Amusing Musings

Social Media

There used be a time when people would wait for one whole week to watch the next episode of their favourite show’s but now we binge watch 3 shows in a week. I might sound like my mom when I say that social media and internet has changed our lives for worse and that these electronic devices have become an extension of ourselves more than we know.

Soon, they will actually become an extension in the most literal sense. We are lost in this world which shows us whatever we want to believe in.

So much has changed in a mere span 5-6 years, i bought my first phone about 5 years back but I would never use it to do anything other than calling friends and family because internet was expensive. 1 GB of data for a month would cost probably around 150 to 200 rupees but then Ambani decided to give us free internet and everything changed (at least in this country) most of it was awesome but much of it is bad.

Today I spend most of time online on Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, WhatsApp and what not.

I scroll through hours of reels in a day and like that they are all “relatable”. There is a reel for every mood you are in, every feeling you can possibly have, every moment that could ever happen in your life, there is reel for even the most infinitesimal thought you have, there are times when I have felt this feeling, had a thought that is difficult to articulate in words or sometimes it’s just a fleeting thought but I can’t remember it, later and there is reel with that same exact thought.

A reel for every moment in your life.

I am not complaining, in fact I have spent many a countless hours scrolling through these reels, feeling relatable and thinking “I thought it was only me”

These quick reels are a drug to our brain, it keeps our brain happy. Usually, our brain releases hormones like dopamine and oxytocin when we achieve our goals, they are essentially hormones that motivates us to work harder and stay alert and focus on our goals. Every time you achieve your goal, hormone is released and you are happy, you feel good about your self, you want to feel like that more often so you push yourself to work harder. The same hormones are released when we watch reels, so even though you are not achieving anything, you are still getting that hit of dopamine.

So whatever it maybe we scroll right down to the next reel as these hormones are released every time we watch a reel.

When we start getting the same results just by watching reels, with minimum effort, there is nothing motivating us to do better at work or study hard or go for a walk.

So we consciously need to take a break from social media and live our lives in the real world.

I also realised that I have held myself back from writing stories or random thoughts for sometime now, when you spend some time on social media everyday (even though I don’t actually spend so much time) it seems as though every story has already been told and even if it hasn’t, who is ready to spend time reading what I have written, even if it is relatable?

One of the reason also happens to be that, we now have the attention span of a gold fish. No one’s going to take the trouble to read a carefully worded, long ass article, when they can get the same information in 15 a second video. I am sure you would have already stopped reading by this time.

In all seriousness, I do feel that maybe every story that could be told, written, whispered has already been said and recorded. We have been around on this earth for so long that maybe every kind of story is already written somewhere. Just try telling someone one of your dreams, they will respond saying “OMG! I had the same dream!”

There are no unique stories anymore. So I thought, what’s the point of writing then when my story is no different than the next person’s.

They say history repeats itself, maybe stories repeats themselves too. Relatives are useless, business has losses, boyfriend’s cheat on girlfriend’s, exams are too difficult, your boss is an asshole, your crush doesn’t like you back and list goes on. There might be stories that have repeated itself exactly like what you have experienced, in some one else’s life, after all we are so many of us.

With social media, whatever shit it was that I was going to tell, its already been told, some one somewhere in world at some point of time has probably gone through the same exact thing and that story is out there somewhere.

With the invent of AI, isn’t this what they were trying to create? All our memories uploaded to a cloud, saved for eternity, a shared experience. We are already there I guess.

After giving it some thought, I realised that at this point what makes my story unique is that it’s not one of a kind anymore, none of our stories are, we are all going through the same kind of life, all our stories have the same underlying fundamental emotion and I think that’s what makes it unique, just the bewildering fact that all our stories are same is what makes it unique.

So never stop sharing your story.

(i am sure after reading this some of you will feel how relatable this post was, coz you maybe had the same thought sometime back. Welcome to the hive mind!)

© Vaishnavi

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