All Hail Our Social Media Life
By: Sravani Saha
Tags: Life Lessons, Nonfiction, The Scene And Heard, Creativity, Social Media

A few days back, I met this acquaintance of mine. An old acquaintance. She remarked it was pretty long that we had talked. I was really happy to see her after years! Then she dropped the bomb and my happiness oozed out much like a balloon getting deflated even before it was fully pumped up. She said it was nice to see how easy and breezy my life had been! I was taken aback by her assumption, but I figured out that she had zeroed up my life based on my social media profile.

I went back and did an exercise myself. I picked up a few people I had worked with earlier or knew from way back, but with whom I was not in touch, except on social media. I checked all the online places they were active on-Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, Snapchat and god knows where else I found them. From a complete round-up of their profile, it appeared that they were doing extremely well, and that their life was a thousand times better than mine!

They were going for these trips that I’ve never thought of taking, they were meeting people all the time, they were spending time in the park, at the theater, at museums, both wax and non-wax; some were jumping out of planes, some were getting haircuts day in and day out, some were celebrating numerous birthdays!

The list was endless. I must also mention one of my friends who dressed up like a christmas tree complete with gifts at her feet to get ready for some rituals and ceremonies. (I did notify her of the simile before I wrote this)

My life seemed to be extremely jejune and sad compared to theirs! I was probably the only one who was living an unbearably mundane life!

Taking a few steps back, I thought over and realized that probably my Facebook profile also gave away similar vibes to that acquaintance who mentioned how easy my life was! She probably, and most surely didn’t know that I struggle with sleep; I struggle with time; I struggle with so many different things that I’d never ever announce publicly.

That’s only because I haven’t put up pictures or posts of my struggles on social media.

Our life seems breezy to someone else when it comes to our social media profiles. Mostly, and I mean really mostly, we put up pictures of happiness, accomplishments, fun and we innocently up our social quotient. We never talk of our hardships publicly, and every other person looks at our life wistfully. Our persona instantly makes us blissfully happy and untouched by struggle.

What we also don’t realize is that, silently, we round up everyone else as the happiest people on earth without knowing the kind of wars they could be fighting. Fighting day in and day out. The worse happens when we try to compare their life with ours not knowing that they could be dying just to see a better day!

I took my social media exercise a step further and contacted a few of my friends personally. To my utter dismay, I found that a friend who came across as an extremely buoyant and carefree spirit on Facebook was struggling in life. Her husband was affected by cancer, and he was going through chemotherapy.

Another friend of mine who had been to two trips in one month told me of the troubles she went to take her special child along on her trips. She was doing these trips for the first time, and they had taken a lot of caution when planning for the vacations. She told me of the constant anxiety they were in during the flights, but none of her vacation photos reflect that stress.

That was all I needed to know perhaps! My data set for analysis could be tiny, but thinking from a human point of view, we love to see happy pictures, and fun photos and also love to be complimented on ours. Our happy profiles are just symbols of our need to see smiles. We only need to zip up our mouths about the groundwork behind putting up these badges of happiness.

And yes, who wouldn’t like to be showered with oohs and aahs of our bikini shots and bungee jumping stunts?

We are all human, above all.

H ave you ever felt the same way about someone else’s social profile?

If you’ve liked the post, please recommend it so others can also read it and up their own social quotient!