Snapshot Community

With social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, among many more, we have created a community of snapshots, which reveals what the user wants about their life. People are living their lives vicariously through their various online personas. I'm not talking about people who are creating fake usernames, although they exist too, but rather people who are embellishing their life narrative through social media.

When I got the idea to write on this subject, I just happened to listen to a morning radio show that was talking about this very idea (not exactly, but the subject at hand).  There was a young lady, who I am assuming is semi-famous that was complaining about her life. She said, "I just don't enjoy my life", and "I'm just existing".

Those statements were followed up by one of the radio hosts that said, "judging by your Facebook you seem to have an amazing life."

Those statements are the synopsis, or rather the totality of the problem existing within social media.

There are a variety of social media users. There is the depressed person who never seems happy. There is the happy person who never seems to have any issues. There is the overly successive person. The person who only promotes personal agendas, i.e. business, real-estate, etc.

Here's the real problem. People believe that they know someone simply because they follow them on social media. They believe they have a sense of the person's character, their family, their business, their romantic life--or lack thereof. Social media may be a community, however, it is largely a faux-community.

There simply isn't enough intimacy for there to be a real community, its simply not tangible enough to be real. Real community won't allow you to delete the person that has wounded you, betrayed you, lied to you. Real community requires you to deal with the real issues that are ever-present. Real community requires people to get to know the real you; the good, the bad, the ugly, the pain, the betrayal, the suffering, the beauty, and not simply the things that you want them to know about you.

Real community is a real family, and real families have real problems. As a general rule, no one gets into enormous battles with a total stranger. Why? Total strangers are incapable of wounding you the way a family member can, will, and do on a semi-regular basis.

True community is not a selfie showing the world how wonderful, or how horrible your life is. True community is a home video with the kids shaving the dog, and spray painting the priceless family heirloom; it requires repentance, and therefore forgiveness.  True community requires a deep commitment to love one another. True community is a true family.