Human 2.0

Tuesday night I was walking into PetSmart (I always thought it was PetsMart but I just googled it.. TIL) and I was on the phone with one of my friends. He asked how my classes had gone and I mentioned our class and how we talked about the phrase "I am enough." Then I went off on a long tangent about FaceBook and Instagram and how we perceive ourselves and others online. For the most part I was talking about perfection, and how we discussed our society's need to strive for perfection even though we'll never reach it as human beings. Which is hard. We live in a world where we have perfected so many things, and we are charging ahead at even greater perfection, but despite it all we will forever be imperfect. The closest we can get, I told my friend, is by creating a perfect self online.

We post online to make everyone see the perfect perception of ourself. We don't do it with that thought it mind, though, because that's a bit out there... but it's in our mind all the same. It helps validate us when people like our Instagram picture from the boating trip, but nobody is posting pictures from their terrible day. They might, but typically only once in a blue moon and is met with sympathy and pick-me-ups. If a depressed person constantly posted about being depressed, people would unfollow their feeds pretty quickly. Nobody likes being sad. So we enter smiling depression online and show the world we are happy, we are normal. To anyone that doesn't know me, I can be a flawless perfect human being if I post the right things. I know I'm flawed, but they might not think twice about it. And that's how we're seeing others in our world. I get on FaceBook and I see everyone having fun and going out, and I sometimes get sad or feel lonely because I'm home and not living it up. I never once consider the other 400+ people on my friends list and how they are probably at home, too, also feeling a sense of loneliness from this one person's posts about how life is great and how everyone should be partying, too.

That's the funny part to me, too, is how I can post such happy things online, watch as the likes roll in, and yet never feel happy because of it. I never think twice about how many likes it gets. It's nice, but it won't change my life. The only time social media really makes me feel something is from seeing other people's posts, not my own and how much attention it generates. The only thing keeping us from falling into a depression is to see past social media happiness and realize these people are just as flawed as we are. I have seen someone post a cute Instagram picture while crying because one of her friends gave her terrible news. It's an odd feeling seeing the post later on and knowing the circumstances behind it, and in a sick and terrible way, it's a little comforting. My friends don't lead perfect lives, and neither do I. I have to remember that.