Doing it for likes and shit like that
An ancient Chinese curse states; “May you live in interesting times”. On the surface this statement seems as neutral as neutral can be. How you interpret it is based on what you call interesting. Which is precisely the gist of the “curse”.
Similar to that curse is an even bigger one. May you find what you’re looking for. A lot of what we do in these interesting times end up netting the kinds of rewards we receive for the things we look for. According to Sigmund “Fraud”, people’s sense of self can be distilled down to two elemental yearnings. The strong desire for sex and the strong desire to be famous.
These two yearnings can themselves be summed up as one single burning desire in us. The desire to be liked. We seek sex not like the animals, purely for procreation. We seek sex as a validation of us to ourselves and to whom ever we have sex with.
interpersonally, validation lies in the recognition or affirmation that a person or their feelings or opinions are valid or worthwhile. Therefore in these interesting times, the desire to be liked is confirmed through sexual gratification and fame.
One need not be elevated to the typical scale of a celebrity to seek and acquire fame. One can find fame or validation of the self, among one’s immediate peers. As long as you feel validated by the responses of those in your immediate or even cursory circle, one’s desire appears to be sated. The interesting times we live in have numerous defining examples of both our search and the discovery of what we seek. There is a statement i heard for the first time after becoming involved in the social media world.
Its called “doing it for the Gram”. Doing it for the gram is the truncated expression of automatons in an age of emoji and limited conversation and interpersonal relationship. Doing it for the gram and getting likes on social media; whether instagram, Facebook or any of the other social media platforms, combine to validate those two Chinese curses.
Back in the day while i was first introduced to the phenomena of myspace and trying to figure out how it works and the purpose of it, considering most of what i have read appeared to be a whole ton of kneegrow shenanigans, Facebook was gaining rapid traction.
I remember sitting in an office of my old job at the homeless shelter, back around 2006, when my co-worker on that shift, kept commenting about different people requesting to be her”friend”. At one point she commented that her young son, twelve at the time was requesting to be her Facebook “friend”.
I knew he was twelve because i asked her how old he was. Right after she commented that she didn’t know he had a Facebook page. In 2006 my daughter was 15 and was not on social media. At that time my daughter was being homeschooled and my ex and I were involving her in a multiplicity of programs to keep her busy and connected to the real world.
Around 2009 I got on Facebook for two reasons. originally to promote my non-profit organization, in partnership with my now deceased friend Leroy Simpson ( rest in power afrikan) and our pilot training program geared towards preparing Afrikan youth in Toronto for the aviation field. I mentioned that my brother, a veteran trainer of commercial pilots, died under mysterious circumstances, flying a simple two-seater, i could have learned to fy after a short lesson. This happened during his contentious battle with crooked lawyers and other characters trying to steal prime land he owned and was developing for our program.
The other reason why I got on stupid book, was to ensure that more people become aware of this blog, so that when i am promoting future business i would have a sizable base. I think i got on Instagram about two years ago, mainly out of curiosity because my lady at the time was big on it.
Now after saying all of this, I circle back to the ideology of these interesting times where “doing it for the Gram” or Facebook “likes”, became a serious validation of self in a time when people with character flaws and self-esteem issues, flood these two platforms. I mention these two social media outlets because they are the only two I am involved with. In the early stages of my Facebook journey, i would read about kneegrows being offended by some comment and threaten another. Some of these kneegrows had even taken the beef off-line, confronting and even harming another person.
All of the beefing, treat making, bathroom and gym selfies, risqué’ behaviors and images uploaded on Facebook and Instagram are mainly to elicit attention, adoration, fame and”likes”. From these attention seeking pursuit, many kneegrows get sex…real sex, due to developing superficial relationships online, only to have it break off, so the can end up complaining about each other. Before jumping right back into this shallow, shark infested water for more of the same.
Many kneegrows also achieve a form of notoriety as social media celebrity. I remember commenting to my lady at the time, how random people be requesting to be my friend out of the blue. Many of these request are coming from people who maybe friends through proxy or who may have read a comment i made and feel they know me or would like to know me.
I have had females crush on me and then hate on me because i did not give them the expected response the sought. One even chastised me for shouting out a sister merely by saying…” that’s my girl”…as if i am her possession and shouldn’t interact with my female “friends”. I have had kneegrows threaten me for voicing opinions on things they claim they would defend with violence
Black women are the most affected by this pursuit of this superficial happiness because black women seem to do the most begging for likes and in the most pathetic of ways. Scores of images of black women taking face, ass and titty shots in their cars, public washroom or their own bathroom with the used tampons on the floor, as well as other “interesting” ones, seem to be the norm instead of the exception.
With the influx of emasculated and effeminate males, competing with these women for “best internet selfies”, what we are seeing are a lot of people finding what they have searched for in these interesting times.
Validation from people and things outside of themselves. Which is why happiness can never be attained. It is quite interesting indeed, how “situationships” are being built and are failing daily, for social media views and likes. While real or potential relationships suffer and die because of the inability to RELATE to each other offline.
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