In a world where everyone thinks they know you

There was a moment in time when I considered all people, without discrimination, to be intelligent. Perhaps not of the same level of intelligence, but generally above average. And if by chance I would meet someone who wasn’t a quick thinker, I wouldn’t rush to conclusions – besides who am I to judge, right?

Being young and naive, I strongly believed that all people walking on this planet ought to be good at something; a lesson at school or a hobby that they are -more than- pretty adequate at or even an activity, let’s say, in which they can display the magnitude of their brain. As always, life managed to prove me wrong, forever since I entered adulthood, I came to realize that stupid people do exist and, as a matter of a fact, they increase day by day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m trying to pretend to be smarter or anything but it is the unbearable truth.

And when I make references to idiots, I’m not pounding down on people who do not do well in Maths or do not get straight A’s on their report cards. I’m pointing to all those who, despite having a brain, utterly fail to use it – not necessarily because they do not know how to, but disappointingly, because they are too lazy to even elaborate on what they are served up on a golden platter. It is a digitally visual world that we currently live in, but few are those who take the time to expand on the meaning behind all these posts that we are bombastically exposed to every single day. Instead, the majority just accepts and adapts the data as it is — and spreads it around as if it is a line from the holy bible.

Pretending to be listening to the endless drama of my best friend, I lay my back on the chair and begin examining the people around me. Everybody seems so withdrawn into their own little worlds, always in the company of their phones. Staring down at bright screens and scrolling down with their index finger, I observe with a frowning look that the young people around me might as well share more smiles with the devices in their hands rather with the people who accompany them and are sitting at the same table, with no signs of deep conversation being shown. Picking a random picture of a pair of shoes in order to satisfy my friend’s need for attention while doing all this multitasking inside my head, it hit me really hard.

Have people always been so stupid and reckless? I’m afraid so. It’s just that back in the day, people would not have had this wide variety of media in their possession as to expose themselves so often — and within the very same day. If something humiliating was to occur to someone, it would be spread from mouth to mouth and be gone with the wind within a few days. How about nowadays though? We have become victims of our own thirst for attention by constantly giving report to the whole world of what we are doing. Simultaneously, each and every one of us has turned into a resource for the rest of those idiots to gossip, and come up with quick judgments, about. Even if, most times, we hardly know the other person.

Because if you haven’t taken it seriously so far, the amount of people who actually bother to react to your posts is the possible minimum, compared to the number of people who stalk you deliberately yet are invisible. With this obsession over the number of likes that a single post might concentrate hovering around, I’d have to ask – have you ever considered the number of people who like you in real life?

You know, the ones that you can genuinely communicate with in person and without having to look down at your phone screen while you are together. The ones who don’t give a shit whether you are popular online and their greatest wonder is to know how your day went down. Those who know the real story behind that picture-perfect profile of yours and to them it does not matter if you seem like a narcissist or not to others, they are aware that it just so happens that you like your damn face and that’s why you keep taking pictures of it.

And here comes the categorization of the people in your life – between the large group of people who know you –or pretend to know you– and the minor group of the ones who understand you. Lucky are those who have at least one human being by their side, acting selflessly, while showing compassion and taking precious time out of their self-absorbed life to even try to understand one’s way of thinking. Taking a walk in their shoes, if you will.

In a world where, one way or another, we have all become acquaintances through social media, it is awfully easy to come to a conclusion regarding a person. Based on what someone posts, you can in fact build a whole image concerning their personality which, most of the time, is completely false.

Why, you ask?

Because we’ve reached a point where people care more about going out in order to take a good picture and prove to the world that they are having fun when instead, they are just sitting opposite each other muted. It is both depressing as well as disappointing watching youth lack critical thinking and being overloaded by the need of show off. But then again what do you expect from a world of idiots; posting takes less time than actual critical thinking. You were given a brain for a reason, you ought to fucking use it sometimes people — I guarantee you it helps.