Me and the Facebook generation

You're moaning about me moaning and then I moan about you moaning. I’m gossiping about you and you’re gossiping about me. That’s the way the local world works. Let’s go on Facebook and see what others are doing.

I wake up every day and say the same things. See the same things. Use the same words. There’s only so much that you and I are capable of. You can’t use words that you don’t know so you stick to what you do know. And what do I know? Nothing out of the ordinary. Like a thief of words, if you know something I don’t, I might just steal from you and call it my own. You can do the same. I can use my own acumen and my own reading of people but that can only get me so far. That can only get YOU so far. So we both steal from each other and the end result is that we’re both clones of each other- we know and do the same things.

But you like to think you’re an individual, right? Of course you do. Every person likes to think that they’re one better than the next. So do I. But you can never know you’re ‘better’ until it’s validated by someone who’s in a position to validate. Is it God? Or a critic? Or your family? All peers.

Or maybe you don’t question at all. Maybe thoughts don’t enter your head whatsoever, except for what’s in the here and now, the tangible things that affect your day to day life. What did you have for dinner today? Tell people. Don’t think about anything bigger because you’ll end up like me- Talking in loops using the same words and never really coming to any conclusions. What bothers me will probably not bother you. It probably won’t even occupy your attention. Because I think about things that aren’t worth thinking about and what this produces is gibberish. All I write is gibberish.

It’s like I’m a misanthropic old man at a young age. I sincerely hope the older I get, things won’t become any more tedious than what they already are. If the routines that I already play out perpetuate themselves for years on end, and become the whole of my life, I’m not sure how long I’ll last. That’s the essence of wasted potential. When it dawns on a person that they could have done this or that but ended up doing nothing- Someone who just drifted and drifted, forever passive, and never caring, about himself or others- Just a vacuous vehicle that’s been gutted but is still somehow able to move.

But one day that vehicle might just die out, inexplicably, and it’ll be beyond repair, ready for the scrap yard. And people won’t even know. It’ll be on the back end of a truck silently moving along until it reaches its destination, where it’ll then be crushed, at which point it becomes another piece of metal, and not the model of car that it once was. I don’t know, where does it go then? Underground, making friends with the muck and dust? New cars are made, better ones, and people forget about the old model. It’s buried underground.

I’m like that old man on the local news talking about how the country’s gone to shit. But he speaks too gruffly and no one can understand him. Not that he would be listened to anyway. But there’s plenty of old men that have lived who’ve never been listened to, and me and that old man and many like him are not short of company, because all anyone ever wants to do is hear themselves talk. Then it’s ironic that you talk to yourself, endlessly, about how no one ever listens to you, compensating for the lack of voices that never heard you talking.

Those people that others do stand up and listen to, they’ve been talking and talking without anyone listening for years, until they say something that resonates, that makes sense, that’s in fitting with certain trends. I’d say something that captures the imagination but I can’t. They’re the lucky ones.

I’m just a bitter young person who wants to be listened to because I think that what I’ve got to say is full of wisdom when it’s not. I could say the same about you. You and I are the same person. It doesn’t matter if I use ‘I’ or ‘you’ in the statements that I make because we’re no different. The point is that the majority of us share banal, common traits. We do what is ‘normal’ because this is what the mainstream does and we want to be seen as like others.

You can’t help but notice this through Facebook.

Almost everything is about ‘Going out’, buying a ticket to some concert, having a wonderful day with all the great friends you have. In general, ‘Here, look, my life is more interesting than yours’. It’s all so FAKE. I go out with my friends, like anyone, but I don’t preach about it and exaggerate it so that it looks so much better than what it is. It’s the same with photos. People put up certain photos as their profile pic because this is the photo that they feel best represents them, or how they would like to see themselves represented. I do it myself without even realising. A photo caught at an angle that hides some flaws you don’t want people to see, but one which accentuates a nice quality that you do have. A close up of the eyes, of your hair, of your smile. You get the point…

Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate people from others because they’re so similar. It’s almost like people are sheep. They say things gauged on what they think they should be saying, or say something tempered by the reaction they think it will get. Myself and my friends are similar. I guess people just fall into categories and there’s nothing else to it. There’s social conditioning all over the place. I’m getting exasperated just thinking about it.

You can achieve the façade of being ‘different’ quite easily through the Facebook medium. You have ample time to think about your responses to people’s questions, so you’re assured of what sounds humorous and quick-witted even when it’s not. You can be random, sarcastic and simply just look like you’re care-free when, in reality, that’s far from the case. It’s a manufactured image. That’s all it is, and it’s most likely not who you really are.

So you might think I’m an enemy of Facebook? I’m not. I go on it all the time.

I’m like everybody else.