Today I want to talk to you about how we can built better relationships by getting offine inspired by that quote or the remastered version of the quote
Now we all know some of the common pitfalls of being constantly connected we take our phones out the dinner table. We text instead of calling each other. We fact check in the middle of conversations and still. We all know that we should stop doing it. We complain about hoe relationships today are deteriorating and we talked and we talked but we still do it and I’m no exception but the funny thing is I happen to be somebody that talks about this in my day today with a lot of people but I’m still the main perpetrator I take my phone at the dinner table and I’m always sending my last e-mail right before I have to meet somebody today.
I want to explain a little bit of my hypocrisy why I’m so attached to technology and it’s because staying connected to the internet allows me to satisfied three really big addictions that I have and I think a lot of a share the first is to stimulation seconds to validation and and the third is to control now. Perhaps I would be helpful if I shared a little bit about how I spend my days I spend a lot of time in café. I do all my work on a computer and even though I’m surrounded the people I’m quite alone and sometimes alone. This does get to me and when it gets to me I’ll go on facebook and the first thing I’ll do is I’ll be thinking about how I have no notifications. There‘s no red badge in the top right. So the first thing I’ll do is I’ll go to my profile pictures and all select an old one and make it new again and I selected make profile picture on facebook says hey I’m get this used to be your profile picture are you sure you want to make it your profile picture again and I say yes facebook.
That’s exactly what I like to do because I want to make sure that people know I still exists and I need them to let me know that they know and they do that by clicking the like button but occasionally I share a moment that’s not out of loneliness but rather because I’m actually trying to share a part of me maybe it’s a picture of us in the living room but the picture isn’t perfectly edited it’s not retouch the lighting is a little off and it wasn’t taken with and SLR camera was taken with an iphone it’s not the best picture but the issue is that picture won’t get the same number of lights that profile picture because the profile picture is so meticulously crafted and what happens when it gets 0 lights you kind of feel like a guy sticking your hand up for a high fire and then nobody’s actually there to reciprocate it so you’ll just put your hand in your hair like it never even happened but that’s basically what I have no social media you pretend like these pictures don’t actually exist these moments never actually happened they don’t matter because nobody said they mattered and maybe they did to you but then they stopped mattering to you because that’s the way feedback works when the people tell you that what are you doing is awesome you’ll do more that because you feel good about it and when people don’t like anything that you have to post then you stop doing those things that they’re not liking because well why are you posting in the first place but it’s not just posting it to are you doing it in the first place are you been living due to do the things that are going to get validation and it’s problematic because slowly but surely for me at least I become the person the internet wants me to be so instead of going to parties because I’m actually enjoying them.
I’ll go to the ones where I feel alienated because that’s where the best pictures are taken and instead of being honest when I don’t know something I’ll actually have to read the article and pretend like I actually know what I’m talking about so I can post a facebook status about this thing that’s happening in the world today and I’ll post an ALS ice bucket challenge just because well everyone else is doing it and I don’t want to be left out it’s a struggle because you forget who you actually are you know we all want to be this individual but it doesn’t actually happen
We’re going back to my day. Today I go the café and I get a little bored. I’ve gotten bored of the validation. I’ve got my 15-20 likes and I’ll go to another café and get on my bike and I live in San Francisco. So I’ll ride my bike across San Francisco to a new café. I’ll have my ear buds on and hit a red light and the light the walking thing will tell me that I have 16 seconds before the light tuens green. So the first thing I do is I take my phone out and I go on facebook and I scroll