The Fake Idols Of Plastic
Everything in life begins, and ends, yet it is always the ending that I always think about. People who I thought would be my forever friends; those whom I’ve known and admired since childhood like teenage film stars and superstars in magazines. The checkmarks of pseudoverification have become the fake idols of plastic. A lifetime spent caring about people I truly believed were my friends, most of which have all but abandoned me in pursuit of their own selfish and self-absorbed nirvana. I held onto the firm belief in the idea that we could change ourselves, and the past might be undone. I cannot rewind and I’ve gone too far, and somewhere along the line, I must have slipped off track. The good times never stay, and the cheap thrills only seem to fade away.
All of my life, personal achievements were ignored as if anything I accomplished was perceived as insignificant and mundane. My depression came after many years of trying to be somebody on social media, and no matter what, it seems that I was never popular enough to succeed. All my life, my accomplishments went mostly unnoticed, unappreciated, and unacknowledged, while the majority of people I’ve known since childhood have all received gratuitous praise over even the smallest or most insignificant of accomplishments.
Social media, it seems is nothing more than an artificial electronic hyper-representation of life in which there exists a schism within every single facet of our lives. It seems that everyone on social media is photographed surrounded by their circle of friends, yet as for me, it seems that I’m never included in such social gatherings.
I have a nasty little habit of looking back on my life as I revel in all the little details; in my mind my perception is such that my childhood years were the best days of my life, though ones perspectives on life only changes when the observer allows them to do so. The good old days weren’t really that good as I look back and realize that I was often the brunt of everyone’s jokes. But now in my adulthood, I’ve finally got a second chance, and a beautiful brain, though my mind is filled with racing thoughts, often fleeting inside an ever-changing mind, like a bird of every color. Now it’s far too late to call me back, I’ve all but disappeared down a one-way track.
Colophon
This post was inspired, in part, by my departure from social media. On June 21, 2021, I posted the following message on Facebook: “I’m abandoning my Facebook account because I am tired of all the constant bullshit. My info: 518-222-9980 / tom@tomslatin.com.”
Photo credits: Fineas Garve, Unsplash; template credit: Canva.
Asides
Lessons From My Twenties | Summer Comes For Everyone | Thoughts On Validation | Self-Esteem, Self-Respect, and Learning Your Worth | What I Learned From Leaving Facebook | Schism | I’m Going Through Changes | Why Do We Care That Kendall Jenner is Dating Devin Booker?
3 Comments
Marlapaige
Social media is a game of smoke-and-mirrors. Some of the people that tell me about how many followers they have (and they outrank the other normal people by a lot) are usually the most vile people in real life. Judging yourself based on that seems like a recipe for disaster. People want the ugly people to make them feel better. The ones that are real are too mundane. There’s nothing wrong with mundane. I do not use Social media because I find it mind-numbing and endlessly fake. I’d rather read someone’s real thoughts – blog, book, or even just speak to them, rather than see one fake photo of the smiling family all gathered around the perfect fire pit roasting marshmallows. The part that’s not in that picture is that right before it was taken, the one child told the parents they hate them, the husband and wife haven’t spoken in nearly six months, and the youngest just got expelled from school for getting high, and yes, it does look like a very serene vacation, but they chose to pay for that rather than their mortgage, so they’re going home to live in their car or with one of their elderly parents. But that picture – oooo what a perfect family that has it all!
Thomas Slatin
I know people who actually stage their social media pictures to create the illusion that they have a truly incredible life, when in reality, their life is dull, boring, and average. I prefer authenticity over the perpetuation of lies.