"They Posted It On Facebook, Therefore, It Must Be True"

 

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The image presented on social media is not reality. Furthermore, it is not a reliable source of information when seeking the truth or the news. Well, many news companies are biased and I have even heard of people publishing "fake news," but social media is the all-time worst when it comes to seeking information. It has increasingly gotten worse as time has passed, to the point of being fake-ly ridiculous.

I posted a post on this blog several years ago about my deleting of Facebook in order to get away from someone toxic, but also because I was tired of seeing people only posting their best moments and nothing else, not even the everyday tasks of their lives such as cooking, cleaning, or working on the car. I got a Facebook again shortly after that, and I only post my music, art, blog posts from here, hiking moments, and my cats Polly and Shadowfax. For many people, for a long time, social media was the main (or only) way they saw and heard content from musicians, artists, and other content creators, so that's why I stayed on there. Also, it's the only way I can message some friends and other professionals I know. 

What this post is about today is about something different that I find disturbing about social media. What better way to ruin your day than to check Facebook while you are waiting for the food to cook for dinner, and scroll through pictures of people who have just been dumped and are including a motivational speech about finding the right significant other and how it will be OK, and grieving about someone you know based on the post. And seeing a post about someone else who has messed their life up in a different way, and posting something sentimental about what happened. Then you see another post about something happening in a family, overspiritualizing the post. Suddenly you have a headache on what started out as a fun day to relax. 

Folks, please stay with me. You could've spent the afternoon happier by just staying off the phone and talking to the physical people in front of you. You don't know the whole story of what you just saw. If you see a post like that, you can call the person up and ask them if they are OK and get the story that way, and ask how you can help them. You can talk to the person rather than going off of the post alone. Please don't go off of Facebook as what is true about a person or what is going on in their life. 

You should also not trust an "influencer" and go off of what they say as true, for finding out what is going on in the world. I would not be surprised if, if the influencer discussed politics, they got their information from the first website they saw, Google, Wikipedia, or other unreliable data before beginning their video rants. Influencers are regular people like us, and at the end of the day they have dishes to do, a dirty clothes hamper full of clothes with stains on them, and often a crying baby that doesn't make the reel. They also have a far from perfect face when the makeup comes off, and they do not wish to show that. I'm sure they have a few holey shirts in the back of the closet that they want to keep hidden, too. It is worse than the magazines of the 2000s, in my opinion, because it is people who are familiar to you, or the average Jane, creating a reality that is not true, and the comparison with others intensifies. Why continue to be a 13-year-old girl who tries to look perfect? A book I read once said that what is posted online can be as far from real life as the fairy tales we read as children.

Please, you can post your genuine art, music, movies, and real pictures, but in doing so, do not create a reality that isn't there. And go to a reliable source for your news. I will write another post soon about what made Facebook fun in 2008! 


The Quiet Girl


 


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