We All Need To Stop Being Preoccupied With The Illusion Of Our Lives So That We Can Have Actual Lives

Sometimes if I go to a certain place or have a certain experience, it doesn’t feel real unless I have a photo to prove it. It’s a horrible mindset to have and I hate admitting it, but it’s the truth. I think a lot of us feel this way to some extent.

If we go out to dinner for a friend’s birthday, it didn’t happen unless there’s a photo on Instagram. If we’re witnessing a beautiful view, it’s not a full experience until we share it in our Snapchat story. Things don’t feel real anymore unless we have them validated by the likes and views of people we don’t even care about.

We’re so wrapped up in our virtual lives that at this point, the illusion of our life that we’re presenting to the world seems like our actual life. You may be tempted to believe that you are the exception to the rule, but think about it for a second. Most of the time, you share pictures of the cool things you’re doing, or you make a status when you’ve accomplished something noteworthy, such as a getting a job promotion or finishing in a marathon. Unless you are just incredibly honest, most of the things you share with your followers have been carefully selected by you and chosen for very specific reasons. They make you look impressive or interesting or worldly. You are presenting the best version of yourself to everyone, which is, in fact, an illusion.

We all have less glamorous sides too. Most people don’t make a Facebook status when their boss chews them out at work, and most people don’t tweet about sleeping until noon and then eating an entire sleeve of Oreos by themselves. Because that would make us seem like we are doing anything less than having an amazing time and an amazing life.

I’ve shared many a photo of myself having fun out at bars with my friends, or drinking a mimosa at brunch. But I don’t usually share any morning-after selfies with the world that consist of me looking hungover, with make-up smeared everywhere and a french fry halfway into my mouth. I don’t make Facebook statuses that inform people I just spent 4 hours watching Parks and Recreation and inhaling a bar of chocolate instead of going for a run. I don’t share that version of myself in my online profiles, but that’s still me too. That’s the same me as the one that seems to be living it up and having a blast and doing fun things. It’s just not the ideal version of me, so I keep it to myself.

Maybe we’re preoccupied with monitoring the illusion of our lives because it’s the only way that makes happiness seem like a real and attainable thing.

Maybe our virtual presence is our way of trying to measure success and contentment. Being able to tweak and perfect everything about our online presence makes us feel like we have some control over what happens to us in real life. We don’t want to share anything average or unpleasant about our lives because that would break the illusion that our lives are anything but perfect.

We all want to create a certain perception of our lives that will impress others, but I think we also just want to impress ourselves.

We all want to be able to look back through our Instagram feed and Facebook profile and believe that we have an impressive and noteworthy existence. We look at our virtual selves and imagine how we look from the perspective of another viewer – maybe an old friend or an ex. We scroll through our Instagram photos or our Twitter feed and we try to imagine what they would think if they were looking at our virtual life. Would they be impressed? Would they be jealous? Would they think we’ve done something with ourselves?

We imagine these situations over and over and over, subconsciously or not. We wonder what others think when they see us online. We wonder what thoughts go through their heads when they peek at what we’re up to. We wonder if they think it’s cool when we announce that we’re moving into our dream apartment. But no matter how many times we imagine what people are thinking, we will never actually find out. We will never know what’s going on in their heads or what their true opinions of us are.

We’re basically going around in circles and setting ourselves up for misery. We’re searching for validation in places where we’re never going to get it. You’re posting things and hoping for likes and shares and views, but what you’re really hoping is that someone is going to pull you aside and tell you that you’re doing it right. You want them to tell you that you’re living life to the fullest and you’re seeking out all the right experiences.

Our generation has a fear of not being extraordinary. We’re afraid of not leaving our mark and of not being admired and talked about. What we have to realize is being famous or wealthy or having thousands of online followers does not constitute an extraordinary life. An extraordinary life is made up of millions of ordinary moments, like laughing so hard that you lose control of your bladder, or laying in bed with your significant other during a rainstorm. These moments might not be captured in Facebook statuses and they might not be shared as filtered photos. But they’re the moments where you’re most present and most alive. So try to grasp onto them and hold on for dear life, because they are better than even the most perfect virtual life you could ever imagine.

Anti-Tech: The New Racism

I’m a tech enthusiast. It’s something that I can’t help – I was just born that way. Growing up, I couldn’t help the fact that my family had the resources to always have a new computer in our home, and I couldn’t help the fact that the education I was provided included classes on software development and future industries. I couldn’t help the fact that I came from money and means and that I was encouraged to go into app development – it’s who I am. It’s basically my race.

I don’t work in tech now, but I do identify with fellow technology enthusiasts. I identify with developers, and I pay close attention to the increasingly hostile attitudes towards my people in San Francisco.

