Post a moment of joy, a cute pic, an achievement.
A "like," comment of congratulations.
You respond. "Thanks."
It's over quickly.
Post a moment of negativity, depression, anxiety, illness, or some other dread.
Likes, comments of understanding, of false support, a one-upper.
You comment back.
They comment back.
And the cycle repeats itself until one person has achieved proving their life is indeed worse than yours or you both agree that life is a miserable existence and you now share a common bond.
The problem is, it's the same people who comment the same way, every single time.
Honestly, with that much ambivalence towards joy, and so much reverence for misery, at what point do we question whether our friendships, at least on Facebook, aren't the cause of all of our woes?
Most people can handle day-to-day hardships, even monumental ones, but that was before Facebook. Social media feeds our need for attention, but in all the worst ways. by allowing things that any well-adjusted adult can handle to fester. This false empathy is viewed as kindness, but it's simply a group of enablers, enabling another's ills to make them feel better about themselves. Some even feel some sort of macabre sense of being a nurturer.
Most of us have very few friends we would trust without lives, but since the advent of social media, specifically Facebook, many of you put your trust in people, daily, whose sole purpose seems to allow you to maintain enough misery to entertain them.
They're toxic, but they click.
A "like," comment of congratulations.
You respond. "Thanks."
It's over quickly.
Post a moment of negativity, depression, anxiety, illness, or some other dread.
Likes, comments of understanding, of false support, a one-upper.
You comment back.
They comment back.
And the cycle repeats itself until one person has achieved proving their life is indeed worse than yours or you both agree that life is a miserable existence and you now share a common bond.
The problem is, it's the same people who comment the same way, every single time.
Honestly, with that much ambivalence towards joy, and so much reverence for misery, at what point do we question whether our friendships, at least on Facebook, aren't the cause of all of our woes?
Most people can handle day-to-day hardships, even monumental ones, but that was before Facebook. Social media feeds our need for attention, but in all the worst ways. by allowing things that any well-adjusted adult can handle to fester. This false empathy is viewed as kindness, but it's simply a group of enablers, enabling another's ills to make them feel better about themselves. Some even feel some sort of macabre sense of being a nurturer.
Most of us have very few friends we would trust without lives, but since the advent of social media, specifically Facebook, many of you put your trust in people, daily, whose sole purpose seems to allow you to maintain enough misery to entertain them.
They're toxic, but they click.
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