Facebook Fake

With facebook people can’t wait to tell the world how much fun they’re having. You get to see photos of vacations, parties, and everyone having a good time. Status update after status update of what people are doing, or what people are buying, and everything in between.

There are typically two responses to seeing these things appear on your news feed. The first and most common is, “Wow, that looks like a lot of fun, I should do that” and the less common but more accurate is, “They look like they’re having more fun than they probably are.”

We tend to look at such things as vacations, new purchases, and other “cool” things in the most envious light possible. To make matters worse there are probably so many people on your friends list that it seems like everyone is doing something cool but you — making you feel kind of left out.

Your news feed is being flooded daily by someone on a vacation, at an event, at a concert, travelling, or doing some type of activity that you wouldn’t mind doing.

Go ahead and look back at the photos you took of your last vacation or trip and then think of how you were really feeling and what was going on at that time. Chances are the photos make it look like you’re having more fun than you really were.

The photos are deceiving.

While almost every trip or event has some special moments and some fun to it, something worth remembering, the photos don’t capture all of the challenges and trying times you went through to make it happen.

The photos don’t show the delayed flights, the restless nights, the exhausting drive, the crabby kids, the headaches, the pains, the rush, the arguments, and all those things we sacrifice and ignore just to get to the part that’s “worth” capturing on photo and video.

We capture the scenic mountain views, the beach, and everyone smiling for a picture. We capture the things we eat, the things we drink, the places we find entertaining, and the places we go for relaxation.

Nobody captures the exhaustion of the hike up that mountain, carrying your kids because they don’t want to walk anymore, the sunburn from staying out in the sun too long, the hangover from drinking too much, or the sore back from the bad hotel beds.

We capture only the good moments or the funny moments. We lead away from the suffering we went through and move toward the relaxation and fun that we had so that we can share “positivity” with the rest of the world.

If a picture says a thousand words, then a facebook picture only shows 500 because half the story is definitely missing.

Understand that while all the things you see may look amazing and exciting you’re probably being deceived by the appearance of such things combined with the desire to be anywhere but where you are now, whether it be at work, sitting at home with kids, or somewhere else.

When it comes down to it, the people that admire the doings of others are mainly those that are mentally exhausted and tired of their everyday ordinary life. Some of these people become addicted or dwell heavily in the lives of others, their newsfeed becomes their lifeblood, their heartbeat, without it they wouldn’t be able to handle the reality of their own life. While they are consumed by this they may not even realize they are beginning to ignore their own life and those around them while caught in the feed.

You’re being fed a line of bullshit every minute of everyday while you’re plugged in.

When you are truly having a good time the opportunity for a photo never arises, in fact, the realization that you even have a phone sometimes disappears. Only those addicts will reach for their phone to ruin a good time by taking a selfie or capturing it. When you take a picture for facebook you’re not capturing the moment in it’s natural setting and you’re not capturing the moment for yourself.

Think of all the times you were truly having a good time and you’ll realize that you forgot to take a lot of pictures. The act of even considering to take a photo of that moment seems like a violation of some unspoken moral code of human decency.

How do you do it?

“Okay guys, hold that laugh and that pose I have to get my camera out so I can take a selfie to show everyone else how good of a time we’re having.”

No!

It doesn’t work like that.

The moment you do something like that is the moment you ruin the moment for everyone else. It becomes the most unnatural thing. Only someone outside of your group can secretly take photos to capture the authenticity of your good time, whenever someone involved in the act pauses for a photo opportunity, it has an effect on both the behavior and the legitimacy of that moment.

In other words, what I’m saying is the photos you see on facebook aren’t real and they aren’t of people really having a good time. They are of bored people that want to put out the perception that they are having a good time. They are taken by people that want to log their lives publicly.

So please don’t be fooled by your news feed.

When you pull out your camera you become a witness instead of an active participant in this thing we call life. Do not confuse this behavior with the occasional selfies or randomly posted photos. The destruction of authenticity occurs primarily in addicts. If you see someone posting hundreds of photos that wasn’t hired as a photographer for that event, then you either have a stalker or an addict on your hands.

The phrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays in vegas.” has little to do with being in Vegas. What it simply means is come join us and have some authentic moments, moments that are so good no one will pull out their phone to capture them because everyone will be too busy living in them.

These moments are what we live for. These are the moments that turn into the stories that we pass down to our friends, children, and grandchildren sitting around the campfire one day. These are how real memories live on, by experiencing things that are real, not creating a collage of fallacy to make others jealous.