dismissive

these days, almost everyone is involved in social media one way or another. for most teenagers, including myself, snapchat is our main source of interaction/communication. when you want to reach someone or meet up with someone, you would send them a snap. not a phone call or text; but either a picture or text in the chat on snap. there is a lot of convenience with this. the receiver of the snap can slide in the chat and secretly read what is sent to them and decide if you want to reply or lag. in many situations, people don’t feel the need to reply and will wait sometimes days to answer. this has become the main way of communication.

what really starts to bug me is the dismissiveness this behavior leads to. if you don’t want to talk to someone, simply don’t open their chat. if someone is bugging you, simply remove them. we aren’t given the chance to look someone in the eyes and tell them what we feel. instead, we are given responses of faces or get left on read.

in one situation, I was explaining how I felt to a friend in great detail. when they read the chat, they responded with simply a picture of themselves making a sad face.

I was genuinely shocked. I did not realize how lacking of real emotion our social communication had. no longer are we forming bonds over unplanned, spontaneous circumstances. they are now perfectly laid out in front of us. we choose who we respond too. we choose what we let others know. a small part of us is laid out that we let others base their impressions on. we get judged but don’t know it.

you may be talking to one person but they may be simultaneously talking in another group chat about you. are deception of each other is totally off.

what hurts the most is when someone dismisses you. they decide you aren’t worth their time and energy any more.

this is our reality. it’s most likely not going to change for a while. in this pandemic, there is no other way to interact socially expect for online.

this is not a typical blog post for me but I thought I would share my thoughts!