The Toxicity of Social Media: How To Suffer and Come Out Looking Good
You know how people post their foreign vacations and pre-wedding photoshoots on Facebook? We all do. At this point we are all familiar with the phrases 'insta-lie' and 'toxic positivity'. We know that a lot of the cheer isn't real. People only show their triumphs and not their challenges.
Well, I'm here to tell you that isn't the case.
It's not true that people don't show their suffering on social media. They do. However, the tales told on the platform often do not reveal the true ugliness of suffering. It is suffering in the Russian tragedy way--sadness draped in a romantic poeticism to the point where the world of the characters somehow draws you in.
There are three ways I have seen this phenomenon manifest.
1) One is a social media post where someone expresses their negative feelings but the way it is described feels sanitized and romantic. Think somber-looking Instagram photo with very long caption detailing what has caused the suffering in question and how it's now a burden they carry. These posts can get a lot of likes because they claim to be fighting a culture of toxic positivity because at least someone's not pretending to have a perfect life. However, after a while it can start to feel contrived in the same sense cinema can feel contrived. Think about the movies you've seen where there's a sad ending and that's why you might think at first glance that it's more realistic than the cookie cutter all's-well-that-ends-well but there's booming background music to go along with it, making the sadness feel more cathartic and meaningful than it would have felt in real life. This kind of cinema can, in many ways, be more dangerous than the formulaic happiness because at least when you're watching a song and dance routine you know it's just an escape whereas here, it kind of feels like real life so we forget to notice how it's minus the boredom and drudgery and the unendingness of a medium where the credits never roll.
I have also noticed that sometimes people can present their suffering with an air of martyrdom. Look at me quietly carrying this burden. Look how I still manage to smile. Look how I don't pretend to be happy all the time. But this has the same negative impact as the obnoxiously positive posts in the sense that they still manage to portray the person in a flattering light. After struggling with some depression over the past few months the first thing I have learnt is that mine looks nothing like quiet suffering. There have been times when I felt horrible so I made other people feel horrible. I texted my friends in a state of mania. Depression also made me selfish because I didn't really care about others as much; my first priority was to make my own pain go away. I projected a lot, which was made worse by the fact that I was alone in a new foreign city with only my job to fill my mind and the lack of connection was making me overthink other people's motives. I worried my parents. I worried my friends. I worried everybody who cared. It was a toxic loop where I felt bad so I put my loved ones in a state where they'd be scrambling to think how to make me feel better. Nothing would really work which would a) make me feel worse and b) punish my loved ones because they were getting tired and rightfully so. In a lot of ways, I became an emotional terrorist. I was not a martyr. I was not silently bearing my pain with a smile. I was hurt but also very hurtful.
Social media posts almost never show this side of suffering--the part where you unconsciously become the cause of suffering for other people as well. Nothing that makes the poster look unflattering--that's still the golden rule.
2) The second way this phenomenon manifests is in the storytelling. We all know a story when we see one. There's always an arc--a beginning, a middle and an end. Instagram suffering can be like that as well. People write a long paragraph about what happened to them, followed by a long paragraphs about how they picked up the pieces, followed by a long paragraph about how they've achieved some glorious transformation through the process or how they've learnt a valuable lesson or some variation of that.Phrases like 'I'm a survivor' are used (more on that later). Real life almost never has this kind of a neat arc. Things never quite 'end' per se. It's more of a spider's web. Here's an example to illustrate this. My grandparents are survivors of a very bloody Partition. That's their tale of woe. It's brutal. We don't always remember to acknowledge it, but they've suffered more wounds than us social media warriors really even know. But the thing is that never meant that they became transformed by their suffering or tragic heroes or anything like that. They still got bothered by little things, acted petty, were hurt by loved ones even though that pain was smaller in magnitude than their hometown burnt off in riots. Heck, they may have even hurt people with their words and actions sometimes. You know why? Because they are people. They are not 'survivors' or 'refugees' or any other such label with positive connotations. They don't have a story, they have a life.
3) The third one is the 'I'm a survior/fighter/whatever phenomenon' which I will elaborate more here. If I sound bitter on this one, it is because I am. This phenomenon has the same toxicity that motivational speakers sometimes do. It's when a person tells you what happened to them and how they overcame it; a true hero's journey to boot. But not everybody goes through things the same way. What this up-and-at-them attitude does is that on top of the suffering people are already going through, it adds to it by telling them how to suffer. This may be a tasteless example but sometimes families of cancer victims can unintentionally do this. They will paint a picture of their deceased loved as if they were superhuman infallible creatures who fought till their last breath, and in a lot of ways they are right and I understand that it helps to remember your loved ones without the shadow of everything that made them human. When this happens in real life, it is understandable. But social media has made this psychological phenomenon blow up to a point where now there are sometimes impossible standards for how you should be fighting in the face of adversity and nobody is talking about that the same way they are talking about the impossible standards of beauty or success. It can also make communication with loved ones difficult. I mean it's true that people are living on a dollar a day and we know about it from the comforts of our neoliberal, affluent, urban lives because we read stuff on the Huffington Post, but maybe that's not what you should be reminding people when they are going mad looking for an OPT job or going through a breakup or dealing with family issues. Unfortunately many will not understand this until it happens to them.
