Virtual Reality

Social media has its strengths and benefits, in terms of connecting with one another and being able to share a valuable message. However, I want to shed light on the false front of social media, where people are constantly projecting filtered versions of their best selves, their best life, and their best angle.

No one wants to express the ugly truth, and when they do, a lot of backlash may come with it. We are a very strange society, that somehow thrives off of people’s misfortunes yet we are uncomfortable when confronted by the unfiltered realities we face in a virtual world. We don’t want to see someone posting about losing a job, or someone vocalizing an affair, or someone going through financial strain. We don’t want to see people posting about a mental breakdown, about their depression, and about their anxiety. Why is that? Why are we a world in which we feel we have to always present our best face forward. Do we present our perfect selves because we secretly seek false temporary validation?

It’s okay to have a bad day. It’s okay to have problems. It’s okay for things to go wrong. And to not feel your best every single day. We are human beings after all. We are not perfect.
Yet with social media postings, there is so much pressure to appear perfect. Well guess what? That is unnatural and in fact impossible. No one has it all- and if they appear to have it all there are many skeletons in the closet that will likely stay hidden, as we currently live in a virtual world of only sharing the glory days: The holidays, the wedding, the perfect job, the perfect family.

The danger is that the pressure of appearing “perfect” virtually has translated into our off screen lives, where when someone asks us how we are, it is rare to respond I’m not fine, I’m not kay, I’m not good. Why are we so afraid to share our vulnerabilities? After all, we never know who we might help or inspire by shedding light on our shadows.

The thought and decision process of posting one simple picture is the final version of what we have both psychologically as well as physically filtered, to present as our truths. Just as every fingerprint is unique, out of the billions of humans out there, and our ancestors before us, each and every single one of us has something special and different to share.

Let us be confident enough to reveal and embrace our true nature, beneath the filters. We must be aware and remember that what we see on the other side of the screen is not reality. We should continuously focus on the ways in which we can use social media messaging to our advantage by speaking and showing our truths and not to our detriment, by shining some false reality to subconsciously fit into some virtual world that is in fact just that- virtual.

In Arabic human being is translated to “Insan” which derives from the word “Nasayyan” which means forgetfulness. It is so easy to forget that social media is not reality, it is so easy to forget that we are only seeing a tiny fragment of the whole picture. We must have a daily reminder to live our present, and to use our forgetful nature as a blessing, by filtering out the noise, and not as a curse by being lost in it.

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