This was going to be a Facebook post and it got away from me. It sounds like a video in my head, but that’s because I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts and vlogs lately.  Maybe I’ll make into a video, but probably not, Maybe....

So I have a confess to make and I swear it’s not as creepy as it sounds.

Sometimes I look at the “people you may know” feature of Facebook or Instagram. I’ll click on a profile of someone who I don’t know-  or think I don’t know but looks * a little* familiar. I’ll make guesses as to who our friends in common are. I’ll look over whatever they choose to publicly post, particularly photographs.  Occasionally, I’ll do this with people who post on groups too, but then it’s mostly so I get some sense of who I’m talking to. 

 I realize social media is currated. We’re looking at the high points- or in some cases the very low points that people will share for the sake of letting others know they aren’t alone. (You aren’t by the way.)

I realize that what we see on Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter or whatever is coming next is not, in the strictest sense, real. Not quite real, anyway. Even those of us who strive for total transparency in our online lives are restricted by the tools at our disposal, or our ability to express ourselves.

For the record, I’ve always found total online transparency to be very very weird.

But I digress.

Sometimes, I look at the social media of complete strangers, and even within the context of the above, and adjusting for whatever bias I might have, I think... “They are amazing. I hope they know that.”