It's a Grand Illusion

Depressing Everyone at Once

I think we are all suffering from what I’d call “second wave technology”.

I remember a time, back in the early 1960’s, when the family would gather around the television at night with some measure of excitement over what this box could bring us in terms of entertainment. There were times that the variety shows of the day back then would present a singer you could only see in the hottest night clubs across the country. Or there’d be a small skit of a broadway play you’d have to travel to New York City to see. And yet here we were viewing it, seeing it, in the living room in our tidy three bedroom in a suburb of Baltimore, a backwater the singer and play would avoid for the bigger East Coast towns of Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

It wasn’t long before the little box lost most of it’s magic, and it was on but no one watched. The television serving as a comforting background noise we’d all grown used to hearing. Like an addled aunt who would talk to herself in another room.

Which brings me to today.

I believe we are all tired of the “new technology” that was supposed to “change our world for the better”, but somehow morphed into a nuisance, a bother, a distraction, and possibly even worse an annoyance.

I say that because we all know inherently that the online world is some sugarcoated version of lives, only the very best photo in the bunch taken, but yet we allow that single photo to seduce. To corrupt our minds. To lend a layer of anxiety to our day-to-day existence.

Out here in the real world, beyond politics, beyond any obsession with government, we are all attempting as best we can to cope. Inflation has become a very real concern. There is no longer any job security in the private marketplace, the “gold watch” for twenty-five years “service” is an anachronism, much like that old variety show, and the entire middle class floats along trying to do the best they can under trying circumstances.

And then along comes Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook X, to disturb our day.

Of course we engage, we’ve been trained through algorithm to engage, those companies pay high wages to the magicians who can sync the programs to our brain waves to keep us engaged. We all reach.

And what we see confounds and infuriates, and it disorients. Oh sure, there are enough added distractions that amuse, or fill you with a burst of joy, but the over-riding nature of these programs is to cause a feeling of anxiety.

You sit watching a program in the evening on your tired old sofa when a photo comes into your phone. It is a steak as big as your head and perfectly seared, perfectly done. A bright glass of red standing tall behind the plate.

For you it is a random Tuesday, sitting in leggings and an old sweatshirt, catching up and binging a new favorite show on Netflix, a lazy night where you threw together a cheap bowl of pasta. Hey, you bought the Rao’s on sale, this isn’t Ragu.

But there is your good friend, sitting in an expensive steak house on a random Tuesday, the caption regaling you with tales of a wonderful night out eating the finest food in town. Suddenly the pasta tastes like shit, Rao’s or no Rao’s.

Of course they included a bottle label in the deep background, they want you to see they opted for the Nickel and Nickel Reserve, and not some cheap red.

The following Thursday you are back on the sofa again, bored and channel surfing, when more pictures are available on your insta feed. Different couple, same message. “Look at all the fun we are having tonight”.

There they are at that fantastic waterfront bar, drinks raised to the camera, smiles all around, a whole group engaged in revelry and fun on yet another random weekday night.

You?

You’ve just made your second trip upstairs to make sure the kids are engaged in homework and not playing video games, the sink is full of dishes from dinner, and the dog is scratching at the back door demanding you come open it so they can get outside. In your world you are but a dog servant, and dishwasher, while “friends” are out having the time of their lives.

Your personal struggle is real, and the journey a slog at this point, but the view of others, based on all of the social networking programs, their lives are a party, they are gliding along on a four lane highway through life, freshly paved.

You stand in line at the check-out and watch the totals rise. And rise. Everyone you know is living in a different universe. There they are in Miami this weekend, all bright smiles and Cuban food. There they are in Iceland, Iceland? It seems there was a deal on flights to London, marry in a stop in Iceland for two nights, the plane fare was half.

Seeing friends play in London is one thing, somehow seeing them in hot springs in Iceland, well, that is completely disorienting. As if you are trapped in some bubble where life is lived just outside the glass that encases you. You slog, everyone out there lives.

How, you wonder.

You sense that your own family is falling behind. You and the husband combine to make far more than the average American family, but at the end of the month there is nothing left but an amount on the credit card bill, the bank account is spent.

The promise of Facebook, of Tik Tok, of Instagram, was that we can all now “keep in constant touch”. We can be in each other’s lives in a new and profound way.

But no one expected that these programs would fill up with only the best three percent of life, and lives lived.

