Yes words are cheap. It don’t cost much to say, “I care” or “I’m sorry” or “I love you“. You don’t have to pay to say these sorts of things. It is totally free! And somebody is gonna say ‘obviously’. Well, tough! I’ll say the obvious. I was going to write this blog as ‘What is Love?’ But thinking about it, I soon came to a realisation that very few people care about what it means. It is a new era where words can mean anything people want them to mean. So I deviated completely from doing an in-depth analysis.
New era
We are now in a new era – the Facebook era. In this new world everybody is pretty, good, fantastic, brilliant, happy etc. It is all smiles and celebration. The fat and ugly become pretty and ‘loveleee‘ etc. ‘Everybody’ has their 2 seconds of fame for just being noticed. Of course I’m not talking just about Facebook but the ‘new media’ on the net where ‘everybody’ can showcase – whatever they like.
In this new era, words roll off the tongue with ease – and people react with thumbs ups and shouts of ‘Go girl!’ etc. Oh no – you can’t really speak the truth else you’re labelled as ‘horrible’, or being a ‘troll’. So if some hideous obese person posts photos online, you won’t get away with saying “Cover up – please“. Oh – that’s offensive. You’re meant to say ‘Pretteeeee! Go girl!’ – or ‘Love you! xx‘. This is a world where ‘superficial’ is the new ‘depth’ – where minds are controlled by the tide of what’s ‘meant to be’. ‘They‘ decide what you say, whether you mean it or not. And before long you believe the utter rubbish that you say.
Words like ‘love’ have no true depth of meaning any more – and people utter cliché like ‘It is what it is‘. In the new world cliché is the new norm. Everybody is entitled in the new world to define what they mean or feel relative to their own views. So ‘love you’ is howsoever you conceptualise it. No longer do the words ‘love you‘ have some special depth. Once you’ve said the words, others are meant to react with positivity – else your name is Scrooge, or Kill Joy or Hyper-philosophical. So talking about how social media has shaped attitudes, social interactions and values – gets you no audience. Like ‘who cares’? No one. Obviously I am aware that there are a few exceptional people.
The new era is fast moving. People surfing away madly on the net, don’t have time to think or consider too deeply what they’re saying. I reckon that only about 10% of people surfing this post would have gotten this far. More than 140 characters (of text obviously) is too long – as per where Twitter took the world. Did I say it is still 140 characters? I did not! But you go on Twitter, you had better be very brief and grab attention with something sensational.
Love?
And what is this ‘love’ thing? Is it only on social media? Obviously not. But the point I make is that collections of words containing ‘love’ mean much to the hit-count junkie. The spill over into real life is often not seen or thought about. Thought? What’s that? Sorry – people don’t think too much any more. Who has time to think, in a world ruled by sensation.
I had thought of digging deep on the meaning of the word ‘love’, then I realised that nobody actually cares about digging deep into ‘meanings’ any more. Digging deep gets you labelled as ‘Asperger’s’ these days.
What does love mean? That’s for a different blog post.
Disclaimer & Guidance
The reading of posts on this blog is subject to the Terms & Conditions. Unpalatable truths and personal experiences may be told. Nothing posted on this blog is directed at any identified person. On occasions individuals are quoted anonymously. That does not mean that they have been identified to the world. Should any person or organisation reading this blog find something that makes them feel or know that they are being referred to – any such perceived identification does not mean ‘identified to the world’. ‘Stupid‘ is an impish figment of my imagination who occasionally is allowed to pop up – and does not represent any known individual, individuals or groups. The treatment of ‘Stupid‘ is not representative of the way people are treated in real life. Adverse inferences made are dismissed in advance.
