Ever get tired of it? The social media shuffle, that is. The constant jockeying to be “relevant”; to say something snarky that people will care about; to keep coming up with stuff people want to read, see, like, plus, star, or re-tweet?
I get tired of it. So tired.
So why do I do it? Why do I pull time out of the day to audition for nameless, faceless, digitally represented people’s approval?
Is it so I can sell more copies? So people will pay me to wave this way or that on an irrelevant subject? So I can pass my opinion off as fact, because, when more people follow what you’re saying it must be more truthful, right?
Ya, I know it’s not true. And yet, I keep after it. Chasing it. Wanting it. Needing it.
Am I an addict?
Aren’t enough people out there already doing what I’m doing—or trying to do? What makes me think my voice can stand out, and why, why, do I think if, for some awful reason, if I can make mine louder than the rest, I’m leading a fulfilling, important life?
Don’t answer that. Please, just let it go. Don’t fill up my comments box with how I should be thinking or feeling or acting. Don’t tell me what you would do if you were me. It’s the last thing I want.
I want to door to public opinion on my life to shut so I no longer get some fix off people acknowledging my shouts into the fog… … wow, writing that here is pure hypocrisy, huh?
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that’s what we all want? To be happy hypocrites telling the world we don’t care about what they think from the venue we feel the most people will hear us from.
At our core, do we all want approval, acknowledgement, and validation? Is that what we’re made to want? Is it the byproduct of living in a world built by and for socially minded creatures?
If so, is this social media version of it what we really need, or is it some digitally re-mastered generic brand— a highly processed social food stripped down until nutrition-less and dispersed in cheap, effortless abundance until we strung out and repulsed by the real article? I feel like the more I eat, the more I wonder; am I who I want to be, or am I just good at being what everyone else wants me to be?
Can I even taste the difference?