Thank you for this thought-provoking post. So often each of us struggles to be heard and thinks about how we will be remembered, if our art or our words or our deeds have impacted another's life in some meaningful way. We all want immortality because we don't know why or how we are here, I think. But having to hide while we are alive is a tragedy no matter what the era. One of our deepest failures as human beings is judgement and prejudice, causing some people to feel they must hide their true nature. It's amazing, isn't it, that we wear masks of a different kind via the internet, but masks just the same.
These lines were so powerful:
"Will the young maiden, when her tears
Alone in moonlight shine—
Tears for the absent and the loved—
Murmur some song of mine?"
And the ending lines gave me chills. Thanks so much for sharing!
I agree Jan, it is sad that people feel like they have to hide. Unfortunately, I think humans will always need to play a role with at least 80-90% of people they come in contact with. It’s a defense mechanism because as you say, humans are very judgmental. Being too vulnerable and transparent -- wearing your heart on your sleeve so to speak, makes someone a target. Unscrupulous people without ethics will see a weakness and exploit it. And with the online climate being more hostile than real life, no one wants to put a foot wrong. But maybe it’s fitting that we only show our true selves with loved ones. Hearts and souls are fragile things after all, and they are gifts to be shared with only those we most trust. The dual nature of humans to both conceal and share has always fascinated me 😊
You never know how you might be remembered, how your words might be engraved in another's heart. Maybe they randomly stumbled across your comment one day and never forgot it, and saved it forever. However it happened that God or angels or magic led them to find you.
"...where nothing is ever forgotten. Celebrities and Instagram “influencers” curate their image by sharing only their most beautiful photos to give us the illusion of a shiny, happy life that is often anything but."
This transcends celebrities and has sucked up others into a narcissistic vortex of self-bloviating nothingness. Love this post!
Hmmm, I often wonder if I unintentionally slipped through the cracks of society and from existence even, from knowing certain people, from being able to participate in modern life by not maintaining an instagram and facebook. I wonder if that was a mistake I made with many years of lost time I can't get back because it's how so many people keep in touch. I didn't have fancy vacations and lots of friends, an exciting job etc, and it was embarrassing when instagram came along so I just didn't bother. I would see those shiny people like you describe, I would wish I just had enough friends and stuff to post about to have an "active" social media, maybe I could've met new people and not come across as a total loser, but it also seemed like it would be a chore to keep up with. I find collections of perfect photos off-putting, intimidating, superficial and it makes me not want to engage with those types of people.
Well I never joined Facebook or Instagram either, and I don’t regret my choice. It felt superficial and fake to me, so I opted out of that. Of course, we are all different, and if you honestly want to try and connect with others through social media, then that is totally okay!
Hi there. 'Lines of Life' poem is aptly named. Being witness to these issues of identity and secrecy is a recurring theme for me. Getting unexpectedly caught up in them. The boy who I liked in high school made a poetry account where he felt safe to express himself online. Out of all the people in the world I found him. His username was damocles1. I did not know he wrote poetry, was not looking for him. He felt betrayed because I did not make my presence known. He shut it down and created a new account and left for me an ominous story about a girl who found his poem that still gives me chills, in which he said my punishment for reaching into his mind and his deepest emotions without permission was he would never finish the story. He stopped the story and left it blank. Forever. He saw me as an intruder. I found him so innocently, accidentally, and he reacted as if I violated him, as if I were the plague, when he put himself out there in a public space, thinking the odds of someone he knew finding him were inconceivably low. We never spoke again.
Keeping your privacy and private life private are legitimate reasons to wear a mask online. For any ordinary person as well as poets and international spies and celebrities. So you make up a name and you choose an avatar. You find other people who love nature walks and eagles and rose gardens and children's stories. But you only have one physical reality, one face and body connected with your heart and mind and soul. If someone gets to know an alt version of you, with a different appearance and life history, I believe you will eventually create distance and disconnect where you sought genuine closeness and connection.
If language is the truest connection we can share with another person, which type, or is it more than type? Is seeing someone's face, hearing their voice a more real version of them? My own personal preference and feeling is I feel deprived of knowing someone who I shared my image and voice with who continues to show me a character/alias.
A person of notoriety would worry those near them are around for the wrong reasons, are not genuine, only like them for their name, profession, image, influence, wealth or possibly knowledge. Maybe that would make them want to retreat into obscurity on the internet. Let's say you fall in love online while wanting to protect your identity and career. At what point do you reveal yourself and location before your significant other feels alienated and rejected? I can understand wanting to share your feelings without risk until you feel more comfortable, but you have to take risks for love!!!! I see fantasy as a stepping stone to real life experience. It's not fair to give another false promises of a future together. The relationship can't stand on lies. It will wither and die and you will lose each other. Such are issues you might encounter in an internet only relationship.
