The other day, I had an experience that reminded me of something important. I had been watching a friend of mine's Facebook feed, and it looked like they were having a great day. I was a bit jealous, actually; they'd been out with their family to a Giants game and to brunch. The pictures looked really nice, everyone smiling, sunny day. Later that day, I got together with that friend, and they proceeded to tell me how their day had really gone; they'd gotten in a fight with their sister, the game was overwhelming, and basically the day was a mess.
I was reminded in particular of a video I watched a while back, which you can see here:
It's a bit of a depressing video, to be sure (sorry about that), but I think it makes a valid point: too many times, we use Facebook (and other things like that) to put a version of ourselves out there that we want other people to like. In the old days, it used to be that the only people who knew us were people who cared about us; people who we worked closely with, family members, spouses, good friends. The only people who really had to worry what others thought of them - random people, that is - were celebrities or politicians. But these days, everyone is CEO of You, Inc. We all are minor celebrities, and we all put together clean and slick packaged versions of ourselves for public consumption.
I am certainly as guilty of this as anyone. What's the point in posting that I'm having a bad day? It just brings others down. Nobody's interested. Anyone who really is interested is someone I would contact in private, offline. So Facebook ends up just being a celebration of the best of my life. And - to a point- I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I do think it's important to understand that's what we're looking at. That what we see on Facebook is not, in any way, representative of who that person really is, any more than an OKCupid profile can really tell us what someone is afraid of before they go to sleep at night. It's a fun diversion, a cute way to keep in touch. But it's not real.