Am I A Better Person Than I Was Last Year?

2022.

I’m pretty sure we all thought we’d be flying around in our cars and skating on air like Marty McFly by now. I, for one, hadn’t given much thought to what life would be like when I was middle-aged. I can tell you this: I certainly didn’t think we would be swinging into the third year of pure insanity, in a world full of insensitive people I don’t even recognize anymore. This includes me.

Today’s world is a far cry from the one we lived in twenty years ago, or even ten. Our daily social lives are now rooted in our beloved phones, our self-esteem dictated by likes and comments, and our private lives are now painfully made public by none other than us.

We started off to be more connected but instead put a billion miles of fiber optics between ourselves and the people who live in our homes alongside us.

We started off to use these advances in technology to improve our lives and simplify but instead have created needlessly complicated apps and routines and schedules that make relaxation impossible.

We started off on social platforms as friends, sharing recipes and sweet motivational sayings and our own life’s foibles and successes and ended up in a contest to say what we think of as clever quips or biting criticisms, shielded by screens we think of as bulletproof. What bravery we have found in the unforeseen new ability to attack friends and strangers without real risk!

We started off having unprecedented access to the sharing of information and ended up sharing only the soundbites that suit our own beliefs and agendas.

Somewhere in between being elated at being able to take photos on the fly and call Grandma Marie anytime we want (and not just in the past five years, blamers, this weirdness is rooted further back than a certain orange president being elected), people got mean… and then they got meaner.

I wish I could say I am immune to all this. It would be good to sit back on my own, self-built high horse and look down my nose at all the rest of the world gone woefully wrong. I cannot. I’ve gotten meaner too.

No matter how hard I try, I feel compelled to make comments on people’s Facebook posts and Tweets because I think they are wrong or stupid. I feel the need to mention my unerringly astute but completely rude and useless observations about a pic someone has posted. I feel the need to correct spelling and punctuation and verbiage when I can easily ignore the mistakes and instead read the message. I also suffer from illusions of grandeur in a way; I somehow think I am some sort of social media savior, tasked with the arduous job of correcting memes and posts with the “facts.”

Why?

Because I, too, have become a member of the same armchair judge and jury everyone else has. I’ve accepted the mantle of vigilante internet justice and become a one-man mob with my grammar noose, or a ‘net ninja stalking around the web searching for something that offends or galvanizes me. Am I so bored, is my life so empty that I must seek out stimulation and create conflict on platforms I have absolutely zero stake in?

Yep. And it’s bothering me.

There is a new year coming in a few hours, and because I would prefer I not become even more cruel and less mindful of my own actions, I am making a personal New Year’s Resolution.

I always make resolutions, and I found the best way to ensure I accomplish even a few is to make them very specific. I divide them into categories such as “financial,” “career,” “physical/health,” “creativity,” and “personal.” It is the latter category I will file this resolution under. I reserve this for the things I feel are personality or behavioral flaws which I’d like to work on extinguishing as well as traits I’d like to develop further.

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“It is my goal to stop wasting time being an asshole on the internet. I have more important things to do.”

~ Me, On the Cusp of 2022

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HERE IS HOW I INTEND TO ACCOMPLISH THIS LOFTY GOAL:

1.) Specifically, I am resolving to use social media during the day for the purposes of promoting my other goals- the financial, career and creativity goals- and not to distract or entertain myself. I tell myself I will just pop in for a look at the local Marketplace on Facebook, and next thing I know I’m reading memes and watching reels and wasting my life doing absolutely nothing. Knowing my own self, that is a slippery slope. I have to keep a personal profile in order to maintain my author pages, but there is nothing saying I have to stop off anywhere else, right?

2.) I will limit my time in the evening to thirty minutes for personal posting and response to others’ posts. I will refrain during that timeframe from responding to political, media, or hot-button issues that I may care about, nor will I share my own political, religious or philosophical opinions in any way but positive. I’m not saying there is no room for pointing out the negative or contesting something one sees, but I am not fooling myself into thinking my comments will in any way impact or change anything. They won’t. If social media really could change things for the better, it would have by now.

3.) If someone responds to something I have posted in a derogatory or disparaging way, I will simply delete their comment and scroll away. A sort of kick some dirt over that shit and move forward move, for lack of a more urbane phrase.

4.) I will make an effort to share more helpful information than personal life information. If that means self-help posts, recipes and inspirational memes featuring kittens and fields of wheat, so be it. I’m good with that!

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Regardless of the role you’ve chosen on social media (and I am certain there are many who have been using Facebook and Twitter and Insta from day one and yet did not fall prey to the habits I’ve done, but many of you have), I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on your contribution to the platforms you utilize, and honestly evaluate your role and contribution to those communities. What is your motivation for being there? Do you see them as adding value to your own life, and are you adding value to the lives of others by being there?

If you are in the same boat as me, I urge you to make some real goals to change it. After all, if social media, and my Facebook in particular, is to be believed… this is your year. Let’s make it a good one.

©dsericksonwrites.com