01

I watched a Japanese variety show "Nino-san" some time ago. The program team followed the daily life of a "severe patient in the circle of friends".

The Japanese girl’s name is Manami Nishigami. She posts selfies, food, and party photos on the popular foreign social platform Instagram every day. She leads an extremely enviable and exquisite life on the social platform.

However, behind these photos is...

Because she has no friends in real life, she can only go to some gorgeously decorated cafes to take pictures of food. According to. In order to create the atmosphere of eating with others in the photo, she always orders two meals by herself.

Even if I hate eating vegetables, because the color of vegetable salad is bright and it looks better in photos, I force myself to order it every time.

In order to get more likes, she often goes to some photo-taking places alone and invites passers-by to take photos with her, pretending to be taking photos with her good friends.

What’s even more frightening is that while she lives a glamorous life on social platforms, her home is as messy as a garbage dump.

It turns out that her sophistication only exists in the circle of friends.

She smiled and told the program team that it would be uncomfortable not to post photos for a day. Moreover, she has been decorating social platforms for too long and has been too involved in the drama. She has become a habit of acting and looks down on those who cannot keep up with her. Therefore, she has no friends in real life.

Do you think she is pathetic? But I can see the shadow of most people in her.

Various social platforms are like a microcosm of society. All kinds of people rack their brains in front of the screen every day, thinking about how to gain comments and likes from others, and create a moment of satisfaction for themselves through external evaluation. .

People who never read books like to post a book cover in their circle of friends, accompanied by a profound text that they may not even understand.

People who don’t like to watch basketball games and don’t know Kobe also followed suit and posted messages on the day of Kobe’s retirement, wishing him well.

I had a reunion with an old classmate I hadn’t seen for a long time. They were speechless and each of them played with their mobile phones in silence. After returning home, they posted a photo of each other with their faces: "Friendship lasts forever."

Moments It seems to have become a parallel world, where everyone is trying their best to perform.

02

The more friends we add, the more often we want to click on the little red dot in the circle of friends to peek into other people’s lives.

If you don’t check Moments for half a day, or if you don’t post a post for a few days, you will feel abandoned by the times, lose your sense of existence, and be forgotten.

There was a time when I was obsessed with deliberately managing my own circle of friends.

I gritted my teeth and spent all my money to go to a sub-fine restaurant with my friends. The price was heart-breakingly high, and the foie gras was so unpalatable that it made me cry. However, I never tired of adding filters to each food photo and posting it on WeChat Moments.

I bought a new set of sports equipment and got a gym membership just so that the girl at the gym’s front desk could take some photos of me sweating on the treadmill. I received countless likes, but I no longer had the interest to continue exercising.

When traveling, every seemingly careless snapshot posted in Moments is selected from hundreds or thousands of photos. Use various beauty software to slim down your face and skin, add carefully selected filters, delete and delete the accompanying text for half an hour, and only send it out after making sure the quality is high enough. Traveling has become a tool for me to show off.

In my circle of friends, I created the image that I was living a good life and full of positive energy, which satisfied my great vanity. However, every time after posting, I was left with nothing but emptiness inside.

We put all our energy into performing, painstakingly manage those dazzling masks, and use performances to win the admiration of others, until those exaggerated and realistic presentations are believed to be true by ourselves, so we work hard and never tire of it.

Sociologist Goffman wrote in the book "Self-Presentation in Everyday Life":

"Life is a drama, society is a big stage, society is As performers, members are eager to create an acceptable image in front of the audience, so everyone strives to perform on the stage of social life, no matter what the specific personal goal is, his interest is always the same. Control the behavior of others, especially the reaction of others to him. ”

We are afraid of seeing the real self behind the mask, the face that looks dull and messy without the beauty software. A room without any refinement, a life that is so lazy and boring.

03

The first episode of the third season of the British drama "Black Mirror" tells such a story:

In the world where the heroine lives, people Everyone uses a social software to rate others. People with high scores enjoy better social evaluation and social resources, while those with low scores cannot find jobs and are isolated like the plague.

