Authenticity is out.

A few years ago I deactivated all my social media accounts (except for Whatsapp which I use to keep up with family and friends scattered all over the world). I closed out Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram from my computer, my phone and any other device I had previously logged-in and left it like that for more than a year. It didn’t interest me anymore. When I finally logged in again, I had lost the routine that kept it current in my life so I never checked it and didn’t post anything. Another year went by. I lost track of most people during that time. But I was also managing a major life event so I couldn’t remember and didn’t care to post or comment or like anything anywhere. 

Now I’m back on these platforms and I noticed that everyone is acting now. A while back, there were clips of honest reactions to proposals, to minor disasters (like a gender reveal gone wrong), to mishaps and mistakes. Now everything is a show, everyone is acting all the time. There are no honest reactions anymore – or at least, they are hard to find these days. 

I recently watched a reel on instagram of some friends who supposedly planned a hangout for their friend who didn’t know it would be a surprise proposal from her fiance. In the reel, she is all dressed up, she has three people filming just her and she then had to cut an obviously fake cake just to then be told to flip the cake/bun and … would you look at that, there is a ring box in the hollow cake/bun. Then we are told that she was “shocked”…the caption said “look at her expression”. What I saw was a woman trying to act surprised. She knew. She knew the moment they started filming that she had to act surprised. She unfortunately didn’t pull it off. I skipped the reel and closed out the app.