I’m by nature a pretty cynical person. Yeah, I know that that’s not necessarily the greatest personality trait to admit to, but it’s kind of true. Thoughts go through my mind all the time whenever I see certain things, and it’s often times a mental scale being weighed on whether or not I should say them, or express them on social media. I thought about it today, and if I had to place a number on the thoughts that I don’t say, I’d would probably venture something like 85-90% of thoughts that might come off as cynically skeptical do not make it through the pipes and out of my mouth or typed by my fingers.
As a sample, here’s a thought I had that I’ll share on my brog because only six people read it, but wouldn’t share on social media, because that would paint me publicly as a curmudgeon:
Nobody who’s already been to a prior Comic Con actually envies those who are going for the present one.
This is something I thought about in response to the number of people I see on Facebook who are boasting about their travels to beautiful San Diego for this year’s Comic Con, or proclaiming their envy, wishes or desires to also be attending.
Naturally, I use an umbrella pronoun like “nobody,” when I really am referring to solely myself, and assuming that there are plenty of like-minded people who have also been to a Comic Con in the past, and feel similarly. But the thing is that I don’t envy anyone who’s going for the first time; sure, I hope that they have a great time, meet a lot of people, pick up a lot of swag, dine at many of the great eateries in San Diego, but not for one second do I envy anyone who has to stand in numerous lines of literal thousands, be shoulder-to-shoulder with 175,000 other people, crammed into hotels, hallways, sidewalks and restaurants for four days.
Hypocritically, I was so excited about Comic Con two years ago, that I made a litany of passive-aggressive humble boasts about how I was getting to go to San Diego, how much I loved Richard Walker’s, and so forth. I wonder if there were people who had been to prior Comic Cons that thought similarly to how I feel now, about how much of a schmuck I’d feel like when I’m standing in line for what’s advertised as “Comic Con Exclusives” that will ultimately be on the shelves of Hot Topic by October?
Comic Con was cool and something I’m glad I experienced, but it’s not something that I really feel like I’d be missing if I never went again.
But anyway, that’s an example of a cynical thought that goes through my head from time to time, but I would typically not share over social media. Perhaps a longer time ago, I might’ve, but then I probably would’ve grown sad when I realized that people would glaze over the things I had to say, because I would be one, posting too fucking often, and two, everything would sound really cynical and I’d most certainly be painted as a curmudgeon, contrarian asshole.
I thought about it, and I guess the phrase that formulated in my head is that I’ve (thankfully) developed something of a social media discretion towards what I post on social media.
Sure, I think a lot of things that would sound pretty droll and cynical, but frankly, I think a lot of people all over the world, with less social media discretion than I do, already fill up the internet with all sorts of droll and cynical, without me. So, often times, very many often times, I simply choose to not verbalize my cynical thoughts, especially in written online text, where once it’s on the internet, it’s on the internet forever, in some capacity.
It’s like, I think about the earliest stages of the internet, through like Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online, and how the internet was touted as this great learning resource that was going to revolutionize the world. Sure, the internet has made tremendous strides, but aside from all the obvious jokes, it’s become where we get pretty much all of our news now. And it took very little time at all for the internet to adopt all the same strategies and adages learned from the printed news disciplines:
- If it bleeds, it leads
- Controversy creates cash
- Misery = drama, and drama = views
And so forth.
The internet by itself provides the rest of the world with way more cynical than anyone truly really needs in their lives, so frankly I don’t see much reason to add to it with (too much) of my own cynical social commentary.
So 85-90% of the time, I don’t vet the cynical thoughts that swirl around in my head at any given time, but rather, I like to think that the things I post on like Facebook are lame attempts to be funny, something engaging to see what other peoples’ preferences are, or sharing things that genuinely make me feel good or that I think are really worth sharing.
I’m telling myself right now that using social media discretion is a sign of growing up in a way, or that I’m way ahead of the curve or something, but let’s be real here, it’s probably me just catching up to those that are way more courteous than I am, and that I’m becoming slightly more socially acceptable to a larger median.