No one posts the night last week they found Molly in Junior’s sock drawer. No one posts pictures of the bent fender from where little Janie cut the parking space too tight. There are no instagram videos of parents sitting in the living room “surprised” by Junior coming home an hour late and inebriated, even though Junior is an underage high school senior. No one ever Instagrams a view of the medicine cabinet that shows Janie is on Paxil and Prozac, while Junior is swallowing Adderall like a fiend.

And while there was a time not so long ago where Facebook felt like a fresh new friend, and there was an appreciation that you could now get a glimpse into the cousins lives who live so far away, you could stay in contact with those out-of-contact for so long, well, now there is just a bit of anxiety and trepidation as you reach.

No one wants to sit at night with the worry over bills and see friends beaming with smiles all around in Paris, the beautiful Eiffel Tower glistening in the background.

We’ve entered an age, and quickly too, where the first wave technology has become a second wave nuisance. Programs have become the 1971 television, sure it is on, but treated now as background noise. All body counts from ‘Nam and stale programming.

With all these miracle new programs meant to enhance our lives, they have instead become anxiety machines. Demonstrating to us how far we are falling behind. Except we aren’t, we are being shown a world that only exists for three percent of life. All the best parts.

Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, X, they are all delivery machines for a swipe of the finger through the icing on the cake, where you get a big hunk of strawberry too, and a heaping of sprinkles. There is never any dry cake.

The realities of Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok are the same illusions as any member of the cast of “Friends” being able to actually afford the apartments they live in on the show given their lowly entry level job status. Or the cast of “Seinfeld” being able to afford their “coffee shop at 2PM Tuesday afternoon” lifestyle absent any real evidence of a working career.

Yes, that is your friend in the picture and not an actor from television, but the life being shown off is just about as real as the lives of a character on television.

You aren't seeing the full reality. You aren’t seeing the movie, just a snapshot. You aren’t even seeing the original snapshot, it took four tries to get the steak, glass and bottle lined up just right, absent their husbands sausage like fingers in the background.

Second wave technology has become an anxiety inducement machine.

Which has washed away all the benefit of keeping track of a long lost aunt in Michigan, or cousins in Kansas City.

And yet our addictions to these programs won’t allow a disconnect. Just as with that 1970’s television we aren’t necessarily watching, but we need it to be on, there is something in the psyche that demands it be turned on, whether we engage with the box or not.

The same holds true for the technology we all consume today. We get that urge to join the “X” community and see what people are saying, only to become outraged, disgusted, and angry over the dominant conversation on our government’s lack of response to the latest storm tragedy.

We knew before we picked up the phone that “X” has become a “rage machine”, inducing anger and discord into our bodies and minds, and yet we still reached. Because like the television of old, it is always “on”.

And yet even you are not immune to participation in all the lies.

You see the photos, the videos, all of the fantastic fun, you feel the urge to participate. You remember the oversized slice of cheesecake in the Fridge, and the half-bottle of wine. You dump the empty pasta bowl into the dishes-laden sink and line up a nice glass of red alongside the strawberry cheesecake slice on the counter.

“snap”.

And send everyone a picture of a monstrous slice of cheesecake, along side a shining glass of red. You didn’t include the “Josh” label in the background, no one needs to know it’s just a glass of eleven dollar bottle grape, the wine not as spectacular as the giant slice of dessert.

And as you press “send” no one hears you scream up the stairs “you better not be on that Grand Theft Auto, or I’m coming up there and beating your ass”, no, no, no. There is no room on Facebook, Insta, Tik Tok, or any other program for that.

And suddenly, though you stand in the kitchen with a sauce-stained sweat shirt advertising your college from long ago, in threadbare leggings, this photo has transformed your own Tuesday night in to an elegant evening at home, with a decadent dessert, and giant stem glass of red.

“Look at my life” says the photo, I’m living my best life too. Now let me fill the dishwasher, and clean up after the dog.

Our “online” world has become a mirror image of our government, all lies all the time.

A grand illusion that our government is working for us, just as the grand illusion we are all living these wonderful lives.

On Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X, no one hears the screams, no one ever gets to see the dishes in the sink.

And if we as a society do not begin to disconnect from the facade, the Potemkin Village of life on these programs, and begin to see that we are all in the same boat, we are all going to very comfortably lose our collective minds.

That is going to be the end result of seeing reality as a lie online.

But wasn’t that bite of cheesecake enjoyable, right up until the dog crapped the carpet while you were sending cheesecake photos, and your daughter just screamed from upstairs her brother has become a nuisance.

Where Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok and X are concerned, dog logs need not apply.

We all need to divorce the lies and embrace the reality. It is our only salvation.