We've talked enough about toxic positivity. We all know that couple with the fantastic honeymoon fights sometimes. But now, let's put a stop to the toxic inspiration. It's hurting all of us. We just don't know it till we do.
Well, I'm here to tell you that isn't the case.
It's not true that people don't show their suffering on social media. They do. However, the tales told on the platform often do not reveal the true ugliness of suffering. It is suffering in the Russian tragedy way--sadness draped in a romantic poeticism to the point where the world of the characters somehow draws you in.
There are three ways I have seen this phenomenon manifest.
1) One is a social media post where someone expresses their negative feelings but the way it is described feels sanitized and romantic. Think somber-looking Instagram photo with very long caption detailing what has caused the suffering in question and how it's now a burden they carry. These posts can get a lot of likes because they claim to be fighting a culture of toxic positivity because at least someone's not pretending to have a perfect life. However, after a while it can start to feel contrived in the same sense cinema can feel contrived. Think about the movies you've seen where there's a sad ending and that's why you might think at first glance that it's more realistic than the cookie cutter all's-well-that-ends-well but there's booming background music to go along with it, making the sadness feel more cathartic and meaningful than it would have felt in real life. This kind of cinema can, in many ways, be more dangerous than the formulaic happiness because at least when you're watching a song and dance routine you know it's just an escape whereas here, it kind of feels like real life so we forget to notice how it's minus the boredom and drudgery and the unendingness of a medium where the credits never roll.
I have also noticed that sometimes people can present their suffering with an air of martyrdom. Look at me quietly carrying this burden. Look how I still manage to smile. Look how I don't pretend to be happy all the time. But this has the same negative impact as the obnoxiously positive posts in the sense that they still manage to portray the person in a flattering light. After struggling with some depression over the past few months the first thing I have learnt is that mine looks nothing like quiet suffering. There have been times when I felt horrible so I made other people feel horrible. I texted my friends in a state of mania. Depression also made me selfish because I didn't really care about others as much; my first priority was to make my own pain go away. I projected a lot, which was made worse by the fact that I was alone in a new foreign city with only my job to fill my mind and the lack of connection was making me overthink other people's motives. I worried my parents. I worried my friends. I worried everybody who cared. It was a toxic loop where I felt bad so I put my loved ones in a state where they'd be scrambling to think how to make me feel better. Nothing would really work which would a) make me feel worse and b) punish my loved ones because they were getting tired and rightfully so. In a lot of ways, I became an emotional terrorist. I was not a martyr. I was not silently bearing my pain with a smile. I was hurt but also very hurtful.
Social media posts almost never show this side of suffering--the part where you unconsciously become the cause of suffering for other people as well. Nothing that makes the poster look unflattering--that's still the golden rule.
2) The second way this phenomenon manifests is in the storytelling. We all know a story when we see one. There's always an arc--a beginning, a middle and an end. Instagram suffering can be like that as well. People write a long paragraph about what happened to them, followed by a long paragraphs about how they picked up the pieces, followed by a long paragraph about how they've achieved some glorious transformation through the process or how they've learnt a valuable lesson or some variation of that.Phrases like 'I'm a survivor' are used (more on that later). Real life almost never has this kind of a neat arc. Things never quite 'end' per se. It's more of a spider's web. Here's an example to illustrate this. My grandparents are survivors of a very bloody Partition. That's their tale of woe. It's brutal. We don't always remember to acknowledge it, but they've suffered more wounds than us social media warriors really even know. But the thing is that never meant that they became transformed by their suffering or tragic heroes or anything like that. They still got bothered by little things, acted petty, were hurt by loved ones even though that pain was smaller in magnitude than their hometown burnt off in riots. Heck, they may have even hurt people with their words and actions sometimes. You know why? Because they are people. They are not 'survivors' or 'refugees' or any other such label with positive connotations. They don't have a story, they have a life.
3) The third one is the 'I'm a survior/fighter/whatever phenomenon' which I will elaborate more here. If I sound bitter on this one, it is because I am. This phenomenon has the same toxicity that motivational speakers sometimes do. It's when a person tells you what happened to them and how they overcame it; a true hero's journey to boot. But not everybody goes through things the same way. What this up-and-at-them attitude does is that on top of the suffering people are already going through, it adds to it by telling them how to suffer. This may be a tasteless example but sometimes families of cancer victims can unintentionally do this. They will paint a picture of their deceased loved as if they were superhuman infallible creatures who fought till their last breath, and in a lot of ways they are right and I understand that it helps to remember your loved ones without the shadow of everything that made them human. When this happens in real life, it is understandable. But social media has made this psychological phenomenon blow up to a point where now there are sometimes impossible standards for how you should be fighting in the face of adversity and nobody is talking about that the same way they are talking about the impossible standards of beauty or success. It can also make communication with loved ones difficult. I mean it's true that people are living on a dollar a day and we know about it from the comforts of our neoliberal, affluent, urban lives because we read stuff on the Huffington Post, but maybe that's not what you should be reminding people when they are going mad looking for an OPT job or going through a breakup or dealing with family issues. Unfortunately many will not understand this until it happens to them.
We've talked enough about toxic positivity. We all know that couple with the fantastic honeymoon fights sometimes. But now, let's put a stop to the toxic inspiration. It's hurting all of us. We just don't know it till we do.
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