8 January

Billy Joel wrote ‘The Stranger’ after a painful breakup. He realised the person he thought was closest to him in the world was actually a stranger to him. (Pure Proust.) You can never really know a person. And they can never really know you. Not because people lie but because to *really* know somebody, you would have to be them. Social media seems like a movement in the other direction, towards more ‘sharing’ of who we are, but I think it’s actually a shift in the other direction. We curate our online selves, social media is a fantastic accelerant for the masks we show others. Which is why many never feel lonelier and sadder than when they’re online. Not a reason to get rid of online or social media either. Some of the greatest inventions ever. We just have to understand what we’re doing.