Are we losing touch with reality?
Recently I saw a reel/short video of a sketch with people on the bus. To me it was obviously actors and not a real life situation unfolding. There was no talking, just gesturing in a way where you could tell what they were wanting to communicate. The scenario was on a busy looking bus; a heavily pregnant woman in a red, close fitting dress is cradling and rubbing her hand over her stomach as she gestures to a man sitting that she would like to have a seat. The man grins at her and with his legs apart pats them to indicate that she can sit on his lap. A middle aged lady sitting behind him shakes her head with a look of indignation, stands and gestures for the lady to sit in her seat. She then steps around and sits herself with a cheeky smile on the man's lap, to the delight and laughter of his friends.
The comments section was full of comments praising the older woman and criticising the actions of the man as if it was a real event. I scrolled through trying to find the usual comments having a laugh about it or even ones saying "this is a sketch, not real" in response to the angry comments but I couldn't find any. I had to wonder, have we reached a point where screens are such a big part of our life that they are becoming reality for many people?
I heard someone say that we are losing the ability to read facial expression and body language and they put this down to our reduced interactions face to face with people in real life. It's hard to see subtle expressions on screens, after all.
When a lot of places implemented mask mandates people questioned how this might affect the development of young children. This is a time of life where the brain is developing rapidly and making a lot of new connections and some of these babies and children weren't seeing faces outside of their own home for up to a year. I'd be curious to see if there will be any follow up when these children reach adulthood to know if it had any effect on them in the long run.
Attractiveness isn't just 2D
Image courtesy of @nioberojas
Something else I recently saw was a woman talking about how often women complain about getting matched on dating apps with less attractive men (I don't know if this complaint goes both ways). She theorised that this might actually be because there aren't many attractive men, but I have a different theory. While the way someone looks might be one of the factors that attracts us to a potential romantic partner, it is far from the only thing. Have you ever seen a posed photo of someone you've never really thought of as attractive and been surprised to find yourself thinking that they're way more attractive than you thought? Then you see then again in person and can't see the attractiveness you saw in the photo any more? And no, I don't mean that the photo was altered in any way, it was just a good photo and makeover to highlight their best physical assets.
On the other hand I've encountered men who I wouldn't class as particularly good looking at all, but they have no shortage of admirers and leave heartbroken women in their wake. Then when I've interacted with them I've understood why. There's a lot to be said an attractive personality.
There is a combination of factors which attract us to someone. The way they look, their character and compatibility of that character with or own and even their scent. Interestingly the scent aspect seems to be connected to the immune system/microbiome. If their immune system is too similar to our own then we won't find their scent appealing at all, but if it's very different then we are likely to find their scent attractive. When I worked behind the bar in the UK at a rugby and football club the rugby team had two players from New Zealand come to play for them. They weren't particularly attractive looking men and visually I would say that their fit physiques were the only thing that might have made them stand out a bit, but no more so than the other players. There were certainly better looking players on the team, many of whom were also players when it came to women as well. Yet these New Zealanders garnered just as much attention from the local groupies. Initially I didn't understand why, but eventually I got to know them and could see what these girls were falling for, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. As I think back now, could it be that they would have had very different immune systems to our own having spend years in a completely different environment to us?
We had another rugby player visit from South Africa at another time. He was good looking and drew girls to him only for them to immediately turn away when he tried to turn on the romance. I guess the looks were right and the scent was right, but the personality was off. I heard was that he was the worst kisser they'd ever encountered.
The thing is, you can't base attraction on looks alone and you can't experience the rest without interacting with that person in real life. You might get a bit more information through voice and video interaction, but we can't pick up on other things without actually being with them in person. Besides scent, we can often have an instinctual feeling about someone when we encounter them that might flag them as creepy or dangerous. You might not even know why you get this vibe from them, but the chances are that it's subtle body language that you can't pick up on through video media. If this is the case then the fact that we seem to be seeing over exaggerated body language as normal means we're possibly losing our ability to spot more subtle body language.
Are we trying to normalise loneliness?
The less we interact with others the less we want to interact and the more distrustful we become of others. We are also more likely to become depressed and anxious at the thought of having to deal with other people. My daughter is doing much better with her anxiety since she started working in a cohesive and supportive environment. Not something she really understood until she took that step. It's helped her confidence in dealing with people in other environments as well.
