Social Media Saga

Watching older posts in the Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, etc. is like walking back to the past. Social media – we interact with people in the digital platforms using the internet. There is a cycle which compels us to share more and more of our personal information, of our feelings, of our thoughts to the people who hardly matters. The idea is that more the number of people we know and make friend, more social we are. I find so less weight into this. Are we really becoming more social in the digital platform? The conversation which used to be private earlier is now readable 24x7 to the general public. Our life is no more private. We even share very personal photographs in the vibe that we are special. Well, everybody is special but then there is a tinge that those who share much, have much life, and thus is more special. The information that we share is subjected to judgments by the public at large and it is also a source of commercial exploitation. I think a bubble is being created around us, an illusion created by us and it is something we should be careful about.

Am I conservative about it? What’s the big deal? It’s a personal experience and every time I have posted something on the internet, I tended to look at it, again and again, become critical of oneself, compare the number of likes the other person has got and so on. I may have seen very few posts on the internet which would have helped me change my life. Those are the ones where I read stories of other people lives, like the page “Humans of New York”, “Humans of Bombay”, where they interview random people in the public. Some other pages would be like ‘Artidote’ – It is the artistic representation of one’s inner thought and it promotes solidarity in the world.

Have I ever been benefitted from looking at the profile picture of someone? No. I might have become judgmental to him and even envious. This is human nature and this is aggravated. We may say that we will do a balanced use of social media. The thoughts which remain during the time of fresh posts heat up the mind. There is also a feeling that people would be looking at my posts, my pictures, why are they not liking it? Why are they not commenting on it? Am I a bad guy? Am I a loser? Here you are - a like, a comment, so many likes, I am the best, I am a loser… What should I reply to this comment? Should I like his post or not? What would he or she think?

Someone at a different stage of mind browses the platform with different kinds of mindsets and moods. Some are angry with the government and talking about corruption, there are new profile pictures in the midst of nature, and there are those who are sharing their viewpoint on some current happening and so on. For a student who wants to study, it is ideal that he is away from the travel content to prevent from distraction, for someone who is happy – he may not want to look at the bureaucratic corruption content and the end of the world. This goes on and obviously creates incoherence and into this complex life, complexity adds on.

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