Disclaimer

In the age of social networking, I find that most of my connection to the outside world is through what I view and read online. To me, this feels unfortunate, but also has its benefits. On one hand, the convenience that social networks offer, by making the world as accessible as it has now become, is infinitely valuable. I can visit places I've never been and most likely never will. I can communicate with people, I would otherwise never meet in real life and strengthen relationships with friends, old and new, that would be impossible to achieve in other ways. I can also educate myself in any subject I could ever dream of exploring. However, the flip side of the conveniences and accessibility the web affords us, is that living through your computer robs one of the actual experiences, and can never serve as a replacement for the real time ability to touch, taste, feel and see.

In addition to that, most people I come across, myself included, create an "online" personality which is different from who we are in our day to day dealings. Social networking lends itself to perpetuating the notion of our perfect self. We tend to censor information, both good and bad, depending on the audience we are playing to. We are in virtual control of what we want the cyber world to know and to not know about our person, our family and our lifestyles. People do this kind of self editing in real life as well, but the anonymity of the computer screen adds an extra buffer, making it even easier to do.

It begs the question, at least for me, to ponder whether any of it is real? Is the information that has become so accessible to us merely fantasy or actual reality? Do we really know people in the way we think we do? Is the information we seek accurate or simply someones opinion devoid of fact to back it up. I think we as a culture, have become complacent to accept everything we read and see as the truth, whether it be about people, places or things. Prior to the age of the internet, one had to actually engage in the fact finding process themselves to research anything they wanted to know about- relationships included.

Nothing will ever replace face to face contact. Social networking, blogs and other informative websites will never be able to offer the same level of empirical data that can only be gained through other means, away from our computers, but none the less, they do serve a purpose.

And with that said, please read this blog bearing all of this in mind. As much as I try to remove the self editing button, there's no way to completely get rid of it. Anything I may blog about is being channeled through my unique perspective, mostly born of my feelings and not actual fact. Even personal experiences that I will recall, are memorialized in my mind based on perspective at the time and not necessarily what factually happened. As with all memories, thoughts and feelings, people will remember and interpret the same events and information much differently from one another. Each recounting is as unique as the person who is telling the story. I suppose this is what makes the age of the internet so interesting and valuable, but only one small part of the whole. Its up to us, individually, to fill in the gaps to attain our own truths, if that's what you seek.