Online or offline?
Currently life has been practically online, with amenities and relationships, both professional and personal, happening in real time and with great intensity. You pay your bills through the bank's app, buy products and services on your cell phone and schedule your appointments via links and websites.
But have your main relationships gained space online or are they still in the traditional format? Do you like meeting people and looking them in the eye or are you satisfied with the chat apps? Have you ever stopped to think about how we are getting used to 100% online contact and not in person? And the worst: we like it and even prefer it! When someone calls us, that “strangeness” is in the air, who still calls in the traditional way in 2020?
When I say “we”, I speak for the collective, for most people and their current habits. Think about it: how many people do you still call? Pick up your phone and dial. For your parents, wife and brother. The rest you don't even remember the number, in fact if you run out of your cell phone, you won't remember almost any number! We even forget passwords, after all the cell phone and its smart lock store all our information leaving us accommodated and out of memory.
Have you called any cable or telephone companies in the past few months? How long did it take to talk to a real person? Chatbots ask us questions, forward calls, receive commands. And when it suits us, it's wonderful, as it can solve our problems in seconds. When not, it is that reality check of how we are living today, we feel the need for someone to assist us, solve our problems by talking.
In the end, we end up in need, needing human contact, and when we realize we are telling our most intimate things to the colleague at the gym or to the parents who sit next to us in our children's weekly activities. And we still think that everything is normal. The great truth is that we adapt, we change, we get used to our new online reality, connected, digital. But somehow we relate offline, as it is a human need. We need to communicate, exchange human warmth, kiss someone! If online contact were at least satisfactory, we would not be mentally ill with the excessive use of social networks, deluding ourselves with posts and believing (and suffering) with the content we access.
So is the fault of the internet and social networks or the human being who is free to create his perfect life in the feeds or still believe that online life is perfect? It is easier to place the blame on the internet, but in the end the people who manipulate it are us! We created social competition, we who live connected behind relevant content (or not), we who are deluded by all of this. Social exposure has increasingly become a social problem, we barely recognize people without their filters on the street! The reflection here is on the correct use of the amenities of the online world, the positive part of technology. The human being has been divided into two versions: the exhibitionist and the spectator. Where do you stand?
But have your main relationships gained space online or are they still in the traditional format? Do you like meeting people and looking them in the eye or are you satisfied with the chat apps? Have you ever stopped to think about how we are getting used to 100% online contact and not in person? And the worst: we like it and even prefer it! When someone calls us, that “strangeness” is in the air, who still calls in the traditional way in 2020?
When I say “we”, I speak for the collective, for most people and their current habits. Think about it: how many people do you still call? Pick up your phone and dial. For your parents, wife and brother. The rest you don't even remember the number, in fact if you run out of your cell phone, you won't remember almost any number! We even forget passwords, after all the cell phone and its smart lock store all our information leaving us accommodated and out of memory.
Have you called any cable or telephone companies in the past few months? How long did it take to talk to a real person? Chatbots ask us questions, forward calls, receive commands. And when it suits us, it's wonderful, as it can solve our problems in seconds. When not, it is that reality check of how we are living today, we feel the need for someone to assist us, solve our problems by talking.
In the end, we end up in need, needing human contact, and when we realize we are telling our most intimate things to the colleague at the gym or to the parents who sit next to us in our children's weekly activities. And we still think that everything is normal. The great truth is that we adapt, we change, we get used to our new online reality, connected, digital. But somehow we relate offline, as it is a human need. We need to communicate, exchange human warmth, kiss someone! If online contact were at least satisfactory, we would not be mentally ill with the excessive use of social networks, deluding ourselves with posts and believing (and suffering) with the content we access.
So is the fault of the internet and social networks or the human being who is free to create his perfect life in the feeds or still believe that online life is perfect? It is easier to place the blame on the internet, but in the end the people who manipulate it are us! We created social competition, we who live connected behind relevant content (or not), we who are deluded by all of this. Social exposure has increasingly become a social problem, we barely recognize people without their filters on the street! The reflection here is on the correct use of the amenities of the online world, the positive part of technology. The human being has been divided into two versions: the exhibitionist and the spectator. Where do you stand?
Author : Mariana Goulart
Posted in: 10/19/2020
Last modified: 10/18/2020
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