Written by: Sara Wafeer
In light of the tragic incidents that have happened lately and the many more that may still happen, we must have all realised that we’re making up stories over our social media pages, with complicated political and economic analysis alongside the endless fights between who is right and who is wrong. This undoubtedly makes it worse for every party who is directly affected.
Early on, social media started feeding itself on the concept of “share whatever you want”; it was the concept that made it intriguing and interesting. It was entertaining at first, then it started to ask you “what’s on your mind?”, leaving no room in your personal life unshared publicly. In the beginning, it was all fun and games until things started changing. Social media platforms then quickly turned into huge theatres where people show off, criticize, fight, bully, spread rumours, stalk each other, discuss politics, economics, religion, love affairs and so on. And yet it didn’t stop here so under everyone’s nose, social media left us sharing without caring, believing without investigating, posing without style, repeating and imitating without character and without even adding a simple touch of our own. We are now blindfolded by the idea of “sharing without any little effort from our side to THINK.
Who shall we blame? Do we blame ourselves or the technology? Surely we must blame ourselves that we automatically turned into machines. We became slaves to all of the social media techniques. The reaping consequences of our actions is that we’re now experiencing a million feelings simultaneously. We’re somewhere between hopeful, disappointed, cheerful, miserable, friendly, calm, relaxed, triggered, aroused, angry and hateful. And now we feel bad for ourselves because we allowed our emotions to be manipulated. We wanted to exchange our reality so bad with cool filters on Snapchat and quick edits on Instagram that now, we despise the reality that we live in.
I wish we can go back to a time where life was simple. A time when we were gradually trying to track what is happening around us and gather face to face to debate and argue and talk for hours. I wish we would go back to paying each other visits, giving each other phone calls instead of texting because we miss each other. A time when sharing confusing feelings that are roaming through our hearts could only be done face to face instead of sharing it through devices that come hand in hand with foolish misunderstandings.
Social media, you have become the most trending feat, yet you are more irritating, disturbing, annoying and troubling than we can ever take. You are a curse, but somehow still a blessing (but we’re still yet not sure what that freaking blessing is). Maybe we’re just using you wrong.
