The Adverse Reality Of Virtual Reality

Recently some folks at an NHL hockey game booed the Premier of Alberta when she was introduced. They were, no doubt, displeased with her positions on certain issues and wanted her to know about it. This would be the same premier who was elected with a significant majority just a few months ago.

Canadians like to think that we’re a tad more civil than our American and European counterparts but clearly we’re not and the lack of civility and respect for the offices of government has eroded into mob reaction.

We saw it at a NASCAR event where Michelle Obama and Joe Biden’s wife were booed by the crowd as if, somehow, these two women were singularly responsible for the things the crowd was displeased with.

I call it mob courage because there weren’t too many in either of those crowds who would have behaved with the same lack of common courtesy if they were alone and face-to-face with the person the crowd booed.

I blame the Internet for much of it.

Over the past few years, social media has created an environment where anyone can not only say what they want but can be what they want. There is an anonymity about being online that not only allows people to reinvent themselves but provides them with a degree of courage to act and behave in a way they wouldn’t have considered in the real world.

Like any learned behavior, it eventually becomes part of the genetic make up and spills over into other parts of life. We’re dealing with that now globally.

We react rather than respond. We’re misinformed and becoming increasingly lazy in challenging our beliefs and our knowledge. Why bother? There are plenty of people and resources on line to support what we already think and the rhetoric becomes more and more extreme.

Obama is Satan incarnate..no wait, that was Bush. Oops, wrong again. It’s Islam, no it’s Christianity. It’s whatever someone disagrees with. Vaccinations which all but eradicated some diseases suddenly became evil based on fraudulent science and those diseases are making a comeback thanks to the sheer stupidity of some people who can’t look beyond the last web site they visited.

Everyone has a cause or is a cause now. They hold and voice opinions, not in support of their cause but against everyone else who doesn’t agree with them. Its anger and accusation masquerading as debate. Its misinformation and opinion posing as informed fact.

Dating sites are hotbeds for liars, opportunists and scam artists. Facebook is a false representation of a global village and Twitter is merely graffiti sprayed on walls around the world. These are great resources being misused by people who trivialize their own lives. 

People rail against governments’ invasion of their privacy even as they expose themselves to the world in a naïve belief that somehow their private information is safe because it is, after all, Facebook.

Occupy, concerned as a result of a recent court order that Twitter turn over information about Occupy Boston’s account, is moving to set up its own Facebook type site. How droll. Changing site URL’s isn’t going to do anything to ensure privacy and the superficial understanding of the real world are incredible.

But, the virtual world provides that false sense of community, empowerment and secunity. It also fills some human need to be liked, even if it is merely an illusion.

Apps are available to help you collect followers on Twitter. Social media experts will help you develop strategies to gain more "friends" on Facebook or Google + and no one seems to understand that collecting names on a list is not the same as developing true friendships and lasting relationships.

People use apps to validate potential followers rather than taking the time to discover whether they're real or a bot for themselves. They set up auto respond messages because they're too busy to actually take the time to respond personally and then wonder why people stop following them. The lack of personal investment in building relationships is incredible but it is the unwarranted expectation attached to that lack of effort that is even more amazing.

I follow people on Twitter who I think might be interesting. If I find they aren't after awhile, I stop following them. It still amazes me how many broadcast to the world that I no longer follow them as though I have committed some sin or at the very least, intentionally set out to harm them. Good Lord, how pathetic does a life have to be that it is measured by who does or doesn't follow them on Twitter?

Hackers, like Anonymous are nothing more than common thieves and yet online, they achieve a certain swashbuckling cache as if criminal activity is only a game in the virtual world.

Language is devolving into a series of symbols and grunts and becoming more truncated and extreme.

Things like human values and rights take a back seat to the importance of marketing yourself on social media and there is an almost pathetically sad need to collect followers and friends on social networking sites rather than devoting yourself to your friends in the real world. I know families that now connect more often online than they do in person.

Misinformation, delusions and outright lies travel around the world at the speed of light. People post comments on their Facebook pages and Twitter about the most inane activities in their lives as if somehow the rest of the world is waiting breathlessly to hear how their hair turned out this morning. 

We argue, accuse and block others at the drop of a hat. The opinions of others are not important and are shouted down rather than discussed and debated in a civilized manner and everywhere there is pointless profanity and an increasing lack of simple courtesy and good manners.

Where is it heading? You already know the answer to that.

It is the road to perdition, a breakdown of values, self-respect and the respect for others. I have difficulty thinking of something more lonely that counting your success in life by the number of friends you collect on Facebook or the number of people who contact you on a dating site.

photo: photobucket.com

But that is what is happening to our society. For all the activity, for all the communication, we are becoming increasingly isolated from each other and there is nothing but a profound sense of being alone at the end of that road.

I use the Internet and social media primarily for information gathering but it is not my life. My life is outside of the little box and monitor at my desk. My real life involves a two-year old little boy who finds everything in the real world amazing and he’s right. My real life includes a woman who has a smile that warms in a way that words on a screen never will. Out here in the real world there are real people doing real things and that is where I live. When I am online, I try to maintain the same values and manners that are a part of my real life. I try to live in virtual reality, what I live in reality with my family, friends and colleagues. Too many of us are allowing our online persona to change our real lives.

Out here, where the wind blows, you can hear the laughter rather than reading LOL. Out here where you can actually see and touch a person, there is reality. We have replaced our real communities with the illusion of community in a virtual world which allows us to be whatever we want rather than taking pride in who we are, even to our own detriment. It destroys our willingness to constantly improve ourselves. (Why waste time learning to play guitar when you can buy Guitar Hero and pretend?)

The Internet can provide much. It can entertain. It can inform and it can offer opportunities for business, professional and personal communication. What it can't offer and will never deliver is reality. The Internet is merely reality's illusion....and increasingly, a very uncivil illusion of reality at that.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear

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