Musings on kidding ourselves…

Addiction is a problem our society has not managed to truly address. Addictions have often been seen as the outcome for people who have no self-control when clearly it goes far deeper than that. There has always been a stigma attached to addiction while there are far too many real, debilitating, life-threatening ones which anyone may be susceptible to.

Some people have an “addictive personality”. I’m never quite sure if that means they have a tendency to addiction, or if their personality makes people addicted to them… Anyway, I’m referring to the first option. At the beginning, sure, there’s a possibility of choice… Do I go down this road or not; hey, I can control it. Suddenly there’s no turning back and you wish you’d never started. Or not. Maybe it’s fun and doesn’t leave you broke, destroy your life, your health, your friendships, your family and your self-esteem. All that said, I’d rather not get into the intricacies of life-threatening addictions, principally because I am not qualified to opine. What I would say is that the word itself is often bandied about for the most frivolous of circumstances.

We’re addicted to a TV show. Is that something we cannot control, or simply don’t want to? It’s very easy to feel sorry for ourselves because we think we’re addicted to chocolate and then bemoan the fact that we get fat. Is it a perverted variety of vanity? We want to make ourselves feel important, so we create something which we think singles us out. I am no doubt as guilty as the next person, but I do know I could never be addicted to, say, going to the gym. I’ve never understood it. It smells, it’s hard work and you lose valuable time when you could be sitting down. Or maybe I’m just a big lazy lump.

But for the modern age, perhaps one of the most dangerous temptations on the path to hell is…
Social networking sites.
Yet another way to make us feel inadequate under the guise of making us feel important. So much so that we become dependent on something without which we lived perfectly happily not so long ago. Popular culture forces so many things down our throats that we end up believing our own delusions, when maybe the only thing we are suffering from is an incredible capacity for introversion and self-obsession.

Like a vice, social media makes us dependent. It reaches out its pulsating fingers, offering us a box of delights, which we happily take and when we say no more thanks, those fingers close around our wrists and drag us back to the box, force our heads into it, and way, way beneath. We smell the fresh lure of different flavours… it’s a damned selection box! I’ll just try this one… now I have to even it out so there is the same amount in each section, but that one was so delicious… Pretty soon, we find ourselves scrabbling for the last crumbs and feeling absolutely no satisfaction, only disgust, when there is nothing left to be had. Possibly that whole analogy got away from me, so let me get back to the point, whatever that was.

It’s problematic. These sites convince us we can make contact with friends we’ve lost touch with. Surely if they’re good enough friends, you’re still in touch. They suggest various inane games for us to play online, which force us to be up at four in the morning, those of us who have no willpower or strength of character, at least.
And why does one post? To receive comments, surely. Reciprocity is fundamental. And you cannot expect comments if you do not participate. And if none are forthcoming, you are plunged into a sea of despair, which you would never have felt had you never posted the damn entry.

Unfortunately, the problem I see isn’t the fun you have or don’t have using Friend Face, Twotter or any of the others that I don’t know the name of. It’s the obligation that you begin to feel after having been sucked in. You feel you’re missing out on something, who knows what, if you’re not present. It’s the dreaded FOMO.

Let me be very clear. I am by no means dissing the WWW. As an information and communication network it is without doubt invaluable, if we are able to separate the fake from the real. And banal escapism is fine in small doses. If you can, leave it at what it should be used for. The fact that someone needs to tell the world that they ate beans for lunch is beyond me.

Maybe writing this blog is my desperate, hypocritical cry for help. Maybe we are addicted to addiction, constantly searching for a fix in our otherwise humdrum lives. Maybe I overuse the word maybe. Whatever the case, surely there must be something more productive to do with our time.
So I’m just going to post this and sit at my computer waiting for the flood of comments. Until 4am. That’s my cut off as I suppose I’d better go to work tomorrow. Unless someone I care very little about is online and we can have a meaningful conversation about beans.

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Episode Nine Curious Words G to I