The End of Unsustainable Picture-Perfection on SNS

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”
― Socrates

I quit Facebook. I still sometimes use Instagram, but I will probably deactivate both of them soon.

The reason? It’s obvious, and probably you can guess what is. Yeah, right. It’s simply toxic. That picture-perfection they post on the Facebook wall. That edited smile makes us think we’re the only ones who are struggling while everyone else is doing just fine.

And the reality is that it’s not the case AT ALL. They are also depressed and have no or limited ability to cope with disappointment and stress just like you and me. Sometimes, it’s important to share our setbacks, not just triumphs. But that’s something I barely see in the sea of that picture-perfection. And do you really think it’s a morally sustainable approach in the age of global uncertainty?

When it comes to myself, I don’t feel any particular need to engage myself with social media that once dominated my online interactions with my both close and distant friends. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, itself is already turning back against its outdated social media, channeling its resources to Metaverse instead (that’s also a little questionable approach, though).

I used to share almost everything on Facebook. What I ate, whom I hangout out with, whom I dated, where I traveled to, what I achieved, and how I felt at the moment. Social media once was the world to me as well as a digital gateway to my international community.

But my last year’s covid infection and the loss of my father changed me forever, and it changed how I interact with the Internet.

They don’t give a damn

The Facebook wall was the same as before. But the world was not the same place after what I’ve been through the last summer when I lost my father and I myself have got covid, struggling to find some hope.

Simply put, they didn’t give a damn about me at all. They were still busy shaping their picture-perfection on Facebook. I know, I know – I’m not the center of the universe. I, however, am quite opinionated about our world and want to point out how fragile our world is and how fake they can be.

You see, the whole world is now acting as if covid were over, and they believe we all can again enjoy sorta normal life. But really? Unstoppable global Infractions, the Ukraine war, the everlasting covid pandemic, the monkeypox outbreak, and climate change. Our globalized golden age which we enjoyed until the end of 2019 since the end of WW2 is maybe coming to its closure.

Due to the financial and natural resource shortages that are happening elsewhere in our world halting technological innovations, we may even face an unprecedented level of world hunger. In the worst-case scenario, a country like Japan, whose food-self-sufficiency rate is less than 40%, could face a dangerous level of poverty and starvation. And it could happen as early as next year. But who knows? Hope I’m wrong.

But still, when I open the Facebook wall once in a while, my “friends” still keep sharing their picture-perfect reality that no one gives a damn. So, let me echo the same question I asked you at the beginning of this post. Do you really think social media picture-perfectionism is morally sustainable in the age of global uncertainty?

Time to reaccess my friendships

Ever since what happened to me last summer, I’ve been reaccessing not only my lifestyle but also my friendships. I deleted dozens of unnecessary/toxic friends from Facebook, and I’m reaching the point where I need to channel my focus on things and people that really matter to me.

In the process of my personal elimination of the unnecessary, I became selective, judgemental, and critical of those who don’t align with my views in terms of politics, science, and religion (I’m not religious at all). And the notion fuels my aforementioned question about picture-perfection sustainability. Do I really need to please everyone? Why do I need to gain everyone’s attention? Why do I need to pretend as if I were okay despite the fact that the world we’re living in today is apparently not OK? I believe that picture-perfection is not a sustainable choice to interact with our friends, because it might be a matter of time before all of us fully realize the undeniable fact that it was designed for the pre-covid golden age and is becoming a thing of the past.

Regain control

Nowadays, my primary messaging app is Signal where I’m currently connected to four of my closest friends. And I use LINE as another messaging app to communicate with my other friends and family members, but I will probably ditch it in the near future since I don’t fully trust the app for a similar reason to Facebook and Instagram. The reason why I chose Signal is mainly because of its heavy encryption thanks to the open-sourced Signal protocol. Also, I just realized it’s way better for me to interact with my friends individually instead of Facebook-style news feeds.

Not only did I switch my main messaging app from a big-tech company’s tech universe to privacy-focused ones, but also I’m fully shifting my main cloud storage from Dropbox/Google Drive to my home Linux server powered by Ubuntu, embracing the power of open-source. There are a lot of benefits to fully engaging myself with the Linux server instead of corporate-built services. For one, not only am I able to save lots of money by building my own cloud platform, but also I was able to reskill and upskill my Linux knowledge as a possible server administrator. And I believe this is a sustainable option to get through the age of uncertainty instead of posting my-life-is-perfect photos on social media, isn’t it?

It’s your turn

So what did you think about it? And please keep in mind that I could be wrong, so take what I’ve written above with a grain of salt. I just wanted to share my views with you all. Hope you’re doing just fine. Take care!