It is amazing how I think of the most randomness things and somehow find a way to make my thoughts make sense. I low-key believe my IQ could be so high that there isn't a way to measure it, but I digress.....I am not here to talk about how smart I secretly think I am. Today, my post is a somewhat squeal to a previous blog I did about the movie THE MATRIX. In the post, I talked about how the movie how certain aspects of my life soft of mirrored that movie. In the post I will be talking about the real life matrix that so many people are trapped in. 98 % of the world is caught up inside this matrix. Some people know it and some don't know it. Have you guessed what the real world matrix is? Well if you haven't, I will tell you. The matrix is none other than social media.
Since I don't know when social media actually popped of, I will use the year I was introduced to it.as a.starting point as far as a timeline for this. So back in 2004, social media begin to go mainstream with a site called blackplanet. That was a site mostly for black people. Now fast forward to about mid 2005, the world was introduced to MySpace. This really was a game changer because you could share your pics, music, videos, and more importantly your thoughts/feelings to any and everyone. Because of MySpace, the way we interacted with people changed forever. Soon after that, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and instagram became a must have in the world.
Another big millstone in the social matrix had to do with cell phones. Before smart phones came out, you had to use computers to use these sites. Now there's an app fora just about all social media sites. When a person sees something now, all it takes a few clicks of a button from your phone and all things can and will be shared from the comfort of your phone. When this happened, the social matrix began its takeover.
With this millstone, people began to broadcast everything they did/do for the world to read and see. People began to post more pics and videos of any and everything. More and more, people began to share their life's for the world to see. People began to connect with people more through cyberspace and disconnected from the real world. Folks would rather talk to someone through these sites than speak to a person in the real world. This led to an uprising epidemic know as cyber confidence.
Cyber confidence is the act of telling a person something that should be said in person. Because of the number game and like this and I will tell you something, folks began to relayed on these sites more than ever before. What they couldn't tell someone face to face they told the person on a computer screen. In doing so, folks have lost the connection between person to person interaction and instead relied on technology for basic human interaction/interpersonal skills.
Then people stopped being themselves as well. Instead of being themselves, they portray a person that they think others want them to be. And for what, just to gain some new people that they may never meet in the real world? Or to be someone that they wish they could be? By doing this, they begin to live in the matrix and disconnect from the real world. It gets to a point that some people act like their cyber self in the real world. The matrix has them believing that version of themselves is the only one people will like.
So now the question is how do people free themselves from the matrix. Well the only true way is to destroy social media all together. Since that's not going to happen, a more realistic solution is to spend less time in cyberspace and/or have more confidence in yourself. If folks they like you for being yourself, they you don't need to try to befriend them/impress them. Also by spending less time on social media, you can meet real life people, network, and gain enhance those interpersonal skills that will be so helpful down the road called life. So in the end, social media is OK as long as you don't let it consume you, guide you, and disconnect you from the real world.
