glitch

Like most people my age, I start my day off by snatching my phone off of my night stand and scouring over every social media platform, quenching my thirst to know what happened in the world when I was asleep. My morning then becomes filled with everyone’s careful online personas of themselves. These curated presences of my friends, old acquaintances, and idols have become my breakfast. And that is a very unhealthy, unbalanced meal because these projections are usually false. They’re usually edited or staged or taken out of context in order to create the exact image the user desires. Additionally, I am a blatant hypocrite as well because I subscribe to this obsession. I contribute by posting and sharing snapshots of my life that appear great in the context of an Instagram feed. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, to wisely choose how you want to appear to your followers, but to have a constant stream of manipulated and contrived material polluting your mind can lead to unhealthy ideas. To buy into them as if they’re an accurate representation of that human is toxic. No one is constantly surrounded by a squad of support or looking consistently camera ready. And I willingly allowing myself to be bombarded with these personas which, often times, are lies. It is so easy to forget that these pictures of people online are not a holistic representation. Social media is an art form and an outlet of expression but there are elements that can fuel unhealthy habits. We have to remember that it consists of falsehoods or else we will end up comparing ourselves to fictional entities.

Social media portrays the highlight real of our lives and while I strongly believe it is a valuable outlet, it is a fantastical, unreliable lie.  No one’s life is perfect and to believe that someone’s is off of a few pictures and a tweet is a glitch.