unplugged

"You are not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis." 

(in Fight Club)

You are now your number of friends, your relationship status, how many people post on your wall or like your tagged photos. you're how many people that are engaged to other people pop up on your chat screen and tell you how great you are.

like. unlike. dislike.

it's american high-school all over again. who's popular, who's not. who's liked, who's ignored.

logging in 5 times a week. a day. or hour. 

we check the postings: look-at-me-i'm-so-funny-and-/-or-interesting-i'm-doing-boring-things-all-the-time-so-i-have-a-lot-of-time-to-put-stuff-online. 

we like them - maybe they'll like us too, maybe they'll even comment or share our posts.

tagging and chatting.

spending hours talking to strangers, engaging in meaningless conversations that make us forget to call and meet our friends. we're never really together, but we're never really alone. hiding behind the screen, we have conversations we never would have otherwise. particularly with these people (do we even remember meeting them?). 

suddenly, we get late everywhere. we have no time - we wasted it all going through the photos of that one person we only met once at a party but looks really good at that photo at the beach. with some people.

log out (?)

if we stop looking, will other people's lives change dramatically? will they not if we do?
this voyeurism brings nothing but stress. we can't, however, let go of the need of knowing. knowing nothing, going nowhere...

...can't we?