DAY in, day out, we read rants and taunts and jeers, and wonder... how can they even keep this up?
Worse is when you read those rants and taunts and jeers from people you thought had it all together. The type you thought were intellectuals and are more inclined into ruminations than the hoi polloi.
It wasn't like this before, you'd say.
That's before it hits you: Of course it wasn't like this before!!!!
Social media decades ago was Friendster and Multiply, you didn't do much with Friendster and Multiply. You just posted your experiences not expecting anyone to react, much less violently.
Social Media then was for sharing, for reaching out. Social media now has the undercurrents of a mob. Tease them a little and they will become a lynch mob and out will come all the unimaginable curses and jeers and taunts, revealing much more about the “curser,” “jeerer,” and “taunter” as much as the one being taunted.
It's times like this when there is that desire for academicians to finally figure it out that basic as it is, good manners and right conduct should still be a regular subject in school and not something that is assumed to be integrated into other subjects.
We are in an era where there are no longer boundaries. Houses are as open to anyone across the earth the moment your kid clicks that camera or the moment you share a photo of your kid at home. Rants too no longer recognize boundaries.
No wonder that you can only shake your head upon seeing the ruminations of the person you thought highly of and realize that he or she is no better than your neighborhood gossip. And that is indeed a reality, because now, we see how they think in a medium them think is personal but also is an “advertisement” of who they are.
The public face that many talk about -- the tendency of people to act up in public, prepping themselves as more knowledgeable, more likeable, more personable, and all other mores and ables... except that, you can't really be more than you are, and so, those aspiring for the mores and ables but do not know much about projection, advertising and image-building, will fall flat on their face, showing how lacking they are in between their ears and their hearts.
And so we gasp, unbelieving, for the uncouth, heartless, or stupid person that one really is when outside the trimmings and corporate image of his office.
Whether we admit it or not, social media makes us want to be seen in the way we want to be seen. Nyahahaha. But you get the drift right? We possess a social image of ourselves, and this is what we want to project in social media.
Except that, the line between reality and illusion is so thin, in a person's bid to appear most acceptable and liked, an entirely false public image arises. (Even that filter already plays a part there as you show yourself as the unblemished, fair-skinned person you aren't).
The false identity takes over, and we lose who we really are. The pressure of the social gagging the individual, as the mirror is no longer that object of reflection hung on the bathroom wall, but a constant companion complete with all the filters and beautifiers.
Are we strong enough to see through our own illusion? Will our children have that acceptance of self, such that the psyche cannot be enslaved by the virtual society, that has its eyes and ears and judgmental mix focused on what can be taunted, jeered and ranted about? Sadly, not many will ever be.
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