(Willingly) Lured, Lied to & Deceived

The title of this post should be more like "Entertainment and Social Media Are Going To Kill Us". You all do know that I have a problem with being over-wordy though. I am working on that. Anyway...

 I was just looking at the trailer for an upcoming documentary about a certain actor. The "celebrity" has been under fire for being sexually seedy and potentially/allegedly dangerous. The rumors about this person have apparently been around for a while. People not in the entertainment industry (aka "fans") are shocked and titillated and cannot wait to see this documentary. I myself am interested. 

Here's the thing. By believing in the illusion of celebrity and all that seems to glitter within that world, we allow ourselves to be deceived. We accept the deception - when it's called entertainment - to be part of our lives. We feel connected to the actors rather than the characters they portray. We let the stories portrayed color our perception of the people playing the roles. The attractive or smart or kind or loving person on that screen probably has zero in common with the actor. The better the actor, the more we buy the lies. The lies are only supposed to be entertainment, people.

She's already physically attractive.
I don't get it.

This creates problems in our lives. For years, I myself had trouble appreciating some of the people in my everyday life. That new person at work who was slightly shy and awkward wasn't anything like the cutely shy, sweetly awkward, and photogenically loveable character played by ~fill in the blank~ in that one movie or TV show. My boss was just a jerk and not the jerk that was just charming enough to make me want to eventually fall in love with him. My life was not like the ones portrayed in the movies. I was not going to speed through the highs, lows, and serious complications the way a fictional character does. My problems are never solved within a 30-minute episode (minus 10 minutes of commercials). When I hurt someone in real life, there was no sequel lined up where I could fix everything and undo any damage.

Life is life and "art" is art. Art might imitate life but it should never be the other way around. We don't have scriptwriters, a makeup crew, and perfect lighting in our real lives. We don't often get second-chance "retakes".

I was talking with one of my brothers the other day and he mentioned something about some young "influencer" who'd died in a very unnecessary way. He or she had fallen to their death while trying to take a selfie while balanced on a cliff (or something along those lines). When I hung up the phone and looked up the story, I ended up going down a rabbit hole, looking at other similar stories.

What is happening to us as humans? There is a whole generation of young (and not so young) people who are risking their physical and mental health to be internet famous. The term "Influencer" now bothers me so much.

Six or seven years ago, when I started doing product reviews, I joined sites like Influenster, Tomoson, She Speaks, and Buzz Agent. I did it to get free and "first-look" products. Now I mostly do my reviews on Amazon and Walmart. The other sites have gotten outflanked by the Instagram nation of serious influencers. These are the pros at garnering Likes, Follows, Shares, and so on. It has gone from people just trying to score free and discounted products to multi-million dollar opportunities.

Remember YouTube back in the day? When people were posting videos about side hobbies and random life events? Those days are gone, children. These days, some people base their entire livelihood on their video changes. It's all about sponsors, monetization, and fighting like junkyard dogs to hold your place among the big-money earners.

It must be in human nature to make a mile out of every inch. Movies and television - meant, I think anyway, for pure entertainment - have turned into some sort of instrument of mass social programming. Many of us base the way we act, dress, love, make love, parent, etcetera based on the make-believe world of the flickering screens. Social media outlets - meant, I think anyway - to connect us have become instruments for division. It's not about how to keep in touch with the people we know and love or how to help each other. It's more about how to look like we're "living our best life" and who's prettier or richer or sexier or smarter or more powerful? 

We are building our own destruction. We are putting up walls instead of tearing them down. We are doing more harm than good. By trying to appear to be the best, we are becoming the worst.

The thing about progress (if that is what it's called) is that curiosity pushes us forward and selfishness won't let us go backward. We have such a problem with being content. We see contentment as complacency and complacency as laziness. And look where we are.

Peace

--Free