While creating memes yesterday, I was looking at old photographs from WW2. Pictures from the camps. Pictures from the Polish ghettos in which Jews were required to wear gold stars, creating a sense of otherness and adding to the necessary fear that Hitler needed to create to justify the Holocaust. While these images were nothing new to me, something about them felt different. Something about them felt incredibly current.

“What if those little gold stars had cameras on them?” I thought to myself. “What if they could help you find restaurants or check your stock portfolio while you were on the go?”

As I jotted down my brilliant idea for a new piece of wearable tech, I realized that there’s not much of a difference between what those Jewish families faced in Poland, and what modern tech workers are facing in San Francisco. It’s just plain old racism, and it’s even worse now because people aren’t being attacked because of their faith or cultural background – they’re being attacked because they have lots of money and great ideas for gadgets.

When I read about rocks being hurled at the Google buses – the commuter system that ferries tech dynamos from “the ghetto” (recently gentrified neighborhoods where they have displaced longtime residents) to their “synagogue” (the Google headquarters where they make inordinate amounts of money to come up with things like Glasses that you can talk to) – I couldn’t help but think of the Freedom Riders in the south. I couldn’t help but think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A man, who like many in tech, had a dream. A dream that one day young white girls and young black girls would play together – hopefully assisted by some kind of app that matches interracial friends based on location and skin tone.

I thought about those Freedom Riders, and how they had to stand up to local police departments that were predominantly staffed by KKK members. I realized that those Freedom Riders are just like today’s tech workers. Except they didn’t have WiFi on their buses.

“Hey Glass,” I said to my 1500 dollar glasses that record strangers without their permission. “Look up pictures of black people from the 60’s.”

They used to dress so nice back then. Kind of like how tech workers dress now. I felt like I was going to cry. Luckily I am physically incapable of weeping, as I had my tear ducts removed last year as to not accidentally damage my expensive nerd goggles that are only available to an exclusive group of people.

It’s funny, according to everything I hear outside of the snotty lamentations of my fellow tech enthusiasts, white people like myself are considered universal oppressors. Especially rich white people that are displacing those without means. But, if you think about it, and look at it through the Lens Of Innovation, it’s actually the affluent tech workers who are oppressed. The Google employees are basically the Freedom Riders and the Jews in Poland.

The poor people are Nazis, and the poor people are the ones we should be throwing rocks at. Not the tech people – not the people that the rocks hurt more. We bleed just like the poor, but our clothes are more expensive and so is our wearable tech. You’re causing more damage by hurting us.

It’ll be interesting to see how history views this debate. It’ll be good to know that I was right. In 40 years, people will look back and recognize the struggle of the brave tech workers against the oppressive lower income families that sought to destroy and oppress the only people that actually cared about making the world a better place.

Literary Therapy: 11 Quotes to Motivate Your Soul

“You can’t drive to the coastline. You can only drive so close to the white chalky cliff and then you have to get out and dive.”

-Joyelle McSweeney, Flet

“We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did – but now I knew it, because now I was able to put it into words. But I don’t mean this in the fatalistic sense; we’re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct. And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

-Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“Just say no
to family values,
and don’t quit
your day job.”

-John Giorno, “Just Say No To Family Values”

“I can look back and recognize the things I’ve done and said that were wrong: unethical, gratuitously hurtful, golden-rule-breaking, et cetera. Sometimes the wrongness was even clear at the time, though not as clear as it is now. But I did these things because I felt the pull of a trajectory, a sense of experience piling up the way it does as you turn the pages of a novel. I would be lying if I said I was a different person now. I am the same person. I would do it all again.”

-Emily Gould, And the Heart Says Whatever

“The only thing of value anyone has to offer
is their uniqueness
and individuality
no matter who you are or what you do.”

-Penny Arcade, “Manifesto”

“The meaning of mañana is ‘Wait until the signs are right.’”

-William S. Burroughs, Junky

“Both Henry and June have destroyed the logic and unity of my life. It is good, for a pattern is not living. Now I am living. I am not making patterns.”

-Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

“Move to the beat. Dance for hours. Plan and pack for a trip. Plan and pack for a scene. Set up camp in sub-zero weather. Cook over a fire. Sharpen a knife. Wield a scalpel. Fist her. Take a fist. Clean a wound. Kiss it better. Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. Lift weights. Pick up girls.
Wrestle.
Win.”

-Elaine Miller, “A Femme’s List of Incidental Skills or, Things This Femme Can Do”

“We keep moving. And as we do, things around us, well, they disappear.”

-Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. To relax, as it were, in the womb of the desert sun. Just roll the roof back and screw it on, grease the face with white tanning butter and move out with the music at top volume, and at least a pint of ether.”

-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“I knew people want most what they pretend to hate, that it takes courage to say what you really want.”

-Darcey Steinke, Suicide Blonde