One of those things that's been rattling around in my head for the last couple weeks, but only crystallized enough to shape into words over the last few days, is the lack of actual created content in Facebook posts nowadays in general, but among high school/college-aged-to-late-twenties folks in particular. I mean, a couple years ago everyone regularly wrote posts on whatever might have happened that day, or what they were thinking about or whatever. And that sometimes led into mega-long comment chains like the kind I'd get into with Jon, Jed, Amanda and Samara that soon veered from pointless-but-grounded to zany-and-capable-of-going-anywhere(especially space and alternate realities). Which kind of hurts looking back at some of them now, but in a good way; remembrances of good times.
Sure, I know it's easier just to react to things by reposting a BuzzFeed article or linking to that certain song on YouTube that says what needs to be said instead of straining to come up with descriptions that, while original, aren't as well-formed, but...that's not as compelling. Especially not if you're reposting your favorite blogger's response to whatever the Current HOT BUTTON ISSUE Of The Moment Which Will Initiate KNEE-JERK REACTIONS. (Blimey Cow reference....cough. (Look them up on YouTube...) See? That kind of proves my point.) And goodness knows, if you say your murky somewhere-in-the-middle-both-sides-have-good-points-and-are-wrong-on-others own opinion, surely somebody would be offended, right? (Gasps at the possibilities of political incorrectness if this policy was followed....) Actually, I think it kind of started with the rise of BuzzFeed from "Oh, yeah, I've heard of that site" to "Well....yeah, duh. It's BuzzFeed.", which happened rather suddenly about two years ago, more or less.
Sure, I know most of our lives aren't that exciting, and most people don't deal with tasks of earth-shaking importance on a regular basis. We're not Captain America. If anybody, we're George Bailey. But isn't just an ordinary life full of enough interesting puzzle pieces to be a good story? It works for Miss Marple and Father Tim.
We always hear about those horror stories about people who posted X(whatever inappropriate/super-stupid ill-spelled status you want to think of) and then they were fired or something even worse happened to them(what, I'm not quite sure...it's too scary and dark to consider. Like the endings of evildoers in Grimm's fairy tales). But most of that is just common sense; most of that stuff doesn't need to be shared publicly.
What I'm saying is, that fear, of indistinct though truly awful punishment for being honest, has made us as society hyper-aware and self-conscious of what we do post. Which means we over-analyze every single little thing that we put on there and then usually delete it immediately for fear it'll be taken the wrong way or something. (Especially if you're already prone to over-analyzing every little detail on a regular basis..."Raises hand")
It's really pretty sad.
Facebook and other social media is about the only method our 21st century American culture has to get to know people. In earlier generations, before air-conditioning was invented, neighbors used to talk over the fence or congregate on front porches to discuss the day's events or exchange gossip. (For example, in To Kill A Mockingbird, or The Andy Griffith Show.) I wrote some about this in an essay a couple years ago. Social media is the modern equivalent/approximation of such a system, and if we don't talk about the simple small trials, pleasures or knowledge encountered throughout the day, what's the point of such a system existing? Why are on that site, then, if you want to contribute? (For an example of the mundane yet fascinating things I mean, did you know that the cast of Recess included the kids who played Jonah Baldwin in Sleepless in Seattle, Uh-huh from The Little Rascals and the girl who grew up to play the waitress from The Avengers? That would be TJ, Gus and Gretchen.)
Societal-sized problems like this follow Darwin's natural selection; if they aren't used, they will eventually go extinct. If we continue down this road, there's all kinds of questions that pop up. How will we make the connections with other people so vital to staying in one piece as we each travel our own pathways throughout life?
This post is an expansion of a Facebook post from this morning, and it got a decent amount of agreement in the form of likes and several people commenting for reasons this phenomenon might be happening. One of the reasons stated was that once all the older people jumped on FB, then it suddenly wasn't cool enough; which sounds good on the surface. But that's really more like a nice cover story for the real reason: We're too scared of being judged for honestly providing records of our opinions and/or actions about how we feel about things. Because, the thing is - honesty is really dangerous. That's why we appreciate it so much in good writing or wherever else we may come across it, because we usually don't see it, at least not completely. Because we're in a fallen world, we mess up constantly. And as part of this nearly-ever-present sin, humans prefer darkness to light and are more comfortable with deception than truth. And so societies throughout history are built, kept alive and eventually crumble due to half-truths and partial lies and avoiding total honesty whenever possible. Besides, "only the winners write history", and it's a lot easier to make your people's empire sound good if you don't detail every instance of cruelty that your side did, and it's more convenient to make the other side look villianous if you gloss over their good points and highlight their not-so-great deeds.
America's pretty much always operated under this principle of necessary lies being used every day to keep our civilization and society intact; on a large level, the work of spies in the CIA, on the micro level, replying "I'm all right" to a passer-by asking how we're doing, when in reality things might just suck and you want to hide under a blanket that day. Mark Twain pointed this out in his essay "On the Decay of the Art of Lying". And our tall tales and folktales, the closest we have to Greek and Roman(and Norse) mythology, are based on this principle as well. Rip Van Winkle, Paul Bunyan, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Emperor With No Clothes(not American, but still)....
So, when we're completely, brutally honest about something, that's pointing out the flaws of whatever is being criticized, and so pulling out some of the brickwork, weakening ever-so-slightly the structural integrity(in a construction sense, not abstract moral quality) of society. And people don't like that.
Instagram is, I would guess, by far the least-honest form of social media, as pictures can be manipulated in untold countless ways to provide that certain look you want to project. Pinterest builds castles in the air of what could be instead of showcasing what is. YouTube is kind of a gray area. On the one hand, it's video, so if it's done well, then the finished product has no relation to the true conditions/realities of creating that content. But then you have all those cover videos of folks in dorm rooms who can't sing, and that's accurately depicting what was happening when that video was shot. Facebook, there's too much worry about political correctness to usually post anything, which was the whole reason for working on this post. Twitter is probably the most truthful, but the severe limit of message size in tweets works against it somewhat.
I don't really have any good answers to these questions; they have to be chewed on individually, there's no handy one-size-fits-all solution. It's a big subject, with a lot to explore, from many different angles. Hopefully this post made you consider the subject and ponder it a moment.
I'm not even going to try to dig into the role of fiction in its various forms and where that all fits into this discussion just now....my brain hurts from trying to argue my point in this post clearly. :-) But that's a topic/question I've always thought was a really interesting subject that I've wrestled with over the years.
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