I was wondering if I am the only localite who hovers over to the comment section on social media to figure out who am I living amongst in modern Malaysia. It is at times, a rarity to find a decent person; at least in my experience so far — but being Malaysian myself, I am pretty accustomed to the local vernacular and often brush off any animosity because being polite is our culture or a lack thereof. Times have changed, and so did the internet lingua franca.
The problem with keeping up to my own idea of genteelness is that – it is either making me believe that I am out of touch with any sort of modernity or I am no longer emotionally stable for the world of digits. I would imagine, we have all exercised the mental detox required to be part of the internet community but who is the ‘we’ am I really addressing here? This is at its best an echo chamber of my own voice if it is not combusted by the comment section.
I have never honestly asked myself, why the comment sections on my private (and largely isolated) social media accounts were always silent, when I am infamous for creating conversations out of blue skies and chirping birds. The absence of interaction piqued my interest but I decided this was not an experiment to surgically pursue as it became obvious to me that, everyone on my social media were people I have worked together with, on something – somehow, somewhere. They were the people who had a perception of my humour.
Besides the comment section, I am also a huge fan of video creators. I am capable of doom scrolling for hours, just to let my mind go about on a stroll into the deep, dark, unknown woods, rather than deal with the mundane reality of an existential crisis. I don't know if I am relating this to my reader out of pride, but whatever there is with this thing that we call as happiness, well it exists for me, because of videos. Not *ASMR, let me be clear. Those always send the shivers down my spine and I have gone to the extent of ending friendships with people who encourage me to experience that.
My favourite online creators are often changing I have realised; this is something I have enjoyed because the abundance of creators available today, ensure that I am not left to harp and cello myself in love with a superstar who is halfway across the world; that just knowing my love is an unrequitted love – shall keep me wide awake, dangling myself on the crescent moon. No, never. Romantics irk me but romanticism is impressive and I like being a cheat, but I will never be on *Reddit. At least, that is what I am believing about me right now, at the time of writing.
I had once tried to explain to an internet friend that life as we know it is not an illusion as he claimed, but he refused to accept what I was saying because he was so afraid that if he agreed with me, I would un-friend him (which is something I will get back to in a bit, once this paragraph is over) — anyway he says, nothing in life is permanent and the temporal effects of our experiences are just mere facts of what beings such as us, humans need to endure.
I thought that was not thoughtful. In my point of view it seemed obvious that life is not illusionary. If I were to lift a cup, I lifted it, regardless of whether it was empty or full. I did it. Undoubtedly, I was never going to unfriend him, but I suppose that was the illusion I gave out as it all turns out quite fair, really, if we were to run by his Pythagorean theorem of solutions. See, I am never ever going to be interested with being right, I am often just focused on trying to live a life that is outside the realms of my morbid doom scrolling and filter choices.
I am attempting everyday, to smell the roses and to continue embarking on my perilous journey of finding out whether or not a biscuit is tasteless. It is as if I have bloomed into becoming my favourite essayist's essay, when Donna Haraway wrote, in A Cyborg Manifesto “Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not re-member the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection – they seem to have a natural feel for united-front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriachal capitalism, not to mention state socialism.”
*ASMR: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is a term used to describe a tingling sensation that some individuals experience in response to specific auditory or visual stimuli.
*Reddit: A discussion website often referred to as “the front page of the internet” due to its vast array of topics and the active participation of its community.
Nina Nanthini is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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