The wrong to happiness!

News readers used to be good looking people, who could read, be easy on our eyes and yet be someone whom we could all relate to, because they were in our homes everyday and we discussed things they told us. That’s gone out of the windows, no one cares what a newsreader says anymore, because we get the news before them so they stay relevant in our lives by looking like movie stars instead.  We’ve all worshipped beauty and youth forever, so there’s nothing new there, but add this one to the mix - News readers are happier than ever. Why? Why The botoxed face, the tummy tuck?  I can really do without the vocal fry (try saying OMG like you’ve been raised by bears) and blindingly white teeth. Just to tell us that another city was carpet bombed, another species is now extinct, Trump said yet another asinine phrase, and that children continue to be slaves, sold, illiterate and hungry. Why are they so exuberant? It seems like a pretty drab job to me.

 And then I stop watching T.V. and come back to reality and I look around. Everyone is happy. All the bloody time. How? Why? Well, thing is, I’m not looking at the people around me, I’m looking at their social media. In social media reality (pun intended), everyone is happy, smiling, having adventures, eating the best foods, having their nails done, cooking fabulousness, cataloguing their meals, cataloguing their pet’s meals, cataloguing their cats, climbing mountains, surfing seas, and flying overseas. It’s not enough that they are traveling to Romania, they have to do that airplane dotted thing just in case we assume they’re taking the steam engine and/or to tell us where Europe is. 

What really gets me though is this one thing. Okay let’s make it two. Two sides of the same coin. People telling me to post, share, comment on PSA’s. No I’m not sharing a ‘post if you know anyone with cancer and support them’ BS. No. That’s generic.  It doesn’t do anything except make people feel good that they did something for cancer or mental illness. It’s not doing, it’s just making people feel that they did something. That includes Tigers, stray dogs, cleaning up the streets and even a shoutout to craftsmen. The other thing is sharing religious memes. Please please please I don’t come to Facebook for religion. I come to strut about how perfect my life is and enviously glean other people’s successes. I want to be the shallow snowflake here. I don’t want your moral superiority of how you take God’s name 60 times a day and how by sharing and typing Amen or Jai Mata Di, my life would be better.

I live a charmed life. And I make sure, everyone knows that. My pleasures are the indulgences on Pinterest, my friendships on whatsapp provide me with much needed approvals, my self esteem gets a boost on FB and Twitter is therapeutic. The internet completes me, just keep religion and activism at bay.