Saturday, February 03, 2018

Social media, being ordinary & happiness



 
Greatest calamity ushered in by social media is shunning of 'Ordinariness'. People don't understand that media is an eyeball game (mostly) & only extremes make eyeballs possible as none would watch ordinary. Social media addicts need to understand, 'Extreme' is not the norm. By the way, 'Ordinary' is NOT deformity, it's the NATURAL state of being. Genius is an anomaly. The way media glorifies genius or our social news feed shows people enjoying life with endless surfing in hawaii to dancing on pier 39 in frisco almost every single day, we have started assuming this as normal.
People like me, Ordinary, mostly at home on Sundays reading books or doing household chores, trying to break fights among children in our old T-Shirts and shorts have started looking like anomaly. We have somehow been thrown into an abyss of being 'losers'. our images of coming out of crammed trains/tubes, rushing to catch an auto to complete last mile to office are not 'Facebookable' with sweat beads & sometimes crumbled creases. Wearing a tie with fine cut suits (may be once in a month) in an office is real work, rest all of us ordinary men/women are failures.
This is dangerous & cutting the young from reality of everyday grind. The reason why lot of millennials are not able to hold jobs for long is the dissonance & dichotomy between the pictures of their friends/cousins in offices (nice fine suits in AC offices) messes up their heads.
This 'facebookable' fad leads to more and more entitlement, breeding more and more unhappiness in search of a new high.. This is what is killing relationships by creating this 'Outrage Porn' on social media platforms everyday. This brazen victimhood mentality & then demanding entitlements from society is creating a class of happiness junkies in search for another high through outrage or outrageous.
Dear Young graduates, everymen like me do succeed as well. Superstardom is not the perverse of genius alone. There is a way, ORDINARY man can do it also. Its called WORKING HARD & being disciplined. Though what success means to you is different to me but yes all can succeed basis our feet on ground.
Path to greatness exist but what is great depends on your value system. I am happy being the prophet (my measure of success), being 'God' is not my idea.