The bane that social media had turned out to be had struck me quite late, the never ending dosage of negativity that often had people glued to their feeds as if they were birds in a cage, being fed by whatever was posted online; from fake news to chain of texts announcing the supremacy of one thing over another, I had enough of it and it was time: I quietly quit it all, living the life of a fallacy had taken it’s toll on me.
As I now look back, I realise how lame I were back then, how narcissistic I had become and to what extent I had started to seek the validation of people who hardly mattered, whom I rarely met or who were just ordinary fishes like me in the cesspool that social media had become. And, I was seeking their stamp of approval on everything that I did: from what I ate to where I’d been, perhaps there was this sense of insecurity that had crept into me.
I had gotten over the life of my past, the idiotic stuff I would post online, they now seem lame, I have no qualms in admitting to the fact that I was lame indeed, the pictures I would post and the shit I would write were outrightly cringe-worthy, I cringe even now; thinking how lame I were. The shit you do in life can either bring back jolly memories, and make you smile or you end up hanging your head down: accepting the fact that you had no life at all, I for one, had no life; all that I posted online was just to celebrate the fact that I had no life which no-one else knew about. It was one toxic habit, it had developed into one; an addiction that made me succumb into living a life that was pretentious.
As, I now look at a 30 year old swinging in a swing and blowing kisses to her much younger partner: it strikes me, it amuses me: why on earth is all that effort for?? A few likes perhaps, for proclaiming to the world that love found a way through or maybe even celebrating a non existent love life in the first place. To each their own I know, but there’s more to life than flaunting it on social media. If at all, there exists a life in real: underneath all the gloss and the picture perfect joyride that supposedly is the life they boast about.
I am glad, I pulled out from the ruction that life had become, where social media had reduced me to be less social, where my judgements had started to falter, where my decisions had largely to do with the kind of information I was being fed, where beneath all the fixed and curated photographs being posted laid a different me: to that life which was then controlled by a login ID, I say good riddance. And, to the one who’s still swinging: make sure you land safe, another cringefest awaits..
abhishek purkayastha 