This particular TED talk.
Just amazingly opened up my mind. After all this time, I thought I was the only one who knew.
Looking at my blogs, my past life, it suddenly made sense that I was trying to understand this phenomenon without knowing if it really was happening. For once, my findings had some value to it.
For almost everyone that has read and I for myself, I've only understood that my loneliness was seemed to be caused by my over-sensitivity towards my friends.
After this talk, I've come to the conclusion I'm just another victim of 'technology addiction'.
I had always wondered why I feel frustrated when I post a status on Facebook, tweet on Twitter or Blogger (when I questioned everything openly).
First of all, I'm glad my previous mumblings and ramblings weren't totally personal and bias. Remember there was one time I asked "What was life before there was Facebook?". It's surprising to say, it was different from the social life we are living now, in some certain aspects.
Before Facebook, in my secondary school years, we communicated more with our unaided senses than using phones or social network. I would talk, play with fellow classmates, rarely was anyone looking down on their smartphones because it was not trending. Even if we did bring phones, some of us used it to play games that could be connected with bluetooth, still talking to each other. During lunchbreaks, we'd continue to play or talk. Now that I think about it, at that time, I probably felt free.
After, Frienster, random blog websites and now Facebook. That friendship has been reduced to just virtual connection. I believe this, my change started after the end of A-Levels, to which the "symptoms" start to come up. Do we realise that it happens? No, it is said the leaps in terms of communication that has been taken had made such rapid advancement in technology, we do not contemplate the consequences.
We see the beneficial side - We could communicate with friends, families and lovers that are far apart from us. We remain connected to each other. And all that can be done at our fingertips. What we don't see is, when we do not realise, is that everything we do, there has to be balance in terms of time and space.
The 'symptoms' I was referring was for an example. You start with a simple tweet or status update - you get replies, likes. Is this directed towards a single? No, it's most likely made to the mass. What happened to me was, since I was an introvert, socialising was not what I'm good at but the internet made it easier. I took advantage of it, and probably indulged myself with too much.
At first, posting a thought or two was for me to share some insight or knowledge to my friends, but then what I don't know was, I was just feeling alone, I didn't like solitude and wanted closure through these means. But 'replies, likes'... started to get less and then it became rare. At the same time I was blogging, before it felt like I was writing a diary, then I started to give opinions on life, friends and families. No matter what I did, it did not bring any of that closure. You don't know if someone had read your status update, your tweets or your blog posts. You could only assume, but then you could also doubt.
When doubt sinks in, I became more radical, intrusive to other people's life. My blog was the number one platform because I knew people were following it and sooner or later they will read something that was rather impliedly directed to them. I don't know what I was thinking, maybe because love or interest was not an emotion I could invoke effectively, but maybe provoking anger or hatred would make them reply.
March 28 2011, marked the day I would regret what I've done since now.
Anyhow, even then, I still didn't notice it was my addiction to social technologies. Of course it was still my fault, but I didn't know how to get my life back. I felt utterly lonely, even though I was connected to the social network. Looking at other people's lives made me utterly jealous and bitter. And this is another reason why such communication could be bad, Facebook lets us completely share everything possible to anyone. But what we don't know it that this connection makes it too easy for us to socialise.
We end up checking our phones, our computers to know how a person is doing, even though you could verbally communicate in person easily, meaning it could be easy to find the person. Examples are, when we eat together or be with each other, we could also be far away from each other through our phones. I've been doing that a lot, because it removes, the awkwardness, the silence, the boringness of conversations. But I shouldn't be, one of the mistakes I've been doing, avoiding to talk.
Sometime near now, I guess I subconsciously realised I was addicted and I deleted my Facebook account and isolated my blog from previous readers, and recently my Twitter too. It's a real addiction, at least to me.
I find it hard to just remove myself from all of it because I still pick up my phone but then realising I couldn't do much with it. I'm not saying technology is bad but I excessively used it, if I had only used it to keep memories and communicate with it sparringly and not trying to express with it, I wouldn't end up this way. However, touching 'them' again would fuel my addiction once more. So, bummer?
Not really, at least like in the talk, solitude is not all bad, it's when we search ourselves and know ourselves better, that's probably why I knew these things were taking over my humanity, although interpreted in a wrong way. At least now, I know what I should do, spread the word and force myself and others to have conversations.
Some of you probably won't agree with me, either you haven't faced this kind of problem or haven't noticed it affecting you or the people around you. But I completely understand, this addiction is affecting me the most because I'm almost at the worst stage of it so I can honestly relate myself to it.
There is so much I still want to say but I can't find the words to express how truly glad I understood what was happening to me. I'll have to confront my fears of having a conversation to express it.
I know my mind has been badly tainted my perception of others, but I want to try because I want to be better for others. At least make myself more human. Again.
