“Should” is an insidious word. It’s a concept that creeps up on you and affects how you think about the world. “Should” implies a desire that’s rooted in obligation or a societal driving force. Doing something because you “should” implies you don’t actually want to do it.
I should study this if I want to become wealthy. I should do this if I want people to like me. I should work out if I want to look good.
I try my best to eliminate “should"s from my life. Whenever I want something or feel like doing something, I try to ask myself if I want it intrinsically or if I only want it because society says I should want it. It takes discipline and I don’t think I’ve been doing a particularly good job; looking around me now I realize there’s a lot in my environment that came to be because of these “should"s instead of genuine wants or needs.
I’ve also been thinking about how so many “should"s are driven by social media. Social media perpetuates an ideal view of reality - which is to say, unreality - that each person tries to project.
Social media includes communities like Reddit and Hacker News as well. Hang around any community long enough and you start to start to notice how everyone seems to share the same opinions and sentiments. Anyone posting sentiments aligning with the group gets rewarded with visibility. Anyone who steps out of line gets left at the bottom of the pile. Any community will gradually shift towards homogeneity as it grows. Groupthink and self-censorship reign supreme.
I should not post my opinion because I might get downvoted.
People feel compelled to post on Facebook or Instagram things that make them seem happier than they are. More specifically, posts are curated from events with a generally happy sentiment. We know this leads to a biased view of someone’s life and how it results in a societal feedback loop where everyone wants to appear as happy as Jane next door. This is not a controversial view. In fact I’d wager most everyone is painfully aware of this, yet still find it incredibly difficult to break away.
I’ve never used any of the traditional social media platforms - Facebook (I did use this for a few days), Twitter, Instagram. I have no desire to curate my life for social media, but I’ve come to realize that perhaps I could still stand to benefit from using it. I notice that whenever I enter a new phase in my life, I tend to lose relationships from the previous phase. From high school, to national service, to university, to work. I believe this is largely due to me not having a social media presence. The world has moved on and people no longer keep in touch with blogs and email. Without being compliant with society’s expectation of having a social media presence, the friction to maintain relationships has become too high to be tenable.
I should use social media if I want to keep in touch with my friends.
What prompted this introspection was the spate of friends here at Carousell who’ve decided to move on. It’s apparent that these friendships are going to be quickly eroded and lost. When I leave as well, I expect I’ll lose whatever remaining relationships I have left.
To that end, I’m considering finally setting up a social media account. I hope it will help me to maintain more casual relationships. However I’m still a little hesitant to do so because companies like Facebook expend an enormous amount of energy getting users to use their platforms as much as possible. My worry is that the excess will creep in eventually and I’ll be left in no better a position than I am now. This post is partly meant as a marker in time for myself to look back on, to provide perspective on whether the “should"s have crept in.