A scene from the third season of famous TV show Black Mirror sees the protagonist bite a cookie (which she later spits out) in such a way that it is perfectly congruent to her mug of cappuccino. She then takes a picture and posts it on her social media after which she’s showered with ‘likes’ and ‘hearts’. Satisfied now, the lady finally takes the first sip of her coffee. The scene is eerie, because it’s true and in true Black Mirror fashion, it mirrors society stripping off its clothes, giving us a peek into the naked reality.
We’ve become a part of a rat race where you need to put up the most beautiful travel pictures, food pictures and witty status updates for your life to mean something.
What has happened to us? When did we become this superficial generation? A generation which doesn’t believe in taking the first bite of the meal unless they’ve ‘checked in’ so that they can advertise to the world where they’re eating. And not just that, there’s a rat race to put up the most beautiful holiday pictures, food pictures with #foodporn somewhere in the caption, the wittiest reactions to everyday worldly events, the need to state our opinions first rather than think it through.
We’ve created a carefully customised persona on social media, and all our life is spent in catering to it.
Is there a growing obsession among today’s youth with depicting a version of themselves living the perfect life? Why do some of us go all out and share obscure, complex quotes by intellectuals to project ourselves as a serious human being, even though we might be the complete opposite. Since when did we start living such a schizophrenic life where we sell an illusion?
We’re a generation of flakes who put up with shallow relationships, frenemies and are awfully detached.
Where did we lose our empathy along the way? Our sensitivity? We have so much information poured into our senses, that we learn to quickly detach ourselves from things. We see footage of an explosions killing children, we feel bad for a few minutes and then we forget about it because something equally horrific comes along. It’s not entirely our generation’s fault that we’ve become desensitized like we have. And it shows in the shallow relationships and frenemies that a lot of us sit through, fully aware that the other person will not spare an extra minute’s thought.
We skim through 1000-word essays without getting to the depth of the subject and give the impression of knowing it all.
We’ve become a generation obsessed with end results, no matter what means we have to adopt to get there. As someone who studied journalism, I can see the horror in the eyes of veterans when we base our prime-time stories on a series of tweets. It’s a professional hazard of getting there first, as against the old school way of doing things where the reporters would check, recheck and crosscheck details of a story. This professional ethic or a lack of it applies to our generation as well who skim through long op-eds in a matter of minutes and project themselves as a know-it-all.
It’s about time we stopped trying to project and ‘image’ of a perfect life and got back in touch with reality.
Our generation needs to get back in touch with reality. Live in the moment, where we actually devour a cheesy pizza without the constant worry of taking that perfect picture of it which would make our Instagram followers jealous. Where we go bonkers during a holiday and explore things we have never done, rather than worry about that sombre-looking profile picture.
We need to stop selling ourselves, because the truth is outside the ‘bubble’ it has no relevance in real life. And the sooner we realise this, the easier it will be for us to remain sane.
