Out of all the worthy resolutions floating around in my head, there’s only one I really plan to stick to.
In 2014 I’m going to stop lying on Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t navigated my way through 2013 fabricating events for the sake of social media. I haven’t, oh I don’t know, say, pretended to know sign language and made shit up during the funeral of one of the greatest men that ever lived. What. The. What?
But what I have done plenty of times – in fact more often than not – is lied by omission. I’ve habitually curated my life on social media so that it played more like a Greatest Hits album, a highlights reel chock full of ponies and rainbows and Brady Bunch moments.
So my status updates have been like this:
Look at us out to dinner!
Here I am with my children baking!
Here’s a great review of my book!
Here I am with my children baking!
Martini, anyone?
Best husband in the world!
Baking! With children! Still super happy!
Happy! Happy! Happy!
And while all those moments were bonafide, they don’t tell the full story. Because like you and every other SINGLE PERSON ON THIS PLANET (except maybe Beyonce) I’ve also had down days. I’ve stuffed up. Screwed up. Been fed up. I’ve had disappointments and blah moments and had things blow up in my face big time.
But you wouldn’t know it.
Because here I am baking!!! Ahem…
So the Facebook status updates you never saw this year should have included:
My work colleagues are in Melbourne shooting a video and I’m at home feeling envious, picking spaghetti off the dog’s head and watching my toddler have a meltdown because I offered him a second slice of apple.
Went out to dinner with Brad. Had enormous argument about “Who is the most tired?” Didn’t speak a word for the rest of the evening except to ask for the WORLD’S LARGEST GIN.
I just found and ate chocolate freckles for breakfast. #fail
Four-year-old just said: “You never spend time with me.” Part of me wants to cry. The other part wants to go to my union with photographic evidence of 1000 hours spent playing HAIR SALON.
I’m having one of those days when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life.
But who wants to mention that real stuff? I mean, it’s boring and depressing, right? RIGHT?
Better to treat Facebook like a never-ending sales conference where the job is to convince everyone else we’re dizzy with happiness and success.
At least that’s clearly what I was telling myself until TWO dear friends of mine separately opened up to me about the year they’ve had.
Each admitted they were struggling with bouts of depression and had been in a black hole. To say I was shocked is an understatement.
“But you seemed so happy on Facebook!” I said to each of them.
And you know what they both said?
They each looked at me as though I had rocks in my head and said, “Oh come on, you can’t believe what’s on Facebook”.
How did we get to this point, people? When did we all think we needed to treat Facebook like an enormous PR campaign for our lives?
You see that’s the thing with social media … by curating our lives like a resume – by editing out the dud moments, the stuff ups, the pear-shaped days – we’re creating a two-fold problem:
1. By pretending our lives are PERFECT we paint ourselves into a corner. It becomes harder and harder to admit that the version of our lives we’re ‘promoting’ is not the one we’re living and it can stop us from reaching out for help – to our friends, family or even to take the steps we need for professional help. So we just feel like big ol’ frauds but feel like we can’t reach out to anyone and say our lives are total crappola at the moment.
2. The other problem of course is that if so many of us are just continually fake smiling our way through Facebook, it can lead other people to thinking they are alone – alone in having a bad parenting day (or month, or, er, year). Alone in sometimes hating their job, or feeling blah about what they’re studying or being single or married or whatever.
Telling the truth is scary, I get that. But it’s liberating too … and it’s often when we admit to a screw up or a bad day that deeper connections are made with our family and friends.
So this year I intend to tell the truth on Facebook. To remind everyone who knows me that I’m not superwoman, that I don’t live a perfect life or get things right all the time. After all, a highlights reel is always so much better when the bloopers are thrown in.
So in 2014, I’m keepin’ it real. Who’s with me?
Do you often find yourself lying on Facebook?
Top Comments
I don't have Facebook and one of the reasons is because you are talking to a group of people at once rather than an individual, and therefore you have to be superficial to a certain degree. I prefer email (or face to face old fashioned thing that I am) because for instance if you are depressed you can talk or email or phone a good friend and tell them your problem e.g. I cried myself to sleep last night because my husband was talking about leaving me (or whatever the problem is) but would you announce that to a group of friends if 20 of you were all out having a meal? Probably not because it's not private and apart from that you'd get 20 different opinions. Also I have friends for different purposes, some you can confide in them but others you can only have fun or a good laugh with, those kind of people are often useless in listening to your problem as they just want to joke around. Then you get the judgemental or bossy people who may be good for certain practical problems eg if you need an urgent babysitter they will drop everything to help you or will cook for you when you are sick but tell them that your husband is thinking of leaving you and they will start lecturing you, eg "well I noticed that time I was over cooking for you when you were sick that your house was very messy and a man likes to come home to a clean house, you really need to keep your house clean if you want to keep him." The point is all these people have their strengths but they are not necessarily all people you can or should tell your problems to if you want a sympathetic ear. Therefore because Facebook is a group mentality it has to be superficial. And personally I much prefer to see my friends individually (though of course the occasional group get together is fun) so I can have a real conversation. Yet the number of people who try to force me to use Facebook who just don't get where I'm coming from, they say "oh but you can still send private messages via Facebook." Yes but I already do that via email so I don't need Facebook. Oh BTW I get the irony that I speak to a group here but the difference is it is anonymous and also I'm not talking about anything really private anyway (but because it's anonymous I could if I chose to)
I tend to get the opposite. I tend to get criticised for being too HONEST about my life. The ups AND the downs. If Facebook or any social media isn't a good place to educate each other that life isn't a big bowl of cherries and each person deals with life circumstances differently because our perceptions of the world around us then I'm perplexed. We can't continuously pretend that our jobs are wonderful and we're being lorded over with praise for our great work. We can't pretend we aren't suffering when our supposed life partner in marriage decides to leave without any notification. Well we could but why lie about our hurts and pains. But apparently, it's not what people want to hear.