via celiabeth
“We not only want others to see us, we like to see us. We are able to inspect and tweak what others are seeing about us. We become fascinated by the image we project. It’s like having a mirror on your desk or in your pocket. And every so often you pull it out to gaze upon your own image.
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This heavily edited and carefully controlled self easily hides certain parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. This is hardly new of course. In any social situation we seek to control the impression we give. The problem is that in real social settings there are limits to what we can hide. At a certain point people intuitively see through us. Eventually they get a sense of who we really are. And in this way, real friendships can function as a healthy mirror. They become an honest mirror that loves but doesn’t flatter us.”
I read this a couple of weeks ago, sat on it, and re-read it again this afternoon. The excuse of staying on Facebook because “it helps me keep in touch with people” is sort of wearing thin. When I care about people, I’d rather reach out to them and talk to them to see how they’re doing. How they are truly doing, not how they want others to think they are. I just don’t think I want to work on maintaining an image that doesn’t accurately portray me. I am more of a person, broken and full of joy than I can lead on 140 characters or less.
Anyway, just something to chew on.
Read the rest of the article here
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I agree with this. The author put into words exactly what I’ve been thinking about our culture since I finished college. Technology in communication constantly pushes the public sphere toward becoming a perfectly post-modern society. Though, it will never reach true perfection, I’m glad, because like the author says, it’s really killing us; numbing us. Deep down I think most of us want true modernism back. We don’t want people to see every second and every secret of our entire lives, even though that’s what is happening. We want people to dig deeper, because we seek personal relationships. The problem is that we’re on this exponential curve that keeps getting closer and closer to pure communication, which is making the average person seem more and more bland every minute.
