I must start by advising that some readers may find this post particularly insensitive or offensive. This is not my intention.
A recent observation has introduced me to another side of vanity. I have found that the word and its meaning have in fact adopted a new and orchestrated phenomenon that has quickly started to obsess the masses. It’s as though the word itself continues to expand its own self-indulging influence. What a clever little word!
I stumbled upon this insight through the use of the very popular and sought after social networking mediums that saturate our minds, time and lately lives. The realisation that vanity has indeed been elevated in its principal, hit me when I suddenly noticed the abundance of images, tags, check-ins, status updates and profile picture changes that occur each minute of every day.
Of course these on-going notifications would be easier to stomach if the pictures perhaps told more of a story than boasting the common pouted lip and hands on hip pose, serving the single minded purpose of telling the world “ I’m hot and jolling tonight.” Or if the intellectually debilitating statuses offered more than an informative update on an individual’s expert sports opinion, emotional infatuation with love, or tasteless diet (a word to the bulging muscled bench monkeys, nobody gives a toss about your body fat percentage and flavourless protein shakes!).
The glaring increase in self-adoration and vanity is apparent in the users need to constantly inform the world of their whereabouts. These GPS alerts coupled with images sporting the famous zoo lander pout, are merely meals of scripted sensationalism for countless followers waiting to pass their comment or approval.
The point I’m trying to make is that these advanced tools of social connection are in fact an unknowing contribution to our detriment. The focus has been shifted from the nurturing of the inner self, to rather the external perception that we portray to the virtual world. People are consistently pre-occupied with dressing their social mediums, in turn, deflating the value of substantial interaction, and rather emphasising the so called importance of aesthetically pleasing, ephemeral, and limited human encounters. The consequence of which, manifesting a generation of posers who worry more about the visual messages they are sending, rather than concentrating on their live and living networks. The time and energy exuded in perfecting their public portrait, is therefore understandable. More alarming, is that some will even go as far as to falsify their public displays, so as to live up to what now has become a platform of expectation.
You may or may not see this as a concern. But from where I’m sitting, I see this vanity seeping into areas previously unaffected. It has become more than just a little self-affirmation, and has developed into an attitude that cultivates traits of superiority, arrogance and obsession. I am afraid for the men and women that we are raising. What chance do they have of being humble, when surrounded by a surge of pretention? I ask myself this, for I see, what I have called growing vanity, as a probing force of slow and subtle destruction. The one who loves himself outwardly instead of inwardly cannot possess a genuine love for others. Instead, this person inhibits an obtuse insecurity and oblivious disregard for moments of truth and value.
Perhaps I am being a pessimist, but if I look back on our social progression over the years, or rather degression, I am forced to acknowledge the inevitable, and the worst part about the inevitable, is that there is no escaping it. I think at this point, the only thing you can do is hope that you have the smarts to exist in it.
In the ironic words of Blaise Pascal, “ Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.”
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