POLOKWANE – I miss life before social media. This was a time when I did not know that my neighbour’s daughter does not like pumpkin-flavoured Purity, what my friend ate on her date or that the girl I sat next to in Gr 9 maths class in 1999 has a new hairstyle.
I did not know this, and most importantly, I do not need to know this.
Go through your social media feed on any given day and this is what you will find. Be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, people are constantly sharing little tidbits of their lives. You would swear they are the only ones with camera phones.
I get that some people have friends and family overseas and other places that no sane person should ever move to, but where do we draw the line at keeping loved ones updated and just plain old oversharing?
I don’t want my timeline to be filled with pictures of my colleague’s three-year-old daughter. Cute as your child (or puppy or kitten or whatever else you hold dear) may be, I don’t need to know about their milestones. Save that for grandma.
All this oversharing has turned us into a vain society. We want to show off, portraying to those who scroll past our timelines that we live amazing lives. Things have gotten so bad people are checking-in at church and the local fast food place! What happened to us as a people?
To those of you who are fortunate enough to take a holiday every three months, good on you, but please stop taking pictures of every little damn thing, especially your lunch.
And remember that with every check-in, every post of your cute daughter or nephew, and with every post of your new shoes and new car, it’s not just your ex and former classmates who are watching, it’s also paedophiles, thieves and SARS agents.
