Everyone is lying so much to be connected in America, and the tragedy is everyone is missing one another, not realizing that we are falling stars and fading fast.

I spent the best years of my life living in a 3rd world country. Something was electrifying in the air living in the country’s capital. The place was alive, young, and for the most part, happy. I woke up quite excited about what will come of the day since something unique would always happen despite daily routines. I recall the ease of making acquaintances both natives and foreigners without it being under the guise of financial gain.

The environment was not like that of the sterilized West, where we are no more than well-mannered prisoners of war.

Being back in the U.S, I do what I can to replicate my general excitement about life, but they’re so many elements missing to produce sparks. The most significant aspect I’ve realized that’s missing is the general pleasantry of talking to (let alone look at) the opposite sex. I wasn’t in the United States when social media took off so, I basically “paused” my life from when I left to when I returned. There has been a drastic transformation of communicating, where it’s now all in the realm of apps, texting, social media, and the internet. I thought getting a women’s number was a lock on going on a date. At least this was the case in 2009! But now, getting someone’s number is just a means to be worthy of that person’s attention and to be redirected to their social media account.  The never-ending need to be seen in images, attention, adulation, and affirmation has left me quite nauseated, and I’ve boiled the problem it down to social collapse due to over socialization.

There is a general ambivalence that permeates throughout the society as social edicts are not well defined. Is it cool to be bisexual? Shouldn’t I be looking for a spouse at my age? I’m still young, aren’t I? Now is a good time to send a dick pick, right?

A joke amongst Expats is, “when you’re here, you can be whomever you want to be.” Meaning that no one knows who you are when you arrive in a new country. You can make up your past, which was a bit a laugh considering I’ve heard some ludicrous personal histories’ of others—yachts in Monte Carlo, or rebel fighting with United Wa State Army. In the online world, the same rule applies. You can use filters, take photos of goods you don’t possess, lie about previous relationships, and burn every bridge where you originated from.

Communication is a skill one can lose rapidly the less he or she interacts with the world outside. Peoples linguistic skills become anthropic, and the phone becomes the crutch. The smartphone has become a coping device, an adult pacifier (flapper binky) where one person feels “threatened” by their surroundings; they would rigidly clutch the phone in a ritualistic manner. Self-protection becomes an overriding imperative. “If I don’t see them, they don’t exist” (eye rapped). What has replaced linguistics is the skill to be witnessed. Either you stand out, or you are left out, and more outlandish, the more one notices.

We have separate lives online, hiding behind an avatar, and trite images. But the stories are untold because the story is the photos.

Social media and dating apps are based on aesthetics and pure optics. A form of Self-promotion through winning images such as a pilgrimage to Santorini, Dubai yachts, extravagant nights out. We all project fantasy and illusion online, where one must be in it to win it. Being a happy, humble hermit is frowned upon in a hyper-consumption culture.

Where does the illusion come from?

It’s actually from the banality of one’s work and now for millions being on the dole. To break away from reality, you must put on a show. It’s merely daydreaming.

People seek depth, which can’t be denied, yet it’s nowhere to be found because Neo-Liberalisms religion is consumerism. Goods provide you your value and identity in the sexual marketplace. It’s now about who has the most toys are the winners. To get the junk, you need to sell the image or spectacle, and if you have no means of getting the junk, pop oxycodone and dream away. The disparity between the imaginary ideal and reality gives rise to a detachment that dulls realities pains. This is called the grandiosity gap, where extravagant expression is now a sign of cultural decay.

The haughtiness, exhibitionism, and omnipotence are signs of primitive psychological defense mechanisms. You preserve your fantasy world of you being boujee with avocado toast (glamour zoning) or taking your lifted jeep off the road, really showing everyone (no one) how fulfilling of a life you have. This produces a negative feedback loop where you compete with yourself—your previous uploads of snaps, memes, and spectacles.

