"Social media bullshit expands to fill your time" - Me
My version of Parkinson's law is especially debilitating for me as I sit for hours on end surfing myself into a stupor. Entire afternoons get consumed, precious mornings disappear like dew under a harsh sun, leaving no trace of their existence. Sometimes I wonder how people with an active FB, twitter AND instagram account manage to peel themselves off their laptops and get anything done. I imagine I would be like one of those experimental lab rats with electrodes wired to their brains that give them a jolt of pleasure everytime they pull a lever. I would have a glazed, vaguely happy expression and would mindlessly keep pulling the lever ( or pressing some link) as my meandering instagram searches take me to great photos, great artists and way down the rabbithole.
"You present a particularly morbid vision of social media", you complain. "Not everything on social media is bullshit. There are tons of knowledgeable articles and a lot of inspiration to be found on these pages". Of course, there is no doubt that there is inspiration and motivational articles. A glimpse at " Pocket Recommended" would tell you that everyone is reading those articles like " The one habit you need to acquire to become super productive" or " Ten things you need to do after 10PM" or " Are you doing this every morning or you not having control of your day" and other similar ones. If only reading that one article could make us more productive, we would have not foolishly continued reading the other 10,000 that came after it. Or follow these sites on FB to get "your daily dose of motivation"
I have always been a vocal opponent of posting on FB , claiming it is mainly there for flaunting and image-crafting ( Term borrowed from Wait but Why). If you use FB to mildly deceive others into thinking you are a certain kind of person, you use Pinterest to deceive yourself that you are a certain kind of person. It is terrifying. I remember I used to try and beat the Sunday evening blues by losing myself in Pinterest. Pinning the perfect home, the perfect vacations, the perfect hairstyle etc. I used to do that for weeks, without realising that my hair was no better than it was few weeks earlier, my home was still a dump and for all my Paris and Peru pins, I was stuck in Gurgaon. And I do not know if it was a co-incidence, but I lost my Pinterest habit when I genuinely started traveling ( not too much, an average of a trip per month), even if most of them were weekend trips.
And as I find myself going back to Pinteresty stuff again, it scares me.
It seems like we use these sites as crutches or substitutes for actual work or travel. You have been doing Chinese take-away all week? Here, pin a healthy smoothie and feel better. No travel plans in the near future? No problem here are a dozen beautiful homes with a sea view that you can travel to. It is no one's fault. Obviously, it is easy to get dragged into this whirlpool of social media. And it provides the perfect escape. Unfortunately, the problem with the likes of Instagram is that eventually your battery drains out and you are left with your unglamorous self.
My version of Parkinson's law is especially debilitating for me as I sit for hours on end surfing myself into a stupor. Entire afternoons get consumed, precious mornings disappear like dew under a harsh sun, leaving no trace of their existence. Sometimes I wonder how people with an active FB, twitter AND instagram account manage to peel themselves off their laptops and get anything done. I imagine I would be like one of those experimental lab rats with electrodes wired to their brains that give them a jolt of pleasure everytime they pull a lever. I would have a glazed, vaguely happy expression and would mindlessly keep pulling the lever ( or pressing some link) as my meandering instagram searches take me to great photos, great artists and way down the rabbithole.
"You present a particularly morbid vision of social media", you complain. "Not everything on social media is bullshit. There are tons of knowledgeable articles and a lot of inspiration to be found on these pages". Of course, there is no doubt that there is inspiration and motivational articles. A glimpse at " Pocket Recommended" would tell you that everyone is reading those articles like " The one habit you need to acquire to become super productive" or " Ten things you need to do after 10PM" or " Are you doing this every morning or you not having control of your day" and other similar ones. If only reading that one article could make us more productive, we would have not foolishly continued reading the other 10,000 that came after it. Or follow these sites on FB to get "your daily dose of motivation"
I have always been a vocal opponent of posting on FB , claiming it is mainly there for flaunting and image-crafting ( Term borrowed from Wait but Why). If you use FB to mildly deceive others into thinking you are a certain kind of person, you use Pinterest to deceive yourself that you are a certain kind of person. It is terrifying. I remember I used to try and beat the Sunday evening blues by losing myself in Pinterest. Pinning the perfect home, the perfect vacations, the perfect hairstyle etc. I used to do that for weeks, without realising that my hair was no better than it was few weeks earlier, my home was still a dump and for all my Paris and Peru pins, I was stuck in Gurgaon. And I do not know if it was a co-incidence, but I lost my Pinterest habit when I genuinely started traveling ( not too much, an average of a trip per month), even if most of them were weekend trips.
And as I find myself going back to Pinteresty stuff again, it scares me.
It seems like we use these sites as crutches or substitutes for actual work or travel. You have been doing Chinese take-away all week? Here, pin a healthy smoothie and feel better. No travel plans in the near future? No problem here are a dozen beautiful homes with a sea view that you can travel to. It is no one's fault. Obviously, it is easy to get dragged into this whirlpool of social media. And it provides the perfect escape. Unfortunately, the problem with the likes of Instagram is that eventually your battery drains out and you are left with your unglamorous self.
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