Thanks for leaving such a long and personal comment! I’m sorry to hear about your high-school crush disappearing. The only insight I can offer is that poetry can be incredibly vulnerable, and it must have terrified him that someone he knew from real life had seen into his soul. The internet can provide a thin shield of anonymity, and some people are more comfortable being themselves in an artificial setting. It feels like a safer way to seek understanding and connection from human beings we will never actually meet. The early internet of the millennium was more of a refuge from real life because it provided privacy. People in the public eye could be anonymous for a few hours, and average people could gain a bit of fame. Google and social media changed the internet by removing privacy and selling personal data. And as AI technology becomes more advanced, we won’t even know if we’re talking with a real human being anymore. The internet is less of a playground, and more of a prison now. This might actually force people back into their local communities to socialize with real human beings, and reignite our desire to connect face to face without a screen. Or one can only hope.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, for sharing your perspective. It does provide some relief towards my current situation, towards understanding, even if I can't change things. If you can only be part of someone's life from a distance it's better than not at all, limited as it is, heartbreaking though it is. At least you get to know them in some form.
Yes, that’s a good mindset to have. Connecting with others -- whether it be in person or online -- will always be meaningful. I hope that in time, your heart will heal. I’ve lost many online friends too, and it is heartbreaking even if you’ve never met them before. I think many people forget that there’s a real human being on the other side of the screen. When that happens, it becomes easy to just cut someone off without a word -- as though they don’t exist. I think the artificial reality of the online world has made people less compassionate and more apathetic to other human beings. It’s an unfortunate thing.
BTW, I see what you did at the bottom of your post; AI is starting to make celebrities and others that make a living off of their words and profession very nervous. That disclaimer might take on a life of its own.
I’ve seen a few other newsletters on here taking a stance against AI technology, and I wanted to be open with my readers that I don’t support it, and that my writing will always be 100% from my own mind. Brain power not machine power! ✌️
Thank you for this thought-provoking post. So often each of us struggles to be heard and thinks about how we will be remembered, if our art or our words or our deeds have impacted another's life in some meaningful way. We all want immortality because we don't know why or how we are here, I think. But having to hide while we are alive is a tragedy no matter what the era. One of our deepest failures as human beings is judgement and prejudice, causing some people to feel they must hide their true nature. It's amazing, isn't it, that we wear masks of a different kind via the internet, but masks just the same.
These lines were so powerful:
"Will the young maiden, when her tears
Alone in moonlight shine—
Tears for the absent and the loved—
Murmur some song of mine?"
And the ending lines gave me chills. Thanks so much for sharing!
I agree Jan, it is sad that people feel like they have to hide. Unfortunately, I think humans will always need to play a role with at least 80-90% of people they come in contact with. It’s a defense mechanism because as you say, humans are very judgmental. Being too vulnerable and transparent -- wearing your heart on your sleeve so to speak, makes someone a target. Unscrupulous people without ethics will see a weakness and exploit it. And with the online climate being more hostile than real life, no one wants to put a foot wrong. But maybe it’s fitting that we only show our true selves with loved ones. Hearts and souls are fragile things after all, and they are gifts to be shared with only those we most trust. The dual nature of humans to both conceal and share has always fascinated me 😊
So well said, and a fascination of mine as well. Maybe one reason why we like to write? :) Thanks again for your words!
You never know how you might be remembered, how your words might be engraved in another's heart. Maybe they randomly stumbled across your comment one day and never forgot it, and saved it forever. However it happened that God or angels or magic led them to find you.
So true! <3
"...where nothing is ever forgotten. Celebrities and Instagram “influencers” curate their image by sharing only their most beautiful photos to give us the illusion of a shiny, happy life that is often anything but."
This transcends celebrities and has sucked up others into a narcissistic vortex of self-bloviating nothingness. Love this post!
Hmmm, I often wonder if I unintentionally slipped through the cracks of society and from existence even, from knowing certain people, from being able to participate in modern life by not maintaining an instagram and facebook. I wonder if that was a mistake I made with many years of lost time I can't get back because it's how so many people keep in touch. I didn't have fancy vacations and lots of friends, an exciting job etc, and it was embarrassing when instagram came along so I just didn't bother. I would see those shiny people like you describe, I would wish I just had enough friends and stuff to post about to have an "active" social media, maybe I could've met new people and not come across as a total loser, but it also seemed like it would be a chore to keep up with. I find collections of perfect photos off-putting, intimidating, superficial and it makes me not want to engage with those types of people.
