The emphatic guide to emotional survival on the Internet
I remember an emblematic scene from my youth in the ’10s of the 21st century. I had arranged a bike ride with a friend. When I arrived at his house, he was already waiting for me out front, but on his face there was a look of sorrow, of worry. I asked him what was going on and he said “it’s nothing, let’s go”. But after a few minutes of pedaling he confided: he had updated his Facebook status and regretted what he had written, worried about what some people would think of it. So much so that he asked me to ride back real quick to his house so he could delete what he had written.
What happened? Guilt, remorse? An excess of self-consciousness? Ahhh my friend, what happened was the following: you, behind your computer, were all brave, confident in your message which, obviously, most of your friends would like. You posted the message. The minutes went by. No likes. No comments. Maybe one lonely like after half an hour. Or worse, a negative comment from someone. You begin to despair, because with time you saw that your message wasn’t all that…
Why did a situation like this generate such distress in my friend? To the point of making us return home to delete his status? Let us examine it piece by piece. But first of all, who am I to talk about this? Well, I love the Internet, and I am not the least bit ashamed to admit I love social networks, especially Facebook, which I use systematically to promote my artistic work, my texts and also my inflamed ego. I have a ridiculous website (you can click, it opens in a new tab and there is no pornography — at least not on the front page). I am constantly exposing my thoughts to the public. Sometimes I write messages I know will displease. And I don’t stay home gnawing at myself in fetal position after posting my messages. Because to me, it is quite clear that…
1. People only care about themselves
This one is for you who posted a comment on Facebook and are bitterly regretful. I have great news for you. Nobody gives a damn about what you wrote — unless that text or comment can generate some kind of empathy in the person, that is, unless your readers identify in your words something that reminds them of their own lives. If it is a text directly about them, even better. But if it is something like “went to an amazing place yesterday” or “I don’t like how they treat people at the post office”, prepare yourself for the deepest Internet vacuum. So content yourself, at least once in your life, with not being everyone’s darling, because they are not standing in front of you and need not display any kind of cordiality. Which, by the way, reminded me of the following:
2. People on Facebook are not themselves
When I am in front of you, in flesh and bone, you don’t have much reaction time to my words and actions. Now, when we are dialoguing through Facebook, what happens? There are at least two computers between me and you (not counting the whole weave of the Internet, of course). Which gives you time to think, reflect, choose your words, every comma, two or three exclamation marks… We suddenly become brave, we turn into philosophers, we type things we would never say. Living interfaced is more common by the day. If you go into my Facebook, for example, you will see several carefully chosen photos in which I appear shirtless, doing cool things like paintings and slacklining. From them you might judge that my life is constantly filled with adventures of that kind, but I am writing this text from inside an air-conditioned office with the sourest face possible. So I find the following observation worth taking into account:
3. Nothing replaces “real”, offline life
When I am publicly criticized on the Internet, or my posts don’t reach the expected success, do you think I spend hours in sadness, calculating how to do better next time? No. I close my online activities and go after what interests me in life: friends, bicycles, girls, Yoga, slacklines, drawings, trips etc. I don’t have a smartphone or Internet on my phone, by choice, precisely because of this — keeping my carnal life healthily distant from my virtual life. Which reminded me of the following:
4. Nobody keeps thinking about the things you publish. Only you
This one goes out to my bicycle friend who so regretted what he wrote. Do you spend the rest of your day thinking about every status update you read on your timeline? Do you consider people immediately idiotic or stupid at every unintelligent or uninspired status update they make? Well, I don’t. And I have the strong intuition that other people don’t either. Don’t take yourself so seriously — we are all in the same game of appearances. We are silently each other’s accomplices in all this. The Internet and social networks can be used in your favor — expanding contacts, broadening your opinions and your taste, promoting your work etc. But of course you can always crap it all up and cause exactly the opposite effect… The following topics describe how to raise your L.I. (Lamentability Index) on social networks:
5. Using Facebook to complain over nothing, fight in public, etc
Whiny, quarrelsome people are specialists in wrecking the energy of every environment they pass through. If you do this in real life, I don’t know you, because life seems not to allow that kind of person near me, a fact for which I am very grateful to Existence. But you may have passed through my Facebook — except I have already blocked your posts. That is the great difference between real and virtual life — I can relate to you virtually and filter out what I don’t like about you. Your virtual destiny is ambiguous: a kind of ostracism, since few will enjoy following your stories, when in fact MANY will be silently watching your pathetic virtual saga of lamentations. As I said up top, maybe you’d better not care about that and get on with your life. Or maybe you’d better not have any kind of virtual life, seriously. Because I remembered the following:
6. The Internet and the use of language
I do not know your past. But it may be that you cannot make minimally coherent use of the Portuguese language. It happens. Some say written language should be suppressed in favor of oral expression. Some say. However, know this: you are being daily auscultated by hundreds, thousands of people, and some of these people could point you the way to your next job, trip, a new love… They could. But they won’t. Because you are parading your ignorance of the written code across the Internet. And the written code is the language of the Internet — however articulate and self-possessed you may be in person, on social networks you are little more than a cacophone begging for attention. But if that is your case, you are probably not understanding a single line of what I am writing. It may also be that you are not understanding anything at all for the reason I will point out in the next and final topic:
7. Social networks and the use of alcohol
Avoid. Avoid at all costs. As we all know, alcohol is a powerful factor of social disinhibition. A drunk at the computer is doubly disinhibited, for there is also the technological barrier that isolates him from his peers and gives him the courage to do things like writing a horny message to that ex-girlfriend, telling the boss to shove it, and other adorable chances of social self-destruction. Setting aside the absolute truth that few things are more depressing than a lonely drunk in front of a computer.
Concluding
Life on a social network is a delicate balance between how much you want others to know about you and how much you care about that. It may or may not have consequences on your “real” life. I know extremely sociable people, full of friends and all, who have no Facebook. I know depressed, interiorly miserable people who have over 1000 Facebook friends. The cases are countless, yet I believe that in general the experience is more or less the same — an aseptic, impalpable environment where we project what we deem worthy of becoming public before the eyes of others. The challenge is discovering what we want to show, how we are going to show it, and how we deal with the consequences. What I was able to discover is that self-importance and not-giving-a-damn can coexist harmoniously, without turning you into a hostage of your Internet social life.
I, who possess a mad and irrational love for existence, find it fascinating to spend a few little hours on Facebook contemplating the mental universe of my friends, and I see a little bit of myself in each one of them — which allows me to write a text like this without the slightest fear of being accepted or rejected. Soon I will be leaving my office for life, when I will climb onto my bicycle and pedal gloriously toward the adventures awaiting me on this ordinary Tuesday.