A lot of the world has been living a virtual life for just under a year now: conferences, interviews, classes and much more are online now and Zoom meetings are now an essential part of many of our lives. Online Dating sites have seen a surge too as has social media usage – we can’t go out so the first thing many of us turned to was the internet, naturally.
This calls to question, what’s real? Like when we have virtual meetings now with people for the first time there’s often that cute addition “it’s nice to e-meet you” because even after so many months of virtual interactions being the order of the day, many of us still haven’t accepted this as a “real” type of meeting.
So, if we don’t readily accept these as real, why are we so quick to accept what people put out as clearly curated content on their social media pages, as who they really are? Why do many people allow themselves to believe they actually know someone by virtue of the scheduled posts they interact with? I’m not referring to making friends on SM, by all means this is very possible – shout out to all my close friends that I met on the internet, y’all are the real MVPs!! What I’m referring to is when: by virtue of consuming a person’s content alone – there’s a sense of familiarity that builds up. And that can lead to what my people call “see finish”.
It’s from this false sense of familiarity that some people gain the effrontery to think they can DM someone that they have no prior relationship with – to ask very private questions – with an insane amount of entitlement. Or, they go right off with the entitlement and come with “I expect you to…” – sorry? Who are you to me again? Where do we know ourselves that I should care for your expectations?
In the words of a great man, let’s not attract [pronounced: attlact] curses to ourselves.
Know your place and know it well. Don’t get carried away with what you interpret as access when it’s really just pictures/videos from snapshot moments that has been decided to be shared with the public, not particularly with you.
Food for thought? I think yes.
Till next time,
Dr. ETP xo
