Clones under a burkha

Once the process of posting a picture on Instagram starts, the assembly is intricately managed. It starts with choosing the best picture out of loads of trials taken. Then the bucket moves into the judgement-coated edits and perfection-in-the-making workshop. Following this comes to the stage of adding a caption that mustn’t seem very off-note, nor should it be too philosophical. Finally, it is posted, and then the part where there is so much dopamine in watching all the likes, the very engaging comments and after two days, poof! it's all gone, down the mind, down the profile and down the endless scroll.

Well, it is not to say that everyone follows this cautious an approach towards posting something online. Many also follow the 'impulsive posting' behaviour, see something nice, sure all of your friends must know about it, did something fun, definitely that must be there for the rest to see. It is to consciously or unconsciously give your associates an outlook, update and picture (literally and figuratively) of your life.

But there is also this set of people who remain totally incognito out there, seeing everything but not saying anything. I personally think they are the scariest category. There are also a number of other types of such social media patterns that people adopt or just grow in.

That apart, I think there is something bigger to this. Something that we don’t see as clearly on our phones, but something that we must see through them.

Some great person asked who we are when no one is watching us. If that old man would be here now, maybe he would have asked who we are behind the screen. Nevertheless, I am sure he would have made a 'post' to say that with #inspiration #selfhelp #whoareyou and so on 'tagged' to it. (reach requirements)

Many of us are very different people on the internet and away from it. I can cry, weep my eyes out and yet post a story about how cute a cat looks or how funny it felt to see a man slip and fall while trying to catch a ball or even better, one hand up, another beside it, moving them left to right on a piece of catchy music called a trend. We can do that with absolutely no pain (virtually). But what picture do we put out the rest, that we are the always happy, sunshine-filled, no pain only gain person. While that might not always be the case in reality. We hide the dark things, the pain, the struggles, the falls and fails, not only because it doesn’t match the ‘aesthetic’ but because we just want to be different people on 'profiles'. We want to be happy, successful and full of fun. It sometimes occurs to me that we could think of such presence as a manifestation board, but sadly, it needs belief and effort towards its materialisation, which here makes the case out of question.

Sometimes there are also those people who come as close to as possible in being themselves, maintaining coherence with who they are anywhere. This is hard to pull off and comes with some other set of problems.

Validation. Yes! Many of us seek validation for what we feel. When we believe something is nice, we need someone to agree, when we believe something is unpleasant, we want someone to agree. We want someone to tell us that we are right, to tell us that we are pretty, that we are amazing, that we are what we feel we are more than what we really might be. This constant desperation for external validation has become one of the reasons for the over-pleasing accounts that we curate, create and nurture over time. When your core self is questioned, this leads to a mask that is worn virtually.

Maybe we have evolved as people. It does indeed feel safe to opine when your identity is a gaudy internet image and a few words, rather, letters strung together into a snappy word called a username. This empowers people to be themselves without being themselves with no fear of judgement or opinionated looks. Such accounts have done wonders across the globe so it is with no power to say that the existence of such accounts is pointless. These accounts have come like a solution, a boon to people wanting to speak up with no identity of their own.

We see that some post carefully, some recklessly, some over post and some never post. All of them being right, valid and a choice not to be questioned.

What we need to question ourselves is that it doesn’t really matter much about how you are two different people on the cloud and on the ground. But what we need to observe and make note of is if such discrepancies are taking a toll on who we want to be from who we are deep within ourselves.

Well, it is not to say I am a boffin. I am definitely not this person on Instagram. But as you see, I am talking about people talking about themselves... online.

Thank you

Sahruday

PS: I asked ChatGPT for a heading for this article, and then I wrote something else.