But that’s not what most social media facilitates. The mainstream platforms were about staying in touch with friends and family, once, but now they are about parasocial celebrity worship and broadcasting your life in a fake light of endless positivity. All the while secretly hating the habit of feigned contentment, never realising everyone else is doing the same.
Social media could be about sharing our passions, forming real and meaningful connections with other individuals around the world, as well as truly coming to know ourselves as a species on a global scale.
Some small parts of it are exactly that.
Those are the parts I’m trying to perpetuate and nurture, and though they are a tiny part of the whole thing right now, it does mean it isn’t all bad.
Social media sucks
Envy has existed far longer than social media, none of these things would go away if social media doesn’t exist. Social media just amplifies it.
Comparison has always been the thief of joy.
Yep, “keeping up with the Jones’s” was a phrase I heard growing up in the 1980s
Also, attachment leads to suffering
Communication is a good thing.
But that’s not what most social media facilitates. The mainstream platforms were about staying in touch with friends and family, once, but now they are about parasocial celebrity worship and broadcasting your life in a fake light of endless positivity. All the while secretly hating the habit of feigned contentment, never realising everyone else is doing the same.
Social media could be about sharing our passions, forming real and meaningful connections with other individuals around the world, as well as truly coming to know ourselves as a species on a global scale.
Some small parts of it are exactly that.
Those are the parts I’m trying to perpetuate and nurture, and though they are a tiny part of the whole thing right now, it does mean it isn’t all bad.