Sometimes one needs to escape the here-and-now moments. The ones which come with unsolicited validations. Yes, that is a tricky one. And I can safely say I’ve hardly mastered that art.
But here’s the deal. Think of your timeline as a time machine. Not only does it allow you to take yourself back and forth in time, but also affords you a certain degree of objectivity. A voice over of sorts that puts the most difficult studio audience to shame.
Yes, the online ecosystem does not necessarily have to be viewed as all that frivolous and mindless. In fact, it might very well be the new chicken soup for the swamped soul. Give it some thought.
Actually, take that thought, pin it safely to the back of your head and every once in a while ,chew on it for a bit. While you are at it, you will bite off more food (for thought) than you can chew.
The trick is to hang in there and understand, most importantly, that it it always your call.
Facebook and Instagram, among others, are considered the most toxic form of self-indulgence. We absolutely love to hate them. There’s no end to the constant philosophising over the superfluity and self destruction these platforms encourage. Selfies, online images, construction of a parallel reality..we’ve heard it all!
Why does my hyper-conscious virtual self have to be labelled as “trying-too-hard”? I am only trying to build and unbuild myself. I consider it as a rite of passage. What a magical antidote to my toe-curling moments. I have earned myself a therapist, thanks to technology, that, without judgment, allows me to edit”, “twe(ak)et” and even “delete” myself at any point of time!
Digging My RIPs Out
Whether it be my timeline, my feed or my home pages, social media lets me monitor myself at my best and worst.
How else would I figure exactly how keenly I would want my earlier version to dig the deepest burrow and disappear wholly or, perhaps, how severely words died a gruesome death every time I typed out “hbd”and “ïly”?
On a serious note, my recent past gets mirrored to me in seconds, leaving me to decide what to make of it! It is that gigantic repository of self-fodder waiting to be tapped right.
Is the Naynsukhprapti All That Bad?
I didn’t feel the least bit surprised when I caught wind of Facebook censoring content for its own interests. Facebook never claimed to be my long-lost lover, I might have found one on it, but it never promised me the ring.
It is probably the smartest marketeer out there and honestly, it is doing just what everyone else is. Selling itself.
If Facebook is also using personal metrics to gather marketing data and showing me what they feel I’d be interested in, then that’s the clearest reflection of me right there waiting to be either decked up, played down or kept the same way it is. I, too, am making my own editorial calls every single day.
This is one place where I can experiment with myself, find out what it is like to be a different version of myself and then decide who I would like to be/not be/rather be.
But. But.But
A Few Words of Caution...
You probably aren’t doing it right and need to stop experimenting with versions of yourself if you have tendencies that relate to these mahashays!
1) Shashi Tharoor, who’s come THIS close to being reduced to a GIF(t) of the gab, managed to peev the aam admi quite a bit when he referred to them as ‘cattle class’ traveling in economy.
2) KRK, who stands the risk of being made mincemeat of every single day, not only creates polls to determine which actor is a bigger aunty than the other, but also makes distasteful comments about others’ personal lives. When Bipasha Basu spoke about how no man has loved her more than her husband, this is what he had to say!
3) Abhijit Bhattacharya, who just can’t fathom the aam aadmi’s plight. On Salman Khan being sentenced on account of the hit-and-run charges against him, this is what he had to say:
“Kutta rd pe soyega kutte ki maut marega, roads garib ke baap ki nahi hai I ws homles an year nvr slept on rd”
We can’t even.
What you lack in experience, you make up for, well...on social media.
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