Shaista Fatima/ New Delhi

In a world where masses live for a 2-minute fame, anything glazing the slight truth coated with satire can go viral. In a recent turn of events actor, Simi Garewal posted a video of the satirist Michael Spicer spoofing the music legend David Bowie’s thoughts on the internet that went viral indeed and after a lot of re-sharing, did the masses realize the reality behind the whole act.

People, in general, hate social media but they still have 5 different accounts on 5 different podiums. And surprisingly they have different personas on different platforms.

From matchmaking on Tinder to trying to prove their point on Facebook to being the pseudo-intellectuals on Twitter to finally being artists on Instagram, they are all over social media. All in all, trying to be worthwhile and trying to be happy. Is it bad? Or is it the need of the hour? Or is this the new phenomenon by which the world has started living? 

From life coaches to life gurus to career enlighteners to psychics depicting your soulmates, we find them all at just the right place, the “social” and of course at just the right price.

People these days believe in sharing the moments of their life on social media too much. From getting married to going on a vacation to genuine condolences or even intimate moments, social has it all.And it just takes one post of yours to reach that “exalt” after which it is a never-ending chase.

But then who’s going to ask? Rather will anybody dare to introspect the impact of social toxicity and the added pressure of being “happy”?

We are living in an age of digital media where social acronyms are far more important than realistic abbreviations.

Words like “like”, “tweet”, “fleet, “reel” have lost their real meaning altogether. Ask a 10-year old and he’d be clueless about what thumbs up means. For him, it is an emoji or something related to social.

There’s a race happening and everyone wants to be the winner. We keep scrolling till our thumbs feel numb and we feel tired enough to fall asleep if perhaps sleep is what we were looking for.

Everybody is trying to find the real meaning of their life. Words like inner peace, mental well-being, happiness, inner self are now mostly searched on google or used as hashtags on the “trending” platforms.

Famous people committing suicide to people becoming social warriors are somehow the talk of the hour but the ones who are fighting from the front have no relevance on the “social” world whatsoever, thus are lost somewhere in the ever-moving world.

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The world is a microcosm of its being and eventually, everyone is dead inside, though nobody is aware that we all are dead inside.

From posting pictures of their loved ones to posting their happily ever after, not even leaving the dead ones, each one of us wants to be known. The barriers between known and unknown are decreasing day by day and by default we are moving towards an oblivion that shall engulf our conscious selves.

Everything is commercialized and it feels captive to be there but then humans are social animals and we cannot live without interaction. On the other side though the world is indeed a smaller place now with the social connectivity, people who have to leave their native place due to some of the other reasons find these platforms as a boon but then the excess of anything is bad.

We are moving towards an excess of “happiness”, an excess of “trying to prove our point”, an excess of trying to be “the human of the hour” and that is where toxic happiness or toxic well-being falls into place.

Somehow people sympathizing with others' pain become sadists, people sharing too many happy moments become “show off”, and people trying to prove their point become “snobs”.We are living in a world where anything can lead us to that 2-minute fame but would it be correct to sell our souls for the same?

Is self-promotion the need of the hour or trying to stay connected to the roots is what we should look for?

Is finding a cure important or creating problems to find a cure more “happening”?

We are what we want to be but then who we are in reality?