It is hard to know what is real anymore. Twitter users must specify they are whom they claim; @therealXYZ. There is nothing real about reality TV. Social-media is neither social nor trustworthy media. Losing a competition can now get you publically humiliated and kicked off an island. Losing weight can earn you cash. Entertainment normalizes the lavish and poorly behaved. The talentless are celebrated. We idolize the material.
Everyone is the voice when posts can go viral at anytime. Climbing the hills of legitimacy, finding facts and proof becomes too time-consuming when addictively scanning and refreshing new posts. Information has undergone significant inflation. Don’t believe everything you read; hear, watch, post, pin, or share. Quantity is tops over quality, and more of the world is checking in. There is a increasing factor of fear that our news is fake.
The rules of the road have definitely changed. Pop Culture is popular; it is the mainstream. Shoring up our ideas, attitudes, and perspectives, society defines us by our economic status, physical attributes, gender, sexuality, religion, race, and professional success. Like the distorting mirrors of any circus, that drags out our most unattractive features.
Observing the conflicts of others validates the human condition. Your life, compared to worse struggles, inspires gratitude and optimism. Or, with distorted reflections, validation degrades to voyeurism and entertainment to schadenfreude. Time, more wisely invested, returns a culture that will not mirror the pseudo-realism of the vapid. Society should elect not to reward the prodigal and unrestrained. Authenticity, sincerity, and humility must rebrand our cultural current. It proves challenging to survive in a world where information has lost its value and we compete for reality.
Originally published at mutarelife.wordpress.com