The Nonsensical Journal

Being a social cynic is becoming increasingly difficult… let me clarify that a little more, being a cynic and being able to maintain a social life often do not complement each other. The problem it seems is that not many people are receptive to cynicism (or humor associated with cynicism) as it directly opposes their reality they have ingeniously built out of denial.

This is not an exaggeration

People tend to forget that inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist; at the core of it all I am an idealist who is constantly disappointed as life goes on… I have grand idealistic notions of how mankind should behave, and I have personal idealistic notions of how I should be… both of which have resulted in severe disappointment, leaving behind this friendly neighborhood cynic.

Growing up in The Middle East it’s easy to be a cynic; as a child my pets did not “visit a farm”, they flat out died… Santa did not come crawling down a chimney (mostly because we had no chimney, I suppose a make-believe chimney would have been “too much”) instead my parents got me gifts… making Christmas really about them, and it was easier to believe in my parents than it was Santa or Jesus; my parents are tangible.

Back to this social thing I was talking about earlier… let us not confuse or distort the fact that social in the 21^st century is, ipso facto, maintaining a social media account… or several if you wish to keep up with your immediate society… Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, MySpace, etc… so many accounts so little time; therefore I almost always leave their maintenance to my online Alter Ego.

Now the majority of us have online Alter Egos; that side of you that doesn’t reflect properly when you are mucking about in “real life”… sometimes it seems as if things are fake, but they are not… The online alter ego is a representation of all the things that your mind has to filter through in real life, while being out and about and actually surrounded by real people, not by virtual faces represented through avatars, handles and nicknames…

So, who am I? Am I the person that people see on a day to day basis, or am I my alter ego?

Quite simply; I’m both… while my courteous, social, friendly demeanor smiles back at your conversation, the alter ego is smirking at you, while yelling at me “Tell them they’re idiots! For fucks sake, grow a pair and say something man!”

I’d rather not though, I would rather have all these venomous thoughts and ideas spill out while I am safely behind an inanimate flickering screen that cannot punch me square in the face… it doesn’t really flicker, but it’s always a nice visual effect as we have all seen in the movies…

Also why is it “Square” in the face? If anything the business end of your fist seems more of a rectangle, shouldn’t it be “punch you rectangular in the face”?… Something to contemplate next time you’re on the toilet…

It’s also difficult maintaining a cynical blog and having people you know read it… they often have a compelling need to discuss things posted in person; making for a very awkward moment between me, myself and my alter ego… oh and the person talking to me of course… if I post it online, I expect the answer online, I don’t expect an answer in real life and I most certainly am not expecting, nor am I open to, a debate about what I wrote…

This is my blog, this is my writing, and these are my thoughts and while I respect your thoughts and set of (idiotic) beliefs, please do the same for me… and by all means, feel free to call me an idiot within the sanctity of your mind, because chances are I’m reciprocating the favor…

I recently deleted my private Instagram account in favor of a non-private, mostly follow only, Instagram account; basically an account that I can stalk my friends with as I subscribe to being a voyeur to their exhibitionism, and vice versa…

Within two minutes of deleting the account I received a phone call about it, and within one hour it was a minuscule topic of curiosity… this lead me to a sudden realization; should we wake up one day and find that all our access to social media has been revoked, the public will be galvanized by mass hysteria and society as we know it will implode, and an illogical frenzy will take hold of us as we devolve and crumble into a post-apocalyptic world akin to that of Mad Max (Thunder-Dome not included)

If you don’t know who Mad Max is, or what a Thunder-Dome is, you are either too young or had a very horrible childhood…

Not convinced? Then you must be one of the very few and rare group of individuals who the term “socializing with friends” does not mean face in smart phone as you sit next to a friend doing the same… I am not sure that you people exist anymore; in fact chances are the majority of you are reading this over your smart phone/tablet…

Now this modern age of mixing social media with… ummm… unsocial real life?… well, mixing social media, with whatever it is we think we do in real life, has been the major contributing factor to my uninspired blogging, and overall loss of interest in writing (publicly at least) You post something and people you see start to talk to you with a sideways glance, almost as if they’re taunting you, daring you to realize you’re (according to what they perceive) a hypocrite.

If an Atheist exclaims “Jesus Christ!” that doesn’t make him a hypocrite, perhaps a tad blasphemous in the eyes of the pious, but certainly not hypocritical, mostly because this has become a term we use in casual conversation… if an atheist is using it to pray his way out of a situation, then yes by all means he is a hypocrite.

It’s not hypocritical for you to be two different people online and offline… in fact, it is the healthiest thing you can do… All this social media can become a vent for you to release all those thoughts you held back as you walk around the offline world encountering all what you encounter… there is so much bullshit going on in the offline world that it sometimes begins to seem that online is where the bullshit ends; but it doesn’t really, it’s where the bullshit started and spilled out into the offline realm.

So log on, and exercise your alter ego, let that silenced voice in your head yell and scream, put the pedal to the metal on the information superhighway and be as reckless as you can… the only thing you can hurt is your keyboard, and with all the porn you watch all day your keyboard can handle it…