There’s something about modern humans where we need constant validation. We need attention, and ‘love’, and an audience. It’s part of what we are as a species but it’s also learned behavior in our social media age. So many of us are giving partial attention to one another – always on our phones, scrolling, texting, or browsing – because we want to do all things at once and it cheats us and the people we’re with of the comfort of one another.
There’s a vast loneliness to our culture that is only getting worse as the gulf between us expands. We don’t feel like we have time for ourselves but we also don’t want to be alone with ourselves. We crave attention but then tune out when we’re with others.
COVID has made all of this worse, this feeling that we were cheated out of time, that we were forced to go through something we didn’t deserve and are now trying to make up for it.
And we like to watch.
We like to watch one another, especially as we go through the worst things in life. It’s not that (most) of us take pleasure in it so much as we take comfort in the idea that others are suffering too. The thing is that we don’t want to necessarily comfort one another, we just want to know that other people have it bad too.
Hopefully worse.
And in all of this we’ve decided we have to invite the world for a ride-along as we grocery shop, hang out, take a bath, go on a date, or whatever. We want the attention desperately, for people to think we’re enviable and desirable. We put everything out there.
We put too much out there.
I think we all learned that social media is a curated reality.
It’s the highlights without the low lights.
Or just the low lights if you need that attention.
Either way, we understand that someone isn’t always on vacation, or at orchards, or laughing with friends.
We are being shown what someone wants us to see.
And that’s fine.
I always wish there was more ‘real’ sprinkled in too, but that’s me. Some more of someone’s personality and not so overly curated that they become a greeting card or a character.
We have extended that curation to the point of becoming characters though, the leads in a movie that we are the superstar in and everyone else is a bit character.
We want to film and photograph everything while and thus miss out on so much because were too busy acting to just ‘be’.
Humans we messy.
We all have foibles and baggage.
That’s life, baby.
But we want to seem so flawless and we want people to be that way.
We want them to be beautiful and inspiring and want them to tell us what’s cool and what’s wrong.
We want them to tell us who the bad guys are so we don’t have to look silly because we don’t know.
We want all this and then to have the ability to be outraged when they show that they are only human too.
We want some manner of control when we feel we are powerless to the people we admire so we take it back where we can.
Before that happens though we cling to their every post and if they cancel someone then so do we without a thought or question. We want to delve into past relationships and let everyone know everything about them. But it’s NOT THEIR BUSINESS! It’s normal to tell close friends and family the ins and outs we went through, but it isn’t normal AT ALL to air it to the world. To paint someone as something that they may not be or may only have been with us. Relationships are SUCH deep water and we’ll NEVER know the full truth of what happened behind closed doors but so many of us still want to air it all out. We don’t worry about how it will affect the other person, or their lives, we just care about us, us, us.
And now that we have social media, we can do just that.
It’s just what we do.
And if they have a grievance then it’s ours too.
Maybe, just maybe we can be as admired as they are someday.
But, man, who wants that?
Who wants to be the special of the day for those fifteen minutes, only to have just as many people hating you because you are you?
Trying to make the most of the time you have in the spotlight because we feel the need to tear down people sometimes just out of spite.
Out of bitterness.
Our of envy.
We’re a mess, and frankly, we need to learn to mind our own businesses again.
We need to invest in ourselves and the people we actually know and not pseudo-celebs who have a platform they use as an MLM tool.
We can admire people but we shouldn’t assume they are great examples of a human but just…human.
And we shouldn’t take everything they say – or sell – as gospel.
Deep down, they are just as screwed up as we are and they are just as addicted to the fame as we are desperate to taste it.
If we could just keep in mind that we are ALL messy, selfish, damaged goods just trying to make it all make sense then we’d all be so much better off. Sure, we’ll screw up but we can do better and be better.
We don’t need to air all our business.
Don’t need to show every pleasure or pain.
And we don’t need to hide it all either.
We just need to be human, that’s enough.
And the people that deserve to be in our lives will stick with us.
We need more ‘real’ in this world and less ‘reality TV’.
Alas, we all like a good show, so go pop the corn and I’ll tap that Like and Subscribe button because this is gonna be messy.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 