Since the scoring system has penetrated into every aspect of life, people are always checking the "moments" to show the side of themselves that they want others to see in order to get higher scores.

Just like the heroine, she ordered a cup of coffee and a cookie, took a photo with a text: "It tastes like heaven" and sent it to "Moments", then she spat out the coffee and cookie.

When you see an annoying neighbor in the elevator, you have to talk to each other with a smile, just to improve each other's scores.

Such a "score-based society" makes everyone more hypocritical and unscrupulous.

The heroine is a girl with an average score of about 4.2. In order to live in a better house, she needs to rise to above 4.5. Therefore, she worked hard just to attend the wedding of her best friend with a high score. If you can give a speech at a wedding, you will definitely get 5-point praise from more high-scoring people.

However, on the way to the wedding, the situation took a turn for the worse. Various encounters caused the heroine to be maliciously graded. In the end, the heroine whose score dropped to a few tenths was imprisoned. After taking off her disguise, she was finally able to release herself and indulge in verbal abuse with her fellow inmates.

The world we live in is actually not much different from the world in the play. Most people are addicted to other people's evaluation of themselves, so they work hard to cater to other people's preferences, deliberately please, create illusions in their circle of friends, and say things that go against their intentions.

We are all human beings kidnapped by social software. How many of us live in the virtual likes of WeChat Moments or Weibo and cannot extricate ourselves.

Have you ever asked yourself, who are you living for?

04

Some people say that a person's happiness often depends on the extent to which he can get rid of his dependence on the outside world.

If you live in the circle of friends and the opinions of others, you may never be able to feel the happiness in reality.

Does your happiness only exist in your circle of friends?

1. Instead of thinking about posting on Moments all the time, feel life well

For those who love life, posting on Moments is to share the excitement of the moment and celebrate the ordinary life. beautiful bits and pieces.

For example, after insisting on fitness for half a year, I finally developed my vest line and saw myself full of possibilities, so I posted a post on Moments to praise my perseverance.

Today’s breakfast is nutritionally balanced and looks good. I sent a message to encourage myself to pay attention to breakfast every day in the future.

These circles of friends record every change and breakthrough of oneself, and are commemorations of the beautiful moments in life.

But some people put the cart before the horse and live in the opinions of others. They travel just to post on Moments, do charity just to post on Moments, and click on things they don’t like at all just to post on Moments. food.

These people keep giving likes to others, only hoping that others' likes can give them a sense of accomplishment and make them look popular.

Once no one pays attention, I fall into deep pain: "I just liked his WeChat Moments yesterday, why didn't he like me today? Did I do something wrong?"

Everything is too much If you are too deliberate, you are not advanced.

When traveling, you might as well put down your mobile phone and enjoy the local scenery, because the current experience is the most precious.

I go to the library once in a while. Instead of showing off by posting on WeChat Moments, I might as well really calm down and read a book to further improve my wisdom.

Instead of thinking about posting on Moments all the time, just enjoy life.

2. Pay attention to yourself, no one will care about you all the time

Today’s Moments have more and more functions, including visible and invisible groups, and “only show recent ones” "Three days of Moments"...

Some people post a Moments and have to worry about who should see it and who should not show it. They are afraid that some people will think that the Moments you post are too high-quality. Low, you are afraid that other people will think you are too pretentious, and after the struggle is over, you will no longer be in the mood to post on Moments.

The sign of a person's maturity is that he understands that 99% of what happens to him has nothing to do with others.

In fact, in the circle of friends, no one can really understand you. You only show the side you want others to see in your circle of friends. Your circle of friends protects you like armor, making you feel safer hiding behind it. But once you leave it, your true self is lonely and empty.

Bi Shumin said: Happiness is a kind of inner stability.

When you start to pay attention to yourself and live seriously, you will find that compared to the likes in the virtual world, your progress every day is more worth looking forward to.