SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION

This is the age of trolls, memes, controversies and parodies. 
As I sit reminiscing and reflecting upon the past few years, what strikes instantly is the gross invasion of an individual's privacy by digital gadgets. My life isn't mine anymore, free to live as I wish. It's bombarded by messages, beeps and notifications at ungodly hours and unmentionable places and time. The urge to check every single source of digital enlightenment belies common sense and borders on insanity and derangement.

 Facebook is fast becoming our alter ego and intent on making even strangers shake each other's hands. What started on an initial premise of reconnecting and sustaining social relationships has far bigger implications now on an individual's life. Its steadily attempting to become our guide, astrologer, clairvoyant, messiah etc.. Telling us the meanings of our name, our personal relationships' success meter, our future, our hidden desires, fears, even our death dates. Now seriously!! Even if most of us undertake such frivolity at face value, it takes the cake at the absurdity.
 The casual check-ins have become the norm, full-fledged family albums weighing down under the scores of likes and automated applauding responses from the viewing audience has become mandatory for some. Personal gratification no longer seems to be the primary motive behind any activity. Public display of one's lifestyle has become the order of the day. Even people who prefer to live their lives privately and quietly can't resist peeping into the badass and bindaas lifestyle of the other half. 

Over-the-top selfie craze is the 21st century's biggest affliction ; self destructive, insidious, and incurable. The preeners pout gloatingly, the fawning viewers clap gushingly while the cynics snort disparagingly. But none can match the intense indulgence of the ever spiralling selfie addiction. That you might well be posing for the last time given the risks sometimes undertaken for that perfect shot, is a question that never poses itself well enough to be answered. Therein lies the tragic pit of human vanity.

Twitter consists of belligerent folks with overactive oestrogen levels and dormant grey cells because they shoot their mouth at the slightest pretext, more to catch eyeballs and elicit aggressive reactions than for any genuine feel for the topic in hand. Instagram and photo editors produce picture perfect portraits; glossy, unreal and fake but still garnering record breaking likes. Whatsapp is the little devil solely responsible for bringing long lost acquaintances and forgotten friends together but driving immediate families apart as they are too busy with online chatting to have any spare time for heart to heart talks with family members at home. Personal intimacies are being destroyed systematically by the social media, claim the detractors. Sensationalism rules the roost while sensitivity sleeps like a log. 

This digital onslaught on an individual's life is complete and absolute. Any personal preference to be a passive spectator and watch the circus from afar is scoffed at and one is pulled deep into the vortex of silliness and superficiality.
Hopefully in future, the novelty will wane off and the good old virtues of privacy and containment will come into action to balance this blatant in-your-face style of living. Till then the only choice left is to grin and bear and enjoy the show. Spectacular as it is, at times.