Welcome to the real world

I do remember the world before social media quite well and the excitement that I felt after moving to London and New York. I remember going to nightclubs and meeting people, both friends and new friends. Furthermore, I was part of a popular crowd and usually went home with phone numbers.

When I started partying at the legendary Roxy Nightclub in New York in 1998, guys would write down their numbers on flyers or other pieces of paper. Back in New York, people like my friend Francesco and I were like butterflies. We were flying and walking around, and usually those nights were followed by dates in the real world.

I was thinking about what happened to people since they stopped going out and started spending more time on their phones and how society has changed since then. One of the advantages of being born at a different time is clearly that we have known a different time.

Back in the days it was more about connecting with people close to us, meeting friends, and getting to know new ones. Since I left my parents' home a long time ago, it has always been about making new friends at new places. And it was never about finding new "followers."

What I noticed is that real-life events tend to be blown up on social media, where some people take the opportunity to get the kind of attention that they might not get in the real world.

My parents had a fire on their farm twenty years ago. There were burning cows running around and an entire stable burning down. The event was very traumatic for my parents, but I cannot remember my father calling the local newspaper. He didn’t try to get all the attention he could get so that others would feel sorry for him and write about “some angels having watched over him”.

I heard about the bad weather on the East Coast of the States last weekend. One friend told me that she was without electricity on the Outer Banks and made the best of the situation. She didn’t complain and got on with that situation. She didn’t make a spectacle about herself, and I felt that this was the right way to go.

The people in the Ukraine have feared Russian bombs falling from the sky for the last past four years. They are also getting on with life in a rather scary real world.

But other events are quite often portrayed as overly dramatic on social media. When some people mention a fire half a mile away from their home during harsh weather, then they forget to mention the brave firefighters who arrived quickly and put them out.

Instead, readers get the impression that they were up all night and trying to protect their homes all by themselves, the way my father did many years ago when a part of his estate was actually going off in flames.

I believe that another part of the problem with social media is that people tend to portray themselves or others close to them in a way that has nothing to do with reality. Okay, I admit it, when it is my children’s birthday, then I tend to post a picture and wish them well. BUT I am staying away from describing them as the best and highly outstanding children, which they might find incredibly embarrassing themselves when they get older one day.

Let me give you an example. A few years ago, we had a friend and her two daughters over in New York and I cleaned up our apartment and bought treats for everyone. As a single male parent, I always tried to be the best parent for my children, while I am working two jobs to provide a top education for them and teaching them about having respect for others.

What really upset me was when my daughter made me aware the next day that her friend had made hurtful and judgmental remarks about our home and tried to make her feel bad and sad behind my back while the girls were in the bathroom. So, I informed the mother about the incident, and the best thing she could do was recommend a cleaner for deep cleaning to me instead of apologizing for her daughter's behavior.

A few years later she congratulated her daughter on her birthday on Instagram and described her as genuinely kind and gracious and truly beautiful inside and out. Hm, I had to pause for a moment after I wrote that sentence. I wonder if some people feel the need to write that on social media so that they can actually start believing it and convert the virtual world into the real world. This would be a world that I and other friends of mine, who already quit social media, would rather stay away from.

This morning I am sitting in Starbucks in Eixample while writing this article, and everybody here is staring at the phone while missing out on the real world. I am not going to many parties anymore, but there are so many ways to enjoy the real world and create real memories instead of reading those spectacular posts about others on social media.

Last Saturday I told my kids that we would go for a walk. We took the metro, and I showed them my daily walk to the office before we checked out a fast-food restaurant on the beach and actually felt the sand underneath our feet later.

And then on Sunday my son and I went to Poble Sec, where he hadn’t been before. We went for a hike and enjoyed the good views of the city. But what really touched me was that my son appreciated the time which we spent together – in the real world.