Well I never joined Facebook or Instagram either, and I don’t regret my choice. It felt superficial and fake to me, so I opted out of that. Of course, we are all different, and if you honestly want to try and connect with others through social media, then that is totally okay!
Thank you! It is unfortunate how social media has fueled egocentric behavior 😣
Hi there. 'Lines of Life' poem is aptly named. Being witness to these issues of identity and secrecy is a recurring theme for me. Getting unexpectedly caught up in them. The boy who I liked in high school made a poetry account where he felt safe to express himself online. Out of all the people in the world I found him. His username was damocles1. I did not know he wrote poetry, was not looking for him. He felt betrayed because I did not make my presence known. He shut it down and created a new account and left for me an ominous story about a girl who found his poem that still gives me chills, in which he said my punishment for reaching into his mind and his deepest emotions without permission was he would never finish the story. He stopped the story and left it blank. Forever. He saw me as an intruder. I found him so innocently, accidentally, and he reacted as if I violated him, as if I were the plague, when he put himself out there in a public space, thinking the odds of someone he knew finding him were inconceivably low. We never spoke again.
Keeping your privacy and private life private are legitimate reasons to wear a mask online. For any ordinary person as well as poets and international spies and celebrities. So you make up a name and you choose an avatar. You find other people who love nature walks and eagles and rose gardens and children's stories. But you only have one physical reality, one face and body connected with your heart and mind and soul. If someone gets to know an alt version of you, with a different appearance and life history, I believe you will eventually create distance and disconnect where you sought genuine closeness and connection.
If language is the truest connection we can share with another person, which type, or is it more than type? Is seeing someone's face, hearing their voice a more real version of them? My own personal preference and feeling is I feel deprived of knowing someone who I shared my image and voice with who continues to show me a character/alias.
A person of notoriety would worry those near them are around for the wrong reasons, are not genuine, only like them for their name, profession, image, influence, wealth or possibly knowledge. Maybe that would make them want to retreat into obscurity on the internet. Let's say you fall in love online while wanting to protect your identity and career. At what point do you reveal yourself and location before your significant other feels alienated and rejected? I can understand wanting to share your feelings without risk until you feel more comfortable, but you have to take risks for love!!!! I see fantasy as a stepping stone to real life experience. It's not fair to give another false promises of a future together. The relationship can't stand on lies. It will wither and die and you will lose each other. Such are issues you might encounter in an internet only relationship.
Thanks for leaving such a long and personal comment! I’m sorry to hear about your high-school crush disappearing. The only insight I can offer is that poetry can be incredibly vulnerable, and it must have terrified him that someone he knew from real life had seen into his soul. The internet can provide a thin shield of anonymity, and some people are more comfortable being themselves in an artificial setting. It feels like a safer way to seek understanding and connection from human beings we will never actually meet. The early internet of the millennium was more of a refuge from real life because it provided privacy. People in the public eye could be anonymous for a few hours, and average people could gain a bit of fame. Google and social media changed the internet by removing privacy and selling personal data. And as AI technology becomes more advanced, we won’t even know if we’re talking with a real human being anymore. The internet is less of a playground, and more of a prison now. This might actually force people back into their local communities to socialize with real human beings, and reignite our desire to connect face to face without a screen. Or one can only hope.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, for sharing your perspective. It does provide some relief towards my current situation, towards understanding, even if I can't change things. If you can only be part of someone's life from a distance it's better than not at all, limited as it is, heartbreaking though it is. At least you get to know them in some form.
Yes, that’s a good mindset to have. Connecting with others -- whether it be in person or online -- will always be meaningful. I hope that in time, your heart will heal. I’ve lost many online friends too, and it is heartbreaking even if you’ve never met them before. I think many people forget that there’s a real human being on the other side of the screen. When that happens, it becomes easy to just cut someone off without a word -- as though they don’t exist. I think the artificial reality of the online world has made people less compassionate and more apathetic to other human beings. It’s an unfortunate thing.
BTW, I see what you did at the bottom of your post; AI is starting to make celebrities and others that make a living off of their words and profession very nervous. That disclaimer might take on a life of its own.
;o)
I’ve seen a few other newsletters on here taking a stance against AI technology, and I wanted to be open with my readers that I don’t support it, and that my writing will always be 100% from my own mind. Brain power not machine power! ✌️