Cry out for help to break through the happiness BS in social media

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Nowadays, we're so busy liking our friends' photos of their last trip to Indonesia or Italy, or a video of their clever toddler or even those funny memes that are generated after every happening in and outside the internets, that we're losing sight of reality.

If one is observant enough, there's a very huge difference between the real world and the Internet.

When you meet friends in the so-called real world, your conversations are balanced between happy and sad stuff. Some people are luckier than others in life, but truth is, there's misery out there, and bad luck strikes everyone.

On the other hand, on the Internet we tend to share only happy stuff.

The latter seems to get more reactions, but are we doing it on purpose? Are we thinking long term? Let's analyse this.

Full disclosure: the aim of this post is not to discuss this with scientific data. Rather, I'm just giving food for thought so we might trigger interesting debates out there.

The real world

This past week, I have analysed the conversations I have had outside of the Internet. I have talked to clients, relatives, friends and random people I've exchanged more than two sentences with. This amounts to 65 different conversations of different length.

In a staggering 90%, these conversations included talking about what we'd qualify as "bad news":

  • My mom got laid off her job.
  • A friend is about to break up with his girlfriend.
  • Another friend of mine has been lied to in her MBA and that will affect her professional plans.
  • One of my best friends had a terrible discussion with his significant other.
  • A relative of mine might be suffering from depression.
  • Another relative of mine is worried about her company not renewing her contract.
  • The car of a client of mine broke down one hour before our meeting.
  • Another friend/client of mine is not getting paid for her services by someone else.
  • An entrepreneur I met will have to close his startup.
  • etc.

These are some examples of the topics that have been brought up. Most likely, these won't end up on my Facebook timeline.

We, humans, are empathic - as always: some are more than others - and will only share bad news when delving into a good conversation with a friend. We feel like sharing the bad news to unwind, and sometimes we just need a coffee with a friend to pull them out from our insides.

On the other hand, when disclosing these bad news with a friend, they just stop there. They might share them with other close friends, their relatives or their significant other, but will rarely ever spread them massively.

The Internet

The Internet is all about the contrary: happiness, faux joy, forced positivism that really does not reflect what's going on in the World. Those who denounce or share "not chessy" posts rarely get any attention.

Think about all of this when you're about to fill in this box again:

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Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit

Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit

CEO and Founder at MarsBased and Director at Startup Grind Barcelona. I run a team of 20 people, where I spearhead the sales and strategy areas. My background in consulting and development (ex-Deloitte, ex-VASS) and my international profile help me with the technical and the business perspective. I love loud guitars, cats, travelling and tacos.