29 April

I thought this photo was a nice example of the toxicity of social media to our social lives. A standard sort of photo you see shared, a happy couple, others would see it and feel a whole range of emotions, depending on their own social life too. Some may feel jealous, or inferior, or some may even get happiness from it. Like most social media, it’s a lie. Not long after this photo was taken, the man in this relationship killed the woman, who was also heavily pregnant, and then his body was found floating in a nearby lake. A murder-suicide. It matters deeply that we stop trying to actually live our social lives, through social media. It’s why I rarely if ever post personal information. Obviously this is an extreme case, but the deeper point here is that it’s all curated, even subtly. It provides no insight whatsoever to the actual reality of peoples’ lived lives. It shapes peoples’ feelings and emotions and thoughts profoundly. The most personal thing you can share is what you’re thinking. Which hardly anybody does, possibly because it is so personal. But by not doing that, by sharing mostly what we’re all doing, it’s fucking with our heads. There’s no link between what we’re seeing and what the actual meaning is of what we’re seeing. It feeds compulsive comparison, which is extremely unhealthy.