"Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves" (pg 30, Sensei)
Write about your thoughts on this quote...in what ways, for example, does social media in our time perhaps isolate people as much as it connects people? Does it augment our egotism? Are we "together" but "alone"?
First and foremost, we must take an understanding into how social media plays a role in loneliness, or at least how it contributes to it. Social media allows individuals to share photos and events that he/she might be doing. Essentially it is a tool for the user to input live news about their events in their personal life. With fame constantly goal for many immature high schoolers and many adults as well, people try to use social media to look bigger than themselves. An example of this could very well be someone that is totally poor posting themselves with very high class brand products in their possession. With many photos of this in their profile, it is assumed by most people that do not know this individual very well that he/she is a rich and famous individual. Through this, the individual becomes apart of a higher classed and "cooler" social group. This eventually leads to a sense of loneliness in the modern age. Others may post things uninteresting or nothing at all and this can cause people to think less of them. The problem with social media in this case is that it allows individuals to make a book cover about themselves that does not match the context of the book. Another problem with social media are the followers and people you are following function. Through this, people use the followers as a currency to determine how famous an individual is. Followers in todays world can be bought and through this people look more famous on the outside. If more an individual has 10 followers as compared to someone with 1000 followers, the person with 10 followers is put down and loses friends in real life, of which contributes to loneliness in the modern age.
Social media definitely does augment our egotism in that almost all of the population today automatically associates the fame and money depicted in social media to the type of ego one may have. Consequently, people treat individuals differently in real life as a result of their ego outlook on social media. This leads to my next train of thought that because people ignore some people that do not look "cool" and that everyone is trying so hard to benefit themselves, we are indeed alone. I feel that as far as social media plays in this topic, we are not together. If we were together, then we would learn to stop this nonsense of faking fame and richness just to get into apart of a higher social group or to be accepted. People are afraid of being lonely and only thing about themselves, of which proves my idea once again that we are not together, and alone when referred to the topic of social media.