Ego and the Good Book: Haha, Sad, Love, Wow, and Angry, oh my!

like

Like Me, Baby…

Haven’t you heard? Life is a popularity contest or that’s what it seems like to me, measured by likes, follows, shares and the results from the latest click-bait from the latest click-mills; whoever has the most likes, follows and shares pretty much wins, when all is said and done, and all the races have been run.

You get 1 point per like, 3 points per follow, and 5 points per share, or something like that, I’m not so sure, so I’ll have to talk to my accountant.  Whoever gets the most points by the time they die will win, of course.  What irony!  You have to die to win!  And to the victor go the spoils!

Just kidding! So all you click-bait entrepreneurs, please note: my jaw drops for nothing and I’m not easily impressed. But wait, hold the freakin’ presses! We’ve just received the latest news from above. Facebook is now about more than just casually ‘liking’. Now there are ‘reactions’: Like, Follow, Share, plus Love, Haha, Sad, Wow, and Angry!

That should be worth a few billion on the balance sheet. You still can’t ‘dislike’, though, of course, as that would unleash a horde of furies, but at least we can now nuance the subtleties of a certain displeasure without angering the powers that be…

Then there are ‘shared economies’ like Air BnB, Uber, etc. which are anything but… more like vanity license plates on self-indulgent Kardashian buttocks, that refuse to lie down in non-hostile hostels or sit down on the public trams of public trans: just imagine, now we have self-driving cars! But I’d rather have my own private driver or take over your house and use it as my own, maybe even abuse it all night long, if I happen to get lucky.

Self-popularity rules, in the Age of Ego, Narcisism and Vanity. Yes, by all appearances a person is now usually measured by his ‘likes’, ‘follows’, ‘shares’ and not the sale of common stock, much less legal tender, but payment in kind, a nod and a wink and an invitation to drink, with long-term payment options and a flurry of hand movements under the table.

A little technology is a dangerous thing, and ego is a tough nut to crack…but still it must be, rendered asunder and demolished down under. Kill yourself! Annihilate your ego! Destroy the appendages of personality that serve no good purpose! A new razor shaves clean; scrape the surface and start again, a tabula rasa that stands upright, cuneiform for the creative, uniforms for the armies of night.

My nemesis once confided in me that I was the most ego-defensive person he had ever met, no small irony since he was the most ego-offensive person that I’ve ever met. Still it would be nice to forego all negotiations of personality and all considerations of style, and allow us to focus on the bizniz of this world: greatest happiness for the greatest number! But still: I am so lucky to have a nemesis, as such doppelgangers are hard to find and even harder to maintain, a warped mirror for self-reflection, loyal to the end…

Still: wouldn’t it be nice to avoid such bluffs and feints, and such tough-love rants? Confrontations are the enemy, regardless of the content. No one needs to be told when we’re being an a$$hole, as most of us already know it. We need to be told when we’re doing something right, so as to (drum roll here, please): …”Accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, Latch on to the affirmative, Don’t mess with Mister In-Between” (Mercer /Arlen). All too often that’s me; so time for a change…