Snapchat Sob Stories, Tasteless Tumblr Talk, Facebook Feuds, and Twitter Tantrums

Alright, to start off, this is an opinion. So take it or leave it, it's your choice. Just because you may hate my opinion doesn’t mean it’ll change or I’ll even care about your hatred. You have been warned.

We all have new iPhones but no one to call (that's a loose quote from Life’s for the Living by Passenger). Why is that? In this age of connectivity, this age of global networks, easy access to anyone anywhere, it seems like we are further from people than ever before. As a younger generation, we learn at an earlier and earlier age how to text, Snapchat, Facebook, etcetera etcetera… but the more friends we seem to have, the less friends we feel like we have. I've also noticed that a lot of people prefer texting to talking in person or on the phone. I know I prefer texting to phone calls, and recently I realized that my skills of talking in person seem like they’re declining in quality. Because of technology, I am used to being able to take more time to think about what I’m going to say so my ‘conversational response time’ is getting worse and when I do manage to open my mouth, what I say isn’t as well thought out as it would otherwise be over text or something of that nature. I feel like this is a pretty common phenomenon throughout my generation. Another common phenomenon in this generations is what I like to call “Snapchat Sob Story”. This is very common on all modes of social media, but I first noticed it on snapchat thus the name (also, I’m sure I’m not the only one to think of this catchy name but I didn’t bother googling it to see if it’s patented. So don’t sue me please). This phenomenon is, for example on their snapchat story, the perpetrator would write something along the lines of “I hate feeling like this” or “All alone tonight again. :’(“ or even a public post meant for specifically one person such as “I guess that’s the way it’s gonna be then. F u.” This is a perfect example of people using social media in all the wrong ways. This is a perfect example of how distant social media has actually made us through all this connectivity. These people clearly want to talk about their problems, they want attention. Who doesn’t? Everyone wants to be able to vent to someone and feel like they have someone who will listen. But these people are doing it all wrong. Most of us honestly don't care. I mean that in the most loving way possible. We want to care, if this person came to us (even over snapchat) and asked to talk about something that they have been struggling with or how they have been having a hard time recently, more than likely we will listen, but we will be a little confused. Not only that, but these two people will have bonded and become much closer. This bond may be temporary or permanent, it depends on what either person does following this experience. The reason we don't do this when someone puts up a snapchat sob story is because that is just like rewarding a dog for bad behavior. The crowd doesn’t care about individuals. Individuals care about individuals. So yelling problems out to the crowd is stupid. People recognize that as a desperate cry for attention, a public pity party so to speak, so we don't join in. The ability to throw personal things out to the world like that is one of the reasons social media really doesn’t bring people closer. You can’t make a personal connection with everyone and certainly not a strong connection over technology. There is some sort of bond making magic of talking in person and eye contact. If you are one of the ‘perps’ that does this, you can either hate me for pointing out things you’re doing very wrong when you clearly are at an already low point, or you can stop doing what you’ve been doing and start doing something better. Go make some friends, talk about your feelings if that’s what you want, and stop hiding behind a keyboard. “If you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always got.” -Henry Ford.