This brings to mind another video on social media where a woman filmed what she did on her weekends as a single person with some money to spare. She goes out into the countryside to camp, then cooks steak and drinks lots of beer. Someone had reposted this with the caption that you don't need to be in a relationship to have fun and the comments were mostly along the lines of, 'we don't need men, we're not lonely and can have fun by ourselves.' I'm not sure how this came to being about whether you're single or not, but the woman certainly didn't look particularly happy in what she was doing, more like she was trying to eat and drink her depression away. She didn't even seem to be enjoying the countryside, but rather escaping from the judgment of others and maybe from worklife for a bit. I feel like she would have enjoyed this experience much more with friends, which is what people normally do when going camping. Even if you don't want to be in a romantic relationship it doesn't mean you have to reject all connection with other people.
Why are people trying to normalise being alone? I realise we can all want time alone on occasion and it's not a bad thing, but to constantly be alone and have no choice about it isn't exactly a good situation for our mental health. Someone suggested that it could be a survival instinct for us to become anxious, defensive and even aggressive towards others when we find ourselves isolated, because it would have been hard to survive alone thousands of years ago. Could this be why we are seeing more of this behaviour online?
One of the most disheartening aspects is not knowing what is real and what is not. Lately, a couple who presented themselves on social media as the most loving recently came out to admit they'd been long separated but had to stay together and live in the same house due to their online content. They lost friends because people couldn't believe how unreal they were being all these years.
This begs the question: how many things are actually real, digitally? I remember when I also started content creation, at first, it was out of boredom and because I usually have multiple passions at a time, lol. Slowly, I began losing my real touch, a sense of connection and trueness to who I am. It began to feel like I was chasing trends. At the time, I tried convincing myself that I was doing makeup videos like every other content creator because I love makeup and videography, but guess what? The lines among my love for the whole thing, the fun I was having and being just another plastic influencer got blurrier and blurrier.
It led me to think, why? I'd told myself I was doing this purely to connect with women, to inspire them, and also for the love of doing it, but somehow, with each video, I couldn't tell the difference between myself and any other "fake it till you make it" out there. This also gave me an insider outlook on the "influencer culture," and one thing I can tell you for certain is this: it's all plastic. No true friendship, real interactions, or even true self-representation. Even when you go digital with the intent of being 100% yourself, without care, you can lose that and get swept up in the culture real quick.
I quickly realized that life wasn't for me. I didn't want to become famous, but it was coming, so rather than submit to daily anxiety while every video means I lose a bit of essence, I just stopped.
It gets so bad that some people don't even know how to turn it off. Even in real life, you hear things like, "omg, this lipglosssss", lol.
And as for this, a lot of people don't realize that this is just a coping mechanism used by people burdened by deep loneliness. It's a facade. Because trust me, everyone wishes to find their person. It is a beautiful thing after all. And your person doesn't have to be a partner, could be a friend or family member. But when you can't find them? That's when you take the time to enjoy life at every turn and not miss out on life while waiting for a certain someone.
Whew! As always, your post has given me another opportunity to be as expressive as I love and to reason deeply. Thank you and have a wonderful day!
That's such an awkward situation. You can't even move onto other relationships at that point.
I was talking to my husband yesterday about how sad I feel for so many people who just seem so lost and unable to even figure out how to just be themselves because they're so busy trying to be what they believe others think they should be. This is to be expected to a point with younger people as they try to find their place in the world, but when they are in the 30s and older it's rather saddening.
Something that never seems to work in the long run. If you aren't happy in what you're doing and never feel genuine, then you won't want to keep on. Thank you for sharing your experience as an influencer. I've often wondered if it can wear you down if it's not something you really love.
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For me it already started with America's Funniest Home Videos.
I just couldn't understand why people would laugh about videos that were clearly staged. Who would film his husband standing on a ladder cleaning the gutter?
But nowadays with youtube it has been getting worse. All these so-called pranks and funny videos. I even had a discussion about it with my teenage kids. I told them not to believe everything that happens in a video. These youtubers would get far less views if nothing interesting was happening in their videos.
And with AI videos it will only get worse I think.
It's way easier to be lonely since you actually don't have to interact with real life people. Which is quite difficult for a lot of (young) people nowadays because the most communication is digital nowadays.
I'm really curious how this will develop.
I'd forgotten about those. That was before social media and everyone having cameras on their phones too. Now people will actually just stand around and film accidents instead of trying to help. Yet even further loss of our humanity?
Then they have to keep escalating to keep those views up...
This is a good point. I'm glad I've always encouraged my youngest in this regard, letting her know it's not as difficult or scary as you think. I was also very quiet, but with a less digital world I was forced to learn interact. I'm glad I was and am saddened that she didn't have that push. She got there in the end, though.
New technology can be great, but also makes us dependant on it and makes us lose skills. It is a thing of all times. Like calculators and navigation... a lot of people would literally be lost without them.
And as long as they work it isn't that bad, bit you can't say that for losing the skill to communicate in real life.
We need to learn our kids to stay communicating to keep that skill.
