Zygmunt Bauman
We are living in an era where the exhibition of life has become more important than the actual experience of it.
Do you remember when meeting someone was a slow discovery? When you didn’t already know what they liked, where they had been, or how they looked from every possible angle, because you didn’t have a profile to scan. Back then, we had the patience to build friendships that required time, attention, and, above all, physical presence. Today, we have created a culture of “emotional speed,” where we judge people at a glance and replace them with the flick of a finger.
This is where our new social psychology is leading us: We have become collectors of images, but we have grown impoverished in true emotions. We have built a world where it is more important to appear happy than to actually be happy. Human behavior is shifting: we are learning to curate the best versions of ourselves for the screen, while in real life, we are forgetting how to be vulnerable, how to ask for help without feeling weak, and how to listen without already calculating our next response.
I am amazed by the opportunities this era gives us to connect with millions of people. It is an extraordinary power. But sometimes, I feel that in this ocean of information, we are drowning in a puddle of loneliness. We are losing the ability to see past the filter, to where a human being is real, broken, and magnificent just as they are.
How about you—do you ever feel that the more “glitter” we see on our feeds, the more we miss the simple light of a sincere conversation?