Pretty Things

by Janelle Brown

This is what the Internet has given my generation: the ability to play God. We can make man in our own image, birth an entire human being out of nothing at all.

Social media feeds the narcissistic monster that lives within us all,

It feeds it and grows it until the beast takes over and you are left outside the frame, just looking at images of this creature, like everyone else in your feed, wondering what it is that you birthed and why it’s living the life you wish you had.

When you’re documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You’re never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”

It’s easiest to judge from a distance. That’s why the Internet has turned us all into armchair critics, experts at the cold dissection of gesture and syllable, sneering self-righteously from the safety of our screens. There, we can feel good about ourselves, validated that our flaws aren’t as bad as theirs, unchallenged in our superiority. Moral high ground is a pleasant place to perch, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.

People don’t take the time to really look at each other anymore. We live in a world of surface imagery, skimming past each other, registering just enough to assign a category and label before moving on to the next shiny thing.

We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see.