Are you familiar with the Annoying Facebook Girl meme?
I’m sure you know someone like that. Heck, if we’re Facebook friends, your finger is probably pointed at me. Yes, I admit, I was that girl. Take note, I said WAS. As in past tense. As in now she’s just somebody that you used to know.
I can’t recall when the change happened, but it was sometime after I turned thirty, so I don’t know if this is signs-of-aging-related or something. It wasn’t cold turkey, though, but a step-by-step process. One day, I stopped feeling the urge to “check in” to the cinema I was in and letting the whole world know what latest hollywood blockbuster I was gonna be enjoying and missing the first few minutes of the movie in the process. Then weeks later, I decide that I can wait until later to Instagram the pictures of the food I was about to eat and actually eat them first because my tummy is already complaining. Then soon afterwards, I realize that I don’t need to tweet a blow-by-blow account of my “bonding time” with my friend and miss out on actually bonding with her.
Annoying Twitter Girl talks waaay too much (Those 15,316 tweets have been mass deleted) |
I guess it was also at this point that I lost my appetite to blog, which is the only bad part about this change that I went through. Why? Because I still believe in the importance of sharing stories. And in keeping memories. That was what attracted me to social media in the first place. What I am against is the urge to “instantify” this sharing process, which takes away from the present moment which you are supposed to be enjoying.
Let me explain.
In the examples I shared above, because of my need to be current and immediate, as in “I have to tell the world what I’m doing now!!!” I took my attention away from what I was supposed to be “enjoying” in order to document that I was “enjoying myself.” So I missed a few minutes of the movie and let my food grow cold and let my tummy suffer and ignored my friend for a while just so I could do this. See the problem?
Imagine if you went out on a date with a guy and he spent a lot of that time fiddling with his phone instead of paying attention to you. How would you feel? Major turn-off, right? Like OMG, how rude!!
Now think about how you do this to your own friends or family whenever you’re with them. How instead of giving them your hundred-percent attention like you would a first date, you ignore them in favor of virtual conversations happening elsewhere in the internet. OMG, how rude!! Right?
Disclaimer: Einstein apparently never said this, actually. But it’s still funny. In an ouch-that’s-true way. [source] |
I repeat, I don’t have a problem with documentation and sharing them. I will always take photographs to have something to look back on someday. And I will always keep telling my stories and sharing them because that is how to foster relationships. I just don’t need to share them at the exact instant they are happening.
—;<@
This post is part of the A to Z Challenge, a blog hop that goes through the alphabet for all the days of April except Sundays. I have decided to go with the theme of Alliterations.