I was born the second child in the middle of four girls, all very vibrant and more socially adept. All three had a more likeable public persona, at ease among relatives at family parties and during Christmas holidays when we all gathered at my grandmother’s house. While everyone immediately fit in and played in groups, I usually found myself on the outside waiting to be let in. I was always to be found wherever my mother was, like the proverbial “mummy’s child”, hiding behind her skirts.
Until my months at a small village in the deep South West, I had expected for myself what other people expected of me, to melt into the background, to smile coyly and keep my thoughts to myself. I had found my voice five years before but when I had wielded it, it had been coarse and had caused much pain. I had to learn, and I’m still learning how, to harness its power.
The stories about middle children and their internal social conflict are numerous, but this story is not about a middle child. It’s about all of us. The generation of the computer age. We, who operate as avatars and only go offline when we sleep (that is debatable).
Some people have used their avatars for good and some have used their avatars for evil. The invisible line between the real world and online is incredibly blurry. Nothing happens until it happens online.
There are verbal showdowns, laughing-with-tears-streaming-down-your-face-emojis and people always #living their best life. Meanwhile, the person who types the laughing emoji will not even turn his or her mouth up into a smile. Sometimes, they have not laughed in days.
It seems that not even processing the deepest emotions is not reserved from the camera. The ‘event‘ is promptly displayed on the camera by a professional photographer, sometimes at the hospital bed- public sympathy is better than intimate sympathy AND the more followers the better.
In ‘The Camera Effect’ I wrote about how I used to ‘follow’ a YouTube couple- a picture perfect family who eventually bitterly separated and we, the followers were left reeling, wondering what we had missed, between the all-white sparkling walls and the matching pyjamas.
I have been a social media abuser before. On some of those days when I need a breather, I have ‘ranted’ to whoever cared, feeling downright powerless to walk into the office of the people I really needed to talk to and say, menacingly, “You have a problem with me?” I work in a profession where big egos run on dark-roast coffee. Many lawyers would rather lose a case than have someone else shine. Someone needs to work on a research paper on The inflated Ego of a Lawyer in Modern times and its effect on Health’. Ask Mike of Pearson Specter Litt.
It is just a little too easy to access, this virtual reality, every moment, every day at the tap of a screen.
“Look guys, I’m showering! This is how I wash my face; in a slow circular motion! This is how I eat; with a loud awfully cute munching sound! This is how cute my baby looks when I shout at him!”
Then you park your car and switch off the engine and there is no one there. In the dark, you stare at the ceiling and life is boring. You can’t wait to get high on twitter and Instagram again.
I read on Dr. Kasenene’s twitter (yes, that’s now a thing- not an encyclopedia, not a book) that human beings talk to themselves on average 50,000 times a day. I’m certain that with social media, the ancient tradition of looking at the person you are talking to is wilting away.
This generation does not even confirm quote attribution or cite our sources- we just say #stolen!” It does not matter that intellectual property exists – that the ideas, the quotes, the stories that are the creation of a human mind are extremely personal and inimitable that they are protected by law. The binding spell of ‘likes’ overpowers integrity.
Hobbies. It sounds like a word last used in 1997. We used to write down our hobbies (our teachers used it more for enticing white people into becoming pen pals with us); dancing, listening to music, playing football, cooking. Now we only want to be seen to be ‘turning up’ for the 2 seconds in which we raise our phones and capture everyone on the table smiling and nodding their heads; the two seconds before everyone sinks down back into their phones for the rest of the night.
Some have become backing dogs, reckless online, but toothless on sight. Their avatars are lethal with venom on every post and every world situation, even when not under attack.
But it’s the loneliness that gets most of us, that we would spend all day online, on 30 WhatsApp groups and still not have that one friend to talk to about the things that really matter. WhatsApp’s end to end encryption may not be as useful as the ability to deny a request to enter one more fruitless WhatsApp group. After sending supercharged dancing emoticons, it maybe useful to our psychosomatic system to, maybe once in a while, actually wear that red dress and dance.
PurplePretoria 