Excellent, thought-provoking post, @minismallholding. I appreciate you writing it.
Yes, it would appear so, with a growing body of evidence to support that view. At least that might be the reasonable conclusion drawn by those who still have any independent, critical thinking skills functioning ...
Not to worry. In the not too distant future, from recent reporting, we'll be able to buy a robot which will be able to hold conversations with us. We'll surely be able to select whatever type of conversation we want to have with them, along with whatever tone we wish to have it conducted.
Our very own echo chambers in 3D. 😁 Someone else was saying we could also programme them to be our perfect romantic partner. No need for us to breed any more and actually try to compromise with pesky meat bags.
Very good, @minismallholding:
My kind of humor! 👍🫡 Hahaha ... 😉
If we're still around, we'll see if we're still laughing in a few more years. As all aspects of this new reality linked to AI, robotics, etc. takes shape ...
The thing with sketch like that, is they reflect shit that does happen in real life. I've been on public transit enough to know from my own lived experience people can be disgusting.
The problem I see with the camping women, and a lot of people is that they seem to think that a romantic partner will fix loneliness. Having a few good friends does a person good. But making good friends is hard. And by the time folks have dealt with their day to day obligations they often do not have the capacity to put in the energy it takes to make good friends.
I also personally distrust most of the lives that people put on display for profit.
As to loneliness in general, it's def something that's a serious problem and the pandemic and it's isolation didn't help. Not just the isolation but the way simple things turned into politics. How much people lashed out at each other. (I have a friend whose immune compromised and the amount of bs she gets for wearing a mask is ridicules.) The politics that came out of it def created another us vs them axis to divide people on and it still exists.
The first, and not so nice, part probably happens quite a lot, but the second part where they get shown up, not so much. That's the part you wish would happen more often because it teaches better behaviour.
I agree, it's getting harder and harder to make friends. I would even say that the 24hr working environment adds to this, because quite often your work hours will be very different to other people's so you can't even find time to meet up with friends you do have.
Of late everything seems to just create more divide between people. On social media it's easy to find yourself in echo chambers and this cuts you off from other viewpoints making it easier to view anyone with differing opinions or circumstances as the enemy.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend. There is still a lot of bitterness from that period even years later. It's shocking how easy it was for so many people to just drop their compassion.
Oh yeah, the whole "always on the clock" thing is horrible. I'm glad my home country(Canada) actuly made it so that work places can't expect people to respond to work stuff outside of work hours unless they are paid to be on call.
The echo chambers also make people more extreme, like, if you don't agree 10000% you're the bad guy. Even if your view is actually 80% in line with theirs. So instead of anyone being resonable you got two extremes that see each other as demons. And while some issues def have a good side and a bad side it leaves no space for nuance.
There's a bitter part of me that's just like, if it falls down so fast, was it ever really compassion or was it just politeness?
Also thank ya for the top commenter vote! :D
Is that bitterness or are you genuinely onto something?
I recently listened to a psychologist who said we normally only tend to form cohesiveness in groups of up to about 100 (I think that was the number he gave) so when we started to form larger societies in order to keep everyone working together we needed a shared religion, enemy or blood. So if we need a common cause, maybe we unconsciously look for an enemy ourselves.
So true. And if you believe this then you must also believe all this other stuff that we've decided believers of that also believe! You agree with something on the left you must believe all the left wing stuff and if you believe something on the right then you are completely right wing. Never mind that 80% of people are somewhere in the middle.
Not my doing. They got there before me. ;D
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Thank you!
I have come to understand that relationship this days is not by looks anymore but by having monetary value or finance that is enough to take care of your partner's needs which it what attracts people to a relationship that is not showing true love and once that money is gone the relationship fades away. This is one reason why you see broken homes today because the flashy things that got attracted to them isn't showcasing again and this becomes a problem to continue with the relationship.
If you decide to know what went wrong in their relationship you will find out that the men most especially will call the lady gold digger that she is not interested in him but his money. However it happens to be that it is the men who were flaunting their wealth before to get them. Sometimes I do ask myself if dating app is the best place to go because there you will see different people coming over for love but actually meant to be there for something else especially an already made men or women.
There is no perfect partner anywhere the only way to enable that happen is for both partners to sit down and understand each other before going further which might not be easy but will definitely make a huge difference. We still have lovely people to be with out there is just that the lifestyle out there have made most of them hiding that we really can't tell who is genuine among them anymore.
I think evolutionarily women were attracted to strong men who could protect and provide for them. In today's world this probably translates to monetary wealth. I can't say I understand it myself, because no matter how much money someone has I wouldn't feel happy in a relationship where I'm not comfortable with them as a person as well.
