The Phony World of Social Media

I have a hard time believing that what I see posted on social media is real people in real situations doing what normal people would do. Noone behaves that badly in real life. People tend to mind their own business, not go to someone yelling and threatening and shouting at them. We don’t expect the celebrities on talk shows to be real people. But social media makes actors look ordinary. This is very deceptive.

Whether it is an angry woman or a belligerent man or climate activists or people on freeways behaving badly. Where I come from you could get shot or beat up if you behaved like that. It is all nothing but phony people in staged events trying to get clicks and views. I noticed that they are starting to post disclaimers on some posted media warning people not to do this at home.

Here is an idea. Try leaving your phone at home for an hour, or a day. You will panic at first, but you will get over it. We all need to detox and de-stress and take a break from the fantasy world of make believe on IG and FB. Even on Twitter of all places. It’s like you cannot go anywhere online and find real people.

It’s all fun and games until one day some unstable person goes over the edge and some creator gets hurt for real. This has already happened. Your life is more valuable than an IG picture or a video creation.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I had a thought today. Why does social media leave so many people lonely and unsatisfied? Could it be that we are living in the computer nerd’s paradise, not ours?

Computer tech was not developed by normal people. The nerds who thought this stuff up and developed it were the lonely kids and math geniuses who had few friends and who did not play sports and who felt out of place in normal society. When you live in your parents’ basement you dream of a world that you can access from there without messy human interaction.

As people we understand that we are social creatures. We thrive where we interact with other people. It is normal to learn how to negotiate human relationships, from making friends to getting married. People who are failures at humanity have created a world where they fit in, but we are left lonely and isolated and unsatisfied. They are more concerned about online privacy than about getting along with real people. The only real people in the tech world are those who market this fantasy world to normal people for money. They exploit normal people to make a profit using the ideas formed in the minds of damaged loners.

This is not a generational issue or a cultural issue. I do not feel this way because of my age. I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I am a normal person living in a fringe person’s utopian dream world. I am not alone. Maybe it time for the silent majority to speak up and call their bluff.

Memory Land: Keep Out!

It has been over 10 years since my wife died. I am 99% past the awful, dreadful time of grieving. But there are still lasting effects of her death that bother me today. Recently I was looking at some personal history and remembering people and places from my past. And as I looked at photos and read, I began to be troubled emotionally and I quickly stopped my research. Memories from my past still bother me to the point that no matter how hard I try, I do not last very long in memory land before I have to get out.

For me, memories are about a life that died. It is a time that no longer supports me or inspires me. Too many hopes, dreams, and potential that never happened or ended too soon. There are only my children to prove to me that it was not all bad or in vain. So once again, I slammed the door shut on memories.

Grieving the death of someone you love changes you in some interesting ways. The rules that I govern my life by now are not the same rules that I lived by before. The things that make me happy now are not the same as things that made me happy before.

My biggest question going forward is, what now? What do I do with the years that I have left?

A Lesson Learned

Everyone it seems carries their phone in a back pocket. I do too. So, today, as I was busy around the house, with my phone in my back pocket, I sat down on a stiff folding chair to work. A minute later I heard my phone hit the carpeted floor. I felt it pop out of my pocket. But when I picked up my phone I discovered that the screen was cracked. Evidently as I sat down I tweaked the phone just right and it cracked the screen. This is the first time in all of the years of using smart phones that I had a cracked screen.

Fortunately, I found a repair shop not far away and they ordered the screen today and will fix my phone tomorrow. Not too expensive either.

Lesson learned for me. Do not carry my phone in a back pocket. Or, around the house, do not carry it at all.

Helping Hands

Yard work is one thing that living in this house requires me to do. Mowing, pruning, etc. This morning I was talking to my friend, and he offered his boys to come do it for me today. So, while I ate breakfast, 3 teenage boys got my lawn mowed and trimmed. What a blessing!

Then my daughter contacted me to tell me she would be happy to come and help clean my house. It’s not a big job, it’s just me living here, but it was nice of her to offer. I have a crew coming in two days so she can help another time.

I am grateful for anyone who wants to pitch in and help me around this house.

Growing Older

Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. She is now 89 years old and in reasonably good health. She has outlived two husbands. My father was 72 years old when he died in 2007 and my step-father was 92 when he died a few months ago.

This is important information for me to have. No one lives in this world forever. I hope that I have more of my mother’s genes than my father’s. I turn 69 this year.

I am still young enough to think that I have a lot of years left to live. I try to take care of myself. I try not to abuse my mind or my body. But I am old enough to have discovered that things I used to be able to do are getting harder to do. I am beginning to think that my active hiking and bike riding days are over. I don’t know what is next, but I know what is behind me clearly.