CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES | the dynamics of life ||
A place for self-presentation... and deception
It’s become fashionable to talk about ourselves. But let’s not
kid ourselves: our hidden needs are at the heart of this fashion.
A thirst for social recognition makes us want to be seen as better
than we see ourselves. So we don masks, create new personas.
On social media, we can be a connoisseur of the arts or a confi-
dent professional, a successful entrepreneur or an inveterate trav-
eler, a beefcake or a great beauty: who’ll know the truth? But
some of the popular heroes of Instagram and Facebook have
been unmasked. They had faked their resplendent lives: told tales
of fabulous trips that they had actually taken only from their arm-
chairs, showed pictures of themselves in gorgeous homes they
didn’t own, cited books they hadn’t read…
3
4
5
A place to build a business
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have helped
many aspiring entrepreneurs start up a business. Issues of at-
tracting customers are successfully resolved in social media. We
bake cakes, sell our pictures, put together a Webinar, apply make-
up for customers—and photos and testimonials in social media
do a great job of bringing in new orders, which assures one more
important need—money. We also expand our circle of acquain-
tances, state our position, enter into partnerships or other busi-
ness relationships, and try to find money for a start-up.
A sense of closeness
Virtual interaction, especially on Skype, has succeeded in
creating not only a sense of participation, but also of immediacy.
During the pre-gadget era, time and distance separated people
literally. But today, loved ones leaving on a lengthy assignment
or business trip, or living on different continents, easily maintain
contact through Short Message Service (SMS), photographs,
correspondence by messenger apps, phone calls, chatting, and
79
on Skype. We have the pleasant sensation that we’re not so far
away.
BUT. Virtual life is overshadowing real life.
Probably most of us have had occasion to witness a group
of friends at the next table all look at their smartphones and raise
their faces to take a joint selfie and immediately post it on Face-
book. That selfie is a graphic manifestation of our addiction to
gadgets and virtual reality. Compared to our boisterous phantom
life, our reality seems dim, and even person-to-person interaction
no longer seems so real. So then, there’s an existential question
to ponder here: what is the essential difference between real and
virtual interaction? The answer is in whether or not the exchange
of living energy is drained by distance or impeded by the barrier
of a screen.
6
We’re far from calling on people to reject social media. The
Internet is an excellent tool for exploring the world. It encourages
curiosity, communication skills, and personal development that
can be developed through text information or video: written
speech, the intellect, memory, education, a healthy lifestyle... Im-
pressive numbers of professionals are on line, new information
is appearing exponentially, and the answer to any question is lit-
erally at our fingertips. However, not only adults, but children, too,
are at risk of addiction to the Internet and social media. And if we
don’t want to lose our children, we have to provide them with an
example of how to balance our real and virtual lives. One sug-
gestion is that the family establish a regular day without gadg-
ets—and it should be for everyone. Indeed, rather than take the
gadgets away altogether, we must take advantage of our chil-
dren’s hunger for our attention to listen to them and acknowledge
the attraction of the virtual life, but draw them back to the real
world by sharing its joys and pleasures with them..
ALPEON.COM