Relationships require effort and compromise and this isn't being encouraged in younger generations. If things don't go how they want they are encouraged to just walk away. I can see how it has reached this point, because we shouldn't be encouraging people to stay in abusive relationships, but are we reaching a point of making something abusive out of every little thing we don't like?
@topcomment
comparison is one main issue that is making most people find themselves in abusive relationship which isn't the best mindset to showcase. It is better to be in a relationship where there is peace of mind even if there is no much financial capability than be in an abusive relationship that is not encouraging at all. we learn everyday from situations like this but however some people still want to feel among by finding themselves in a wealthy relationship just to impress people but find it difficult to be happy inside it.
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I believe too much screen time has caused many of us to think things are just real even when they were just staged or imaginative work of a writer or an artist.
Gone were the days when people to people discussions were physical. You could easily read what someone is saying with the movement of their eyebrows, scrunching of their nose or the tone in their voices... things we've missed.
In the relationship aspect, just as you stated here;
I do agree that looks is never enough. Though it'd be nice to have someone whose physical features just want you to hug them deeply in a relaxing way, their characters matter too. The word of their mouth and the way they respond to situations. There's just a lot, and all these can be known through spending quality time together.
Being alone isn't bad. I like being alone because to me, It is peaceful, and I get to self-reflect, sleep, and just have fun being around a place filled with silence. But that doesn't make me push people off. I enjoy people's company and enjoy physical discussion with friends and families. The fun of going out together, staying together, and also learning...
I also like my alone time, probably more so because I don't get it very often. I don't think if like to be alone all the time, though.
Me too! As much as I love my alone time, I am still always surrounded by people 😂.
There's one place where non verbal communication has worked well. Hand signals, nods, gestures. The gym. There's so many ways to say "can I use this?" without speaking, particularly in an environment where everyone is doing their own thing and often has headphones in.
not to mention the loud booming music through the bloody PA
I think I saw this stupid short as well, and I hate the fact that I have. They just keep appearing. They are not avoidable, and I really hate that instagram, youtube, facebook, reddit and other platforms don't allow you to self-exclude from them.
They're so click-baity and just waste everyone's time. I truly despise shorts.
They really aren't. If you delete them and tell the algorithm you don't want more things like them they'll just show you other things instead to see what you will respond to.
I was listening to someone yesterday who was saying that the controversy and click bait are all part of the way these sites are set up to put you in echo chambers and keep feeding you what you'll respond to so they can basically advertise and make money. It also makes you feel like everybody is having the same experience as you.
Shorts also serve to reduce the human agency to make a choice. People swipe through and get whatever comes next. I have never seen someone use the search function to find a short. Even, to show someone an old one, they'll swipe endlessly in the hope tht the slot machine of algo-induced-chance will show them what they want to see, instead of going off to try and find it.
I wouldn't even know how to search for a short. I find it rather unnerving how even hubby and my dad seem to have become addicted to scrolling through them on Facebook or YouTube. Not sure which, but they have them up on the TV when my dad is visiting. My dad can't even watch a full movie without losing interest part way through now.
I put a friend of mine through 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. They managed to get through it without any shorts. I'm grateful for that :)
I long to block the short or reel functionality at a network level. It is probably possible... maybe there's a short on how to do that somewhere...
🤣 A short for everything
Unless people are in or know about screen/theatre I don't think they realise just how much you have to exaggerate anything for it to look good for a camera/audience.
Getting defensive and aggressive towards others when isolated seems like a terrible survival instinct. Interesting idea though, I always thought it was more of an extremely overactive fragile little ego defence.
That's a good point. Do many people even watch theatre these days? You don't often see wordless sketches any more either, I suppose.
It could be that too, especially if you're not very good at interacting, so you're assuming everyone's viewing you negatively.
Wordless sketches as in drawings or as in pantomime type performances?
In the former case I like reading whatever additional information the artist wants to provide in the textbox (like their thought processes behind it or what was going on in their life when they were working on it/posted/etc) but prefer nothing at all to people blathering about how they're "going to let the image speak for itself" (like just do it don't bother explaining it).
and I don't do a lot of wordless stuff because I talk too much x_x
Maybe a self esteem thing? As I have noted that some of the people I know who are very good at interacting will sometimes assume the worst of something that was said or done in ways that I don't even notice (not that that's saying much).
I was thinking more pantomime type performance. Actually, early soundless movies came to mind as I was writing. 😆 But I'm the same with regards drawings, now you mention that.
We probably all over think at times, don't we? It's easy to assume people who are chatty, outgoing and well liked are confident and wouldn't assume the worst, but then one day they surprise you by admitting that they aren't that confident and worry that people dislike them.
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