We are undoubtedly the most connected generation
to live on this planet. Quite literally. We know every single nitty-gritty
detail about everybody around us! Where they are, what they are doing, what
they are eating, who they are hanging out with and so on. And similarly,
everybody knows ‘the whole deal’ about us. Sadly, this is not a result of
private investigators or stalkers, but in reality is our own doing.
Every moment of our life is made public. From
the food we eat to the people we meet; from the places we visit, to the actions
we perform. For example, our first response to being served our orders in a
restaurant would be to seamlessly capture thirty pictorial evidences of the
dinner, each with a different lighting or effect; or even when we meet a friend
after a really, really long time; we instinctively remove our phones and
declare the special interaction to the whole wide world. And this doesn’t just
stop at food and people. It extends to almost every single action that we
perform. Be it a drawing or be it a late night movie or be it shots with
friends; or be it even boredom (like why?). It has to be captured digitally and
publicized to the whole universe.
The next event in this domino effect will be the
reception of acknowledgment. Soon this moment will be digitally glimpsed by
all. Some of the ‘nicer’ people will react with heart emojis, or shock emojis,
or smiling emojis or any other of the million emojis that happen to exist; or
maybe they might even take out the time and effort to type out a few words.
Some might ignore this digital imprint, and if you are lucky, a majority of
your targeted audience will belong to this category. But the remaining people
are the ones we need to be wary of. These ‘snakes’ will make a mental note of
this ‘moment’ of your life, and they will try to out beat it by broadcasting
their own ‘better moment’ digitally. Some of the even ‘worse’ people belonging
to this category might even decide to discuss your life offline and open a critics
forum on it. Soon this insignificant, inconsequential event of our lives will
turn into every household’s most influential and critical discussion topic,
with every tea time being devoted to it.
This public display of our lives will soon turn
into a subtle rivalry or rather a digital cold war. With everybody trying to
achieve digital fame with their own ‘wow’ moment, the real moments in our life
are often forgotten or left behind. The taste of appetizing food at a
restaurant or the genuine laugh of a friend can’t be captured digitally and
these are the memories that have the capacity to bestow us authentic, unfeigned
happiness; not a hundred replies on our Snapchat story or a thousand likes on
our Instagram post.
After completing the introduction and body of
the essay, she decided to take a break. She looked up at the clock as it struck
twelve. As she yawned, she made a mental note to convert the break into a
termination and promised herself to continue working on the assignment the next
day. But, before she called it a day she removed her phone and captured a
Facebook story with the caption, ‘late night essay work’. As she lay down to
sleep, she really hoped that her recent tweet would get more retweets than the
previous one.
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