Status Updates

Why do I have to live in a world where people update their statuses daily? Or even hourly? It’s so depressing. I’m not saying that I’ve never updated a status or told the internet my plans for the day, but at least I can recognize that it’s stupid.

With Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. humans have become more narcissistic than ever. It’s just a big jumble of comments and likes and ratings and favorites and reblogs and retweets and words that shouldn’t even exist but they do. For some reason, we as people, feel that others would be interested in the trivial moments of our lives. I could literally care less what you ate for breakfast or what you bought at Target. Why do people feel the need to tell their “friends” that their dog is sick or it’s their dad’s birthday? LIKE, WHO CARES?!?!

That doesn’t even look like a thumb.

The first thing I see when I log into Facebook is a little bar that says, “How are you feeling, Lily?” It’s like a little prompt to help me make a status. I’m pretty sure I can figure out how to type words and form a complete sentence. It’s almost offensive.

Tweeting is probably the worst. Where some people just treat it as a status update, others like myself treat it as comedy hour. And some people (everyone besides me) just aren’t funny. And it’s painful! But again, why do we feel the need to share our jokes and funny thoughts with people? Can’t we just share them with our friends and leave it at that?

Instagram is like a status update paired with pictures. It’s hard for me to describe how much I don’t care about the funny face your dog made or the vacation you went on with your BFFs. Why do want other people to see these moments? Are these people just constantly at the ready with their phone cameras out, waiting for something interesting to happen? Shouldn’t these people be, I don’t know, at work?

Status updates have become a part of life. They’re normal. It’s only when you take a step back and analyze what everyone is doing, that it feels unhealthy and fake. What are we trying to prove? That we live normal lives? That we have stories that are worth commenting on? That we can make people jealous with our travel photos? What is it? Why do we want to share every moment of our lives with everyone we know?

When I was younger, people would warn kid’s my age, not to put any personal information on the internet. It’s slightly different now.

Holding Grudges

I’m a grudge holder. Consider yourself warned. If someone says or does something mean to me or anyone I love, it will take me a long time to get over. Sure, I’ll be civil to them, but while I’m being nice my brain will be like, “Remember what they did to you?” It’s likely that I’ll never forget. I have an amazing long-term memory. So don’t mess!

The thing is, I know I should be forgiving and realize that people say and do stupid things all the time that they wish they could take back. Sure. I get that. I did something dumb once to a friend and she was mad at me for a while. But then she ended up forgiving me. I wonder what it feels like to be that nice?

Here’s a story about one of the longest grudges I’ve ever held. Sit down and get cozy, this is a good one.

In first grade a girl named Quinn Fabray was in my class. Her name wasn’t really Quinn Fabray. That’s a character on Glee A.K.A the worst show ever made. However, this person has the exact same name as a character on Glee and I’m convinced they named the character after her because she’s so annoying. Anyway, Quinn was in my class and was nice enough to me I suppose. She lived in my neighborhood so I guess that meant that we were forced to hang out.

One time, Quinn came over to my house and was looking around my room and making fun of my stuff. She looked at my piggy bank and spilled all of the pennies on the ground. I’m assuming I only had pennies. I looked at all of my hard earned three dollars and told her to pick them up or I’ll tell my mom. She said no and that if I don’t pick them up she’ll tell her parents that she had a bad time at my house and that I was mean to her. Looking back, I should’ve just said, “Get on the ground and pick up my pennies before I smack you in the face.”

Unfortunately, I was the one who got down on the ground and picked up all the pennies by myself while she laughed at me. Fast forward 18 years later. Quinn asks me to be friends on Facebook. I accept because I’m obviously curious about what she looks like, what she does, etc. After I accept her friend request, she and her mom send me messages about how great it would be to get together mainly because I have a connection that they would love to get in touch with. In their message, they talk about all the great memories they have of my family whom they met maybe twice. They also mention my childhood dog Tasha, that even I forget about from time to time so they must have dug pretty deep to remember that detail.

I have no words to describe how great it felt to deny them of ever seeing me or any of my family members. I wished them all the best of course, but I told them that I knew what they were trying to do. They seemed to remember every detail about my family and I but they had no recollection of the trauma that was caused with my piggy bank. Not that I mentioned the piggy bank episode. I would’ve come off as slightly insane.

That’s what blogging is for!

The Benefits of Being Online

The world has changed incredibly in the span of twenty years. When I was little, my family didn’t have a computer. I don’t remember having one until I was at least 9. Even then I don’t think I ever went “online”. The only activity that I did on the computer was typing my name over and over again in different fonts. I still do that on occasion.

Now it seems that I can’t go a day without being online. I have to check my “stuff” which consists of email, twitter, blogs, facebook, tumblr, pinterest…the list goes on. Of course there are times when I’m away and can’t check my stuff. Those are the times when I’m sitting in a corner and rocking myself back and forth.

One might look at this scenario and think my online life is unhealthy. Fortunately, I’m one of the light cases. I know for a fact that teenagers stay online for hours and hours on end. Even if they aren’t physically at a computer, they can still go online with their phones. I know I’m painting an extreme picture, but the internet, despite being a big time-waster, is actually an amazing thing.

We are able to connect with people around the world without leaving our homes (or beds…in my case). We are able to meet friends, share stories, and fall in love online. Some would even say it’s easier to meet people online because no one is judging you by your appearance, just by what you say.

Personally, I am more relaxed when I’m talking to people online than in real-life. Online, you can choose to respond to a conversation whenever and however you want to. You can take the time to think about what you want to say before your say it. You can eloquently word your input instead of trying to come up with the right words in your head. Everything is smoother and thought out. We can really be our best selves online for that reason.

Will we turn into drones that don’t know how to talk in the future? Possibly. Will we go blind from the light of our computers constantly being shone into our eyes? Most likely. But we’ll have many more acquaintances than we ever could have met in our own day to day lives. We can relate to others and realize that others can relate to us. We can comfort and be comforted. We can laugh and share thought-provoking stories. And that might be worth something in the long run.