Delusional
Once I drove all the way to Ohio to meet someone I had been “chatting” with for a while on-line. She intrigued me because she said that she had been a model, among other fascinating traits that made me feel fortunate. After meeting her though, all I can say is, if she ever really was a model, it was for shoes, or gloves or something unrelated to face and figure. The worst part was that she looked exactly like my accountant, and that’s not good!
However, the most disturbing thing wasn’t the surprise of her misrepresented looks. It was the unchallenged mask of self-deception that was disguising her own self-loathing. Clearly, she had slipped into believing her delusion. After all, she had hundreds, maybe thousands of subscribers on-line reinforcing her online persona, just as it had been dispensed to the digital world. I was only one dissenter, irrelevant since I was only from the real world. I got the impression that she rarely referenced that world.
Cyber-space is the great facilitator of illusions and psychotic tendencies. It’s like Frankenstein’s laboratory of alter egos where any creature of imagined identity can be animated without the annoying intrusion of reality. And it only requires the genius of point and click so now anyone can do it. Some of these personas are harmless, even fun, some are even profitable but others, are pathological. Either way, an audience of on-line participants is waiting to provide the validation and reinforcement that is so desperately being reached for by so many. Pre-internet, these apparitions suffocated to death in the vacuum of obscurity. But now, any pretense can be substantiated by masses of digital attention from a World Wide Web of responders. Numbers of “views,” and “comments” confirm a character’s existence. Interactions, inspire its further development. No matter how bizarre the pseudo-personality, in cyber-space, “it’s alive!”
I’ve learned that when you connect with someone on line, you’re not meeting that person, you are meeting their representative. That pic for example, is misleading, it’s the most flattering of many rejects, likely cropped with a conspiring technology. Quite possibly, so is everything else you’re being sent.
Considering someone in cyber-space as a friend, is extremely vulnerable, even dangerous, as countless victims testify. We should have a warning sign on all our devices that says “warning, objects may be a lot different than they appear.”
Social Junk Food
A well known comedienne and respected author who doesn’t indulge social media or allow her children to do so, [5] recently wrote, “social media is to relationships as Doritos are to food.” Amen! Substituting digital input for substantive relationships is as foolish as empty calories are to good nutrition. Garnishing genuine relationships with the enhancement of Social Media can marvelously feed human connections in unprecedented ways. But imbibing computer data as the main course of your social diet is just unhealthy. The true nature of digital media for socializing is enhancement and amusement, it’s delicious, it’s fun. But you never want to get the two food groups confused.
Many other well known celebrities have declined to participate in the current craze. The list reads like the “who’s who” of the rich and famous,
https://americasspotlight.com/entertainment/25-celebrities-who-refuse-to-use-social-media.html/
Please Drink Responsibly
The advent of the internet is the most impacting influence on civilization since the splitting of the atom. But just as civilization has two sides, the civilized and the uncivilized, so also does Social Media. Just as atomic energy can be used to light a city, or incinerate one, so social media can also be used or abused.
The tremendous power of Social Media was invented in the hands of children. [6] Its narcotic, addictive nature is now documented by it’s founders. The lust of commercial greed at the expense and exploitation of the the naïve consumer has also been admitted to.The power and impact of SM is still not fully measured. How we handle it at this stage is our crucial responsibility.
Russ Moe 01/23/2018
[1] Paula Poundstone “The Totally Unscientific Study of The Search for Human Happiness” [2] Blog, The True Nature of Social Media, Part 1, by Russ Moe www.hedoesallthings.com