She has little interest in his life and is quickly bored when the man discusses it as it takes quite a bit to impress her as she’s been there done that. She is insincere in passing and chortle, unaware of how ordinary she is because no one would dare utter such blasphemy! Underneath it all is definitely shame and the paralyzing fear of being ordinary. He sees the boilerplate Thotistic images and suffers status anxiety as he cannot provide endless summer (Perpetual Disney Dreams), so he objectifies her like a Christmas ornament (Tantalization Cuckoldry), and from here, we are presented with a social dilemma. If neither sexes can enjoy each other’s companionship or have some form of commonality because she’s a vegan and he likes to go fishing, you might as well Venmo her some money for a few naked pictures and become one of her pay pigs. In a poor country, men pimp out young women. When young women eagerly pimp themselves out, the country is essentially dead. Young men have chaotic sexual impulses and low self-esteem, which initiates the commodification of relationships.  It seems the word shallow has completely dropped out of the English vernacular.

Most men who have started questioning the dichotomy between the two sexes and know a bit about the 80/20 rule know about ghosting. Using social media for dating is a vicious form of depersonalization. Ghosting is a form of passive-aggressive behavior as feelings of frustration or alienation set in on the victim. You said what? Delete. You didn’t respond fast enough? Vanished! What did I do? Where did he or she go? When people finally meet face-to-face, people’s intentions are often ambiguous, and personal boundaries are often violated. It’s easier to disappear than to explain to the other why they are not interested. Repeated fears of abandonment eventually desensitize individuals where empathy is considered a chore. It’s better to think I can have intimacy than to actually find out, nor do I want this person realizing I’m ordinary. Perhaps string them along having them think of innocent gestures or texts are subliminal messages. This gives rise to projective identification.

Social media means having access to individuals anywhere on Earth which exacerbates the disposability of oneself. A debauched motodop from Jakarta can now send some cash to an Ethot, so long as he catches some solid 4G rays, which is something unprecedented. The general accessibility to everyone makes it is much easier to go unnoticed or being able to keep certain aspects of a person’s life hidden versus someone you went to high school with. The close proximity makes it much harder to disappear as word spreads on the type of person you are or the likelihood of bumping into one another. If you’re the village bicycle, guys know to hit it and quit it. If you have commitment issues, the better suited and stable women know to stay away. The average individual must understand that the people you grew up around, sharing the same ethnicity, church, linguistics would make the best mate like the boy next door. But in reality, the girl next door actually loathes him a he is a reminder of themselves (fear of ordinary)—the endless search and need for the exotic. A bride from Brazil or Kuwaiti oil tycoon groom (I’m hyperbolic) is part of the daydream believer’s mindset. The constant indulging of fiction where fantasy becomes so detached from reality when you try to reel it back in you realize you’re in your own wonderland based on your own creation leading to depression.

All major dating apps Tinder, Match, Bumble, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OkCupid, are owned by Match Group, a part of the multinational InterActiveCorp. Now at the end of 2020 we’re going out, and meeting someone is all but gone. We are being nudged into using these monolithic platforms and, for all we know, are probably engaging in a nefarious agenda. They have an interpolated the psyche of humans’ attention deficits and narcissism via imagery.

Panic sets in on millennials now in their 30s where they fear of missing out on finding a significant other. They will cling to the past as we broach the twilight of abundance, and they will search for the past cornucopia in a frantic. Underprepared and not knowing what the future holds.

People will be discarded at breakneck speeds and will be quickly replaced (hyper-consumption) and will never be content with the status quo as the better catch is right around the corner.

Sadly nobody lives up to one another expectation. After being discarded by men she was lusting after, she resigns and paints a board brush that all men are the same. He holds onto a false hope that she is out there, but there is no unicorn on the horizon. After repeated failures, he becomes a porn-addicted hermit and apathetic to everything and everyone.

When you put this all into place, your attempt to seek a relationship is in competition with social media.

Today’s dating scene of ambiguity has led to a generation of misguided souls and humanity’s obsession with escapism.

It’s a big world out there.