A tremendously useful observation about life is a Korean idiom literally translated as "Too much is as bad as too little." It's usually used for the lesson of not being too greedy, which is true not to drink too much alcohol, eat too much junk food, or be on social media too much. The last 2 kind of go together......social media, the Internet, and all of the sensory overload media these days is a lot like junk food: it tastes good and once we get a bit of it we want more, so you keep consuming, and before you know it an hour as passed and you've consumed the whole thing and feel awful. At first all the positives about the internet were accentuated when we could access a whole universe of information right at our fingertips and connect with friends instantaneously, then (gasp!) we could even upload videos and become our own TV star or singing sensation. All these things were great as a complement to our daily, "healthier" life habits like studying in school, reading books/newspapers, working out (the "veggies and other daily food groups" in this analogy), but just like junk food eventually the social media and videos begin to take over, humans want more and more of it, and you end up only eating junk food so that it becomes the routine, a way of life. Except now when you're only eating junk food, veggies and fruits and other mundane foods seem bland and uninteresting, and it's hard to go back when you have JUNK FOOD! Going back to the healthy lifestyle is much harder than devolving into the junk food one. A smart analogy examining dystopian societies (which feeds into my current obsession with all things trivia) that I've read in a few places is that George Orwell was worried about future societys society that restricted everything and watched your every move in his famous novel 1984, authoritarian governments depriving us of any joy in our life representing the fear of havng "too little," but what some feel like we've become as a society is the world of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," where everyone is allowed to do whatever they please and blasted with sensations and the need to consume, especially the happiness-producing drug called soma. Our society gets blasted with too many little shots of soma every day- a cool cat video here gives us a boost, 6 minutes later a text from a friend with a response-inducing tweet, a 15-second slam dunk highlight here.....We have too many of these, in this case it's too much of a good thing ("Too much is as bad as too little.")
One of the things we have too much of (and another complaint about society, becoming a trend for me lately) is making public comment on social media that can easily be just private comments. Dull old me didn't really understand why people had to be so transparent about everything on facebook or Twitter or Instagram, but now I get the picture: it's mostly done to make someone feel good. For example, Meyers Leonard, an NBA basketball player for the Miami Heat, just was suspended due to an anti-semitic slur he used while playing video games (another "too much" soma-like junk food item) on a live video game food (why do people insist on posting videos of themselves playing video games?) and Julian Edelman, an NFL wide receiver, published an open letter basically denouncing the anti-semitic slur but then educating and saying, "let's go down to Florida and go get something to eat sometime," basically implyng they'd talk it over and have a discussion. Seems nice and well-intentioned, but why did it have to be an open letter? Is it really necessary to invite someone to have lunch nowadays but let millions of other people know about it? It was a very professional letter, made to make one look good....and therein lies the secret of social media: it exists to make oneself look good, a 24/7 advertisement (even though there are real ads already) of the most important person there is: yourself. This letter is just one of so many examples of people purportedly trying to help a situation or talk to someone, but instead it's just more about making themselves look good. I definitely do things to make myself look good, and certainly when I write emails, speak to others I'm also trying to put my best foot forward, but the difference is that's not my MAIN purpose, I actually trying to see how a friend is doing, communicating ideas, etc. Social media, Youtube channels, and TikTok feeds are more and more transparently just being used as ads for individual people.......but we're just eating it up, like some really addicting junk food.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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