…ironic, perhaps, coming from the woman who recently decided to air her daily strife’s and literal laundry on social media under the guise of a ‘blogger’. BUT, I do maintain somewhat an air of mystery being semi-anonymous; fine, yes I did invite my ‘Facebook’ friends to follow my blog and they know me personally. But otherwise, you don’t know me from Jack. Or Jill. Or that new girl who just moved in next door…you get my point.
Here is what I really came here to talk about though. Something that’s been eating away at my life for the last..at least ten years.
Social media.
The lifeline of my social interactions, the trigger to most of my anxiety, bane of my life. Particularly the big blue F word.
What did we all do before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok became a thing? I know I had a lot more ‘real’ friends before any social media platforms made it easy to hide, ignore and ultimately phase people out of life. The whole ‘I will delete anyone who hasn’t liked my posts in the last six months’ saga. We’ve all been there. Its still a common occurrence to see self congratulatory posts along the lines of ‘if you can read this I still consider you a friend’. Never mind people have literal shit going on and they may not have an online presence anymore.
I also loved myself and had a whole lot more confidence before body shamers, trolls, photo editing apps and filters became a thing and I will be the first to admit that I am a filter user and occasionally like to tweak my own selfies to ‘make me feel better’.
On Faceache and Instameh the majority of life online is black or white with a minority on the sidelines. I get it, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but are we really progressing as a united world when we can easily make people cry, afraid and even consider death by not thinking about a few clicks of a button?
Tik Tok…well I can’t really moan much about Tik Tok because hand on heart it has kept my insanity company during periods of household isolation and given me hours of fun. However; I can’t be the only happily married heterosexual who always finds my way on to lesbian titty Tik Tok and questioning my sexuality?! No…it is…? OK moving on.
I just get it, and I don’t get it.
Many moons ago I was in a short lived relationship with a guy who used to tell me I spent too much time ‘on my phone’. This was around the time I first got into Facebook, and it was new, shiny, and I loved posting funny things that got likes, comments and hours of interaction from the comfort of my sofa. Ironically, he also spent too much time on his phone; it’s how we got talking again, spent hours messaging and chatting and how we ending up living together for several months. The even bigger irony is once he had worn me down and made me bad for even picking up my phone, he kept his glued to his hand, face down on the surface or took it everywhere he went; one day I came home to find all his stuff gone and he was hooking up and moving in with another girl after talking to her on….yep, Facebook.
Perhaps my best and favourite social media/online flex is meeting the now love of my life, best friend, favourite human in the whole wide world. I also call him AJ, my husband…but again, good old social media played a huge part in making or breaking the relationship on my part early on. Thanks to Facebook and Instagram, a person can have an entire previous ‘before you’ life in pictures, in status updates, in video stories and I used to spend hours stalking his past – wondering if I could make him smile the same way she did, if we would have better adventures and so on and so forth. I learnt another big lesson from social media here – it’s not always as it seems. I was seeing holidays, smiles, happy moments caught in a one second click of a camera button but on getting to know AJ more I realised there was much more to the picture than met the eye, and that just because someone is smiling it doesn’t mean they’re happy. I stopped looking and comparing after we had a little bit of a heart to heart and realised that I am not her, we were not them, and we have indeed moved forward in 10 years and had many laughs, holidays, tears and memories than I could possibly imagine.
Will I ever not use social media, she asks, while writing a story to share on social media. Probably not. It has become a way of life for most; and technology is only getting betting and more advanced with time. If you’re going to use social media, use it for good – boost your business, promote creativity, share long winded stories that people may never read but at least won’t make people sad or feel bad. It’s a good way to keep in touch with relatives around the world and share updates and pictures – but we all need to remember to be humble and remember that we are each unique; know your limits, know your worth and just do you, don’t compare yourself to others and do not make anyone else feel bad because they perhaps don’t have what you have.
Before I go off on a tangent here, let me wrap this up by saying:
Just Another Average Mum 