We wear too many accessories. Too much cologne. Too many patches, badges, and pins. We can’t connect using these mediums. Just because you share the same band as someone, doesn’t make you connected. It’s simply a visual effect, a momentary lapse of our barrier.
Look at what you wear, look at your desktop background, look at your Facebook profile. Trying to connect to someone by asking them their “favourites” is like selfishly stating that you’re going to have a ham sandwich two weeks from now. Just because you will, doesn’t mean you will have someone else to eat a ham sandwich with you. There is no connection in it, or in favorites, emblems, and markers.
The stylization of our lives, in comparison with others, is just a way to calculate the possibility of having a better time in the future – it, in no way, guarantees there WILL be a future.
The internet is playing a dictative role in preventing connections. Yes, you read that right. In one sense, on face value, the internet is corrupting the connection (or in many cases, preventing it completely). It allows us to emblematize ourselves and to show our aspirations, but it’s where all talk and no action happens.
The internet has sucked us into what I plainly call, The Search. The internet strives off of us being on it. And when you think about what we search for on the internet, we can Google a question, but we’re not looking for an answer. No. What we are looking for is a connection to the people who are asking the same question and a connection to the people who are answering that question. (Neither of which – the question or the answer – can provide. They are again, merely symbols providing an illusive connection.)
Because of The Search, we’ve been programmed to think that there will always be someone we can “connect” with better. So we ask different questions, search for different answers, IM this person, comment on this post, etc,. We explore the social networks, follow people, “like” pages, and view profiles to see if the person or group will be a suitable match.
And, of course, once we find someone. We begin our search for the next person or group without creating a real connection.
This in turn, plays an effect on our real world, the unplugged world. For years people would advocate that you never settle for anything but the best: in relationships, in friendships, in partnerships, in business, and so on. Now the current trend, the dominating idea in the physical world, is that there is always someone who you can “connect” with on a greater level.
The Search mentality equated with the online world, has now become the mentality of the unplugged world. This leaves us with the reason why it’s so hard to connect with people.
– continuation of post is open for discussion –
Stay Positive & Maintain A Positive-Realist Mindset, The Online World Is Not A Utopia
Garth E. Beyer
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