We post the happiest pictures on Instagram: everyone smiling, at interesting places, having a great time. We publish wonderful sentiments about people, events and occasions on Facebook. We Tweet about rainbows and unicorns in 280 characters or less. We are all loving life . . . and each other. At least that’s what we want our followers to believe.
We collect “friends” like my nephew collected baseball cards when he was younger, fervently and haphazardly, people who barely know us in real life. For if they did they would know we really weren’t thrilled to be at that baby shower, even though we paparazzied and published every onesie and breast pump (one for every room, car and travel!), captioning them with words as sweet as the smell of baby powder. There are birthday wishes sent to and received from virtual visitors who only know it’s our special day because our sister posted a picture of us on our 12th birthday, all pimples, pigtails, braces and awkwardness. We could eradicate world hunger if these were pennies — salutations exchanged between two people, each not knowing how the other really feels about them or anything, except what we feed the world in our feeds. Comments are made in response to the picture posted of Kitty by people we think so little of in real life we wouldn’t let them change Kitty’s litter box. But in the screen world, Kitty gets a like or an “Awwww” and it fills an empty void inside, the need for numbers outweighing the fact that we’ve told the people outside the cyber world that this one has really packed on the pounds or that one is sneaky at work. But “So sorry to hear your grandmother died.”
We hear so much talk of trolls, cowards who hide behind their anonymous screen names, posting nasty things about others without fear of retribution. It is modern-day bullying and it is rampant and disgusting. But those who pose as friends online then disparage in real life are no better. If anything, they are worse. They are not our friends. They are the two-faced emoji, not found on our keyboards but walking amongst us everyday.
