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Circular Happiness and Social Media
Affirmation does not equal meaningful joy
This will be a short one (uh huh.. right..). How many times have you seen a friend online who posts something on social media that you know is just for the “likes”? You know the kind of friend, the one that is nothing but sunshine and lollipops digitally. Then it ends abruptly when they have to enter the real world.
We all have fiends like this. You know them outside of their online personas. When they talk to you they are miserable or often complaining. Then out of the blue, there they are posting a pic of themselves holding onto some trinket and tagging it “#livingmybestlifeever!!” or some other BS like that.
That’s all well and good if you didn’t just lose the last 4 hours of your life listening to them grumbling about their spouse, job, house, car, weather, kids, etc... It’s difficult to identify the so called “best life ever” while enduring the sob/bitch fest.
Short cuts to happiness don’t work.
There is an opinion that states “if you act happy you’ll be happy”. It’s not much different than “Fake it till you make it”. I am in no way condemning any efforts to increase joy, but as a mechanically minded person, I have a knack for looking deeper at problems. I seek the root causes.
