Last night I was out sat by the river having a quiet beer. It was a fairly quiet evening and gave me the opportunity to plan my winter trip to Bali and Australia.
About thirty minutes in I noticed that my phone was vibrating a lot. I didn’t actually want to take a phone call, but as it was someone that I had not spoken to for a few months I answered the call. This person I will not name but in all the years that I have known them I had never heard them so frustrated, or high pitched.
They began the conversation by saying that their partner of twelve years had walked out on them. That did surprise me. I recall the summer that they met. I had just moved to London at the time and recall them meeting his girlfriend for the first time. Over the years their love, if anything, had become stronger. Not once did they forget their anniversary since they married in 2006, and they were always holding hands like two teenagers on the first date. The last time that I saw them they were talking about starting a family. Both are the same age as me but worked hard int their careers in order to become financially stable first.
The first thing that I asked was why did his wife walk out. He started going on about she was seeing someone else and that he had ended the marriage because of her cheating. I was certainly taken back when he mentioned this as in all the time I had known them I would have thought she or he would have been the last person to have been deceitful.
As the conversation continued he told me more and more about how he had trusted her, and that she had thrown all the love and time that they had spent together back in his face. So the only thing I could do was try to be the peacemaker. I suggested that I call her, get her side of the story and then see exactly what had happened. He was fine with this, so I got another beer and gave his wife a call.
To cut a long phone call short, this is what had happened. My friend had seen his wife like another guys photograph on Facebook twice in two days and assumed that she was cheating on him. He changed his relationship status to “It’s complicated” and then to “Single” before “It’s complicated again”. Over something so trivial that I still cannot quite work out the issues here.
Social media surely has placed an emphasis on how people react when it comes to being with someone. There are those who quite literally live for Facebook, there are some who are addicted to Instagram, and there are those who are Twitter addicts. Each of these sites plays a role in a new generation of how we interact with people. It’s not too far to say that social networking sites such as those have changed our lives. We meet people that we have never met and call them friends, we are closer to those we admire or respect more than ever before. It’s almost like Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother idea has come to life thanks to small devices that fit in our pockets.
Yet I find it insane. Yes, websites like these are useful, and technology has certainly made us closer to each other than at any time before. Call me old fashioned (or just call me old) but I remember when we had to take coins to a phone box in order to get connected.
There is a big wide world out there that we can explore, we can actually meet strangers and get to know them as friends through the old interaction of talking and looking them in the eye. If we live our lives through social media websites then, as with my friends, the slightest form of social interaction can possibly destroy lives.
I’m happy to say that there is a happy end to this tale. Both my friends have made up and have, as of now, taken their Facebook profiles offline. The Sensible thing to do certainly. They still send each other text messages when we are in bars together, so there love will live on through their technology addiction.
But take some advice. It’s a good idea to turn off your computers, switch off your phone and see the world through eyes rather than a green eyed jealous technology addicted monster.
Also both have approved this blog post to be written 🙂
