. Empty vessels make the most noise they say!
A lot of the Quora questions are based on ‘What are you
doing for the country’, ‘How can you make this world a better place’. Honestly,
if every person who wrote answers on these questions does what he/she writes,
along with spreading what and how he is doing it, India (or world) will
actually be a better place! An argument to this can be that there are only 2%
Indians on Quora and maybe they are actually doing whatever they say. Taking a
positive view on this, I really hope everybody is doing their share and are not
posting these answers just to have a good social image.
Everybody has an opinion these days about whatever is going
on in the world. Everyone opposed and ridiculed the Yulin festival in China even
though all animals anywhere on the face of the earth are undergoing the same
fate. An IAS officer writing an essay of ‘Why should dowry be eradicated’,
asking for ‘1 Crore’ dowry at his own wedding, is another such hypocrisy. People
ridicule the beef ban; change their profile pictures to show solidarity to the
current events. (Coloured pics to support same sex marriage currently) All this
definitely helps in increasing awareness and spreading the word. However, blinding
protesting or supporting a cause without enough knowledge about the same is as harmful
as half-baked knowledge always is. Support and spread awareness after educating
yourself completing regarding the issue rather than posting up stuff just for
the sake of it.
I am not even going into the ‘Awwwwwwwwwwwws’ (raised to
infinity), ‘I miss you’ s and ‘I love you’ s that are so frequently seen on our
Facebook page these days. (Since when did saying ‘I love you’ to people-close
or acquaintances- become so common in India?) Though there might be a tinge of truthfulness
in these expressions, it would be so much better if these feelings are conveyed
to the respective person along with raising the hotness (?) of our Facebook
page.
If only we would focus on making our self a better person in
real life than trying to portray an idealistic social image…
