Perfectly Real:The Social Media Experience

Perfectly Real: A Journey Through Social Media

“Love is a kind of thing you want to discover with me.” Posts. Captions. Tweets. Shares. They don’t mean any reality. Whether the caption is something trivial when it does not connect to your photo, it doesn’t mean anything. What is the point in the first place? Why are you capturing your alluring face with your camera and have it captioned with something about wanting to discover love with you? Sweet lies? Who do you pertain to? Your granny? Pops? Mommy? Come on! Who are you fooling? You don’t have to overdo things just to get notice.

I often sit around my cousins’ house. I enjoy her company, who wouldn’t? She’s all flashy, talkative about anything and knows the current fashion trend. You can say we are completely different, but who cares? That way I get to know more about what I lack that she obviously has. I’m pretty gaining something from her little company. And oh, for the record, she is society acclaimed “pretty”. Not bad. Not bad at all. But it gets too boring as well, especially when she’s “on” with her phone, that’s when our physical connection just, shut down. I like her company. I get to use her to get out of my boring life, complicatedly chaotic way of thinking and practically handling of things. She always get on with a positive way of thinking, always babbling about everything’s going to be fine, but too bad, I’m not too naïve to believe that, most of the time. But the real point here is I like her company, she’s socially inclined, while I am not.

But the thing is, it’s not just me who get benefits from this cool cousin relationship that we have. I am always there for her too, when she runs out of answers for math assignments or when her favorite artist gets hooked up with my most hated politicians. Yup, I am always there. Most of the time, she needed me for my personal opinions. I can’t blame her. I do own the most honest opinions ever, or so she thought. She always asks me about how her current profile picture, which by the way they call “display pictures or DP”, looks like. Personal opinions? She change too often like, once a week! Is that even normal? Or am I not normal? Fake opinions? Her smile really is a bit awkward and she has to change the side where the picture is taking. She can’t even take a hint on how much I had already used that comment. I admit I give negative comment. That’s what she expects the real me would tell her, she doesn’t even realized it would say things so much darker. The problem does not end there.

Every time I visit her account on Facebook, I get disappointed too often. I like politics and I hate publicity. She has ridiculous captions all over her photos! She wanted to be looked at like she’s some kind of a witty person with a great face! Yeah, she would be a great view with that, cool captions and great photos. Another thing, nobody including her real friends here even scolded her about the silly post. They, too, get along with her unknowingly low blow act. I wanted to scream, “WHAT THE **** IS THE CONNECTION OF HAVING GREAT ******** BOYFRIEND WITH YOUR ***** SELFIE?! ARE YOU LUCKY TO HAVE YOUR ******* BOYFRIEND WHILE SHOWING YOUR FACE?! YOUR BOYFRIEND WOULD DUMP YOU, YOU ******* SELF-CENTERED *****!”

What’s the point of messaging her then later on having a reply of, “Home nerd, that’s how social media work, just get along with it.” Right that’s how the social media world, the social media world that actually dictates you social media maniac on what you are supposed to do with your time seven times a week. They say, it’s not real things, so don’t get bothered too much. If it’s not a real thing then, why can’t you sleep until you’re already done with filtering your photos? Why can’t you not check your posts every minute just to see if someone noticed, shared and liked it? Why the number of likes and new comments does makes you smile? Why are you letting the virtual world inside your system? Why? And the issue here is, why do I, an old fashioned girl that doesn’t care about social media, care now? It’s because I want to understand what my cousin said. I want to understand how really it works.

When you take yourself to a lot of places inside the four cornered world inside your computer, of course with the internet on, you’ll see the face of it. I do understand now.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, these are all the same. They are made of people, of perfect people to be exact. They created these perfect worlds, with perfect everything, photos, words, comments. Nothing’s not right. Everyone agrees with anyone as long as what they posted is perfect. They only care about that anyway, they don’t give a thing to those which are not. If you had realist account, you are considered nothing. People here are either judgmental or hypocrites. What I can’t truly believe is the uniformity of most people here. It’s like there is always two sides, no greys, no or’s, no in between. Take sides realist and you’re doomed. Nobody wanted to swim against a tsunami, so a few really speak up for the truth.

I was so close on going with the flow, but then, a wise man once said, “Only dead fish go with the flow.” And so I started from being me again. I understand my cousin now. I know she’s doing that because that is how a normal teenager would definitely do, that’s the way it is. I also notice as time goes by everything changes and social media go with flow. It seems like most people got tired of being stereo types and brought reality to the virtual world. This time, hypocrites are slowly drowning in with the flood of truth, but as dead fish as they are, they just agree to what the majority thinks is right. And that maybe is the one thing we can’t change from anybody. We have that disease on us and it’s contagious and will live on forever.

We are in a time where we have three worlds; the real world where we live with our families, the virtual world where we became perfect beings and our personal world where we become ourselves. We have different views about how one world is affecting the other. I admit all three won’t ever be the same with each other, although I hope it would be. The real point here is, it doesn’t matter where in this three worlds are you happy, as long as you are and as long as these happiness are immortal and way beyond earthly pleasures, then be happy.

I told you I’ll let you take your pick on which world you want to live, but let me make suggestions. Choose your personal world, you are the only person who knows yourself too much. I am not saying to totally resist the other two, they give you one of your basic needs, your neighbors or friends. What I am saying here is, in this world nobody would dictate what should be right or wrong for you but yourself. In this world you’ll be perfectly real, and when the time comes when you already build up that confidence and sureness that this world had made you a close perfect person then stop making this world just personal, try to take it to the other two worlds.