Society in 2011 has hit some sort of pinnacle of individual narcissism. We all seem to think that every thing we think needs to be broadcast somewhere so that people can look at and admire it. I am guilty of it right this second, as I type away on this essay which will end up on my blog later tonight. I write to express myself and to vent happiness, anger, or frustration, but rather than just saving the words to a flash drive or printing them out to fill the pages of an empty binder, I will send the words into cyber-oblivion in a vain attempt to reach an audience that probably doesn’t exist. Individuals sharing with the world is a phenomenon that’s been going on forever, but in the technologically advanced world of today, we can now over-share every single event in our lives.
Example … facebook. When I log on, I check for any messages, and will occasionally post a cryptic message or a semi-insightful thought or a rhetorical question, but that’s it. I rarely read my newsfeed, because some of the stupid shit people post on facebook absolutely baffles me: “I ate a sandwich!” “I took a shit!” “My toe hurts!” “FML! LOL! WTF?!” Not even the people who like us care about 90% of the stuff we post online. And Twitter is even worse. Just a bunch of truncated bullshit to express random disassociations: “I’m so drunk!” “Going to Amy’s!” “Just got laid!” Who cares?
But even so, I post on facebook and I read my “friends” postings, because I am interested in their lives to some extent. Here’s what I’m NOT interested in: other women’s vaginas. Seriously.
I was reading the paper tonight and saw a most distressful display of self-importance. A woman in New York City decided that, as the “highest performance of art,” she would give birth to her child in an art gallery. Apparently the art gallery was desperate for any sort of foot traffic, so they agreed to let her create a bedroom-like “home-birth” center, where she spent as much of her time as possible (during gallery hours) talking to visitors about “motherhood, art, and other issues”. Oh my god. Yes, giving birth is meaningful, but some woman’s egotistical idea that people beyond her friends and family give a shit about her adding to the overpopulation of the world is a annoying. People are popping out babies all over the world every second (some of stopping work only long enough to deliver the baby and keep working), and this crazy bitch has the nerve to loaf around an art gallery all day orating about her vagina and what is going to soon bloom out of it? I feel sorry for that kid.
Yes giving birth can be a beautiful thing, but it should also be mostly private – kind of like going to the bathroom. The only people who like to watch others’ bodily functions are perverts and/or fetishists. She videotaped it (of course) for people to see whenever they feel like watching a woman’s cervix dilate and then see a bloody new person come screaming into the world. I imagine if she has a facebook account, it was probably her status for the day. Twitter feed: “contractions!! FUUUUUUCK!”
Maybe sometimes we ought to censor ourselves just a little to keep the mystery alive. Maybe we don’t need to announce every emotion we experience throughout the day. Maybe taking our own sassy picture in the mirror is a little bigheaded and unnecessary. Or … maybe because we’ve digressed into a small-talking, small-minded, idiocracy; unfounded arrogance is all we have to offer.
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