What If Social Media Was The Real World?

By Diya Sood

I reminisce when I first encountered social media. The initial trend I came across was the unicorn barf filter, on this entirely weird application titled 'Snapchat'.

I recall my eleven-year-old self wondering, "why would anybody take pictures like that?"

Ironic, isn't it?

I bet all of us have had a spattering point in our lives where we felt that social media was diabolical. Perhaps, we might essentially think so, even now.

In today's fast-paced internet age, we survive or say thrive only through social media. We cannot imagine a day without sparing a single social media application. Checking and updating status' on WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and others are the very banes of our existence!

How be it, have you ever tried to imagine how life would have been if we lived it in the same demeanour as we do on social media?

Well, here's my take on it—

I bet you've at least once left someone on read (don't try to deny it even if you hate it) but just imagine the same scenario in a real-life situation. Can't do that? I'll help you out!

Here's some context for this point of view-

Scene 1- You ask a friend why they didn't turn up to an event you planned to go to collect.

Scene 2- You end up with a stare, and then a simple departure from the stage a short while after.

Fun, isn't it? Quite the Shakespearean exeunt, even.

Well, it turns out that humans have not just invented social media to, well– socialize, but also to generate for themselves a livelihood!

Now, we've all certainly also had a phase where we probably thought that we could become entrepreneurs, influencers, and artists; The list is unceasing.

Visualize how trade would take place in real life if it took place how it does on the internet.

It would be quite an unusual shopping experience, wouldn't it?

Another situation I could think of was the awkward situations some of our beloved influencers would probably get into.

This one actually, could involve a lot of our near and dear ones and it is quite humorous, might I add.

I've been quite a victim of this one myself, to begin with.

This is one for the folks with "wanderlust" in their social media bios.

Presently, what I've come to realize after being a user of social media for almost a decade of my lifetime (this period, very realistically, stands for most of my lifetime...ouch) is that the people with this word in their info section aren't exactly the ones with "wanderlust".

I saw one of them walk for a good twenty minutes before they offered to call for a taxi ride.

Those were some really fun times encompassing the concept of wanderlust!

Now, the real ambiguous situation arises when we think of social media and its most frequent users- the influencers!

Again, try to visualize your favourite influencer resting under a tree, book in hand, the bright unrealistic lush green garden in November (re-read to understand the catch) and of course the lovely sun hitting their crystal clear skin at an exact seventy-degree angle with them not even batting an eyelash and a huge smile plastered across their face.

If you've paid a lot of attention to influencers you would have noticed that it is either that the picture they have posted is out of the present time frame context or the fact that the book they are gladly beaming at is in fact, the autobiography of a world war refugee.

One can certainly imagine how awful a situation like this can be in the real world.

Nevertheless, we still call this "socializing." We have all been at play with it since our infantile years.

You played and went to school with children you did not know. Some of them became comrades while others remained acquaintances. This is how humans have made sense of life.

Primates have since time immemorial, formulated social networks. The phenomenon of social media is nothing new, however, it is 'technology' that we are using that is considered dynamic.

Whether we choose to use social media or not, whether we develop a certain liking towards it or not — it certainly is a part of us and it will perhaps keep developing in the future. Yet, thinking about this topic certainly made me realize that it's always up to us to create clear boundaries between what we need in our lives realistically rather than virtually, and that as long as we understand that, we're perfectly good to go!

By Diya Sood