social media

"Comparison is the thief of joy" - Franklin D. Roosevelt

On the 07:41, tired fingers repeat downwards movements on tired screens. Change the backdrop to a sterile, white lab and you feel part of a nineties sci-fi movie. The robotic routine repeats.

Swipe, swipe, swipe, tap tap, swipe, tap tap, swipe... 

As the train heads towards a world of screens, retinas dart momentarily away in search of a break, before being fixated back to a conveyor belt of images that appear below. To the untrained mind, the photos that rush by show no more than a display saturated with unoriginal aesthetics: bikinis, bars, beaches, boyfriends, blurrrr... the scrolling hits top gear. 

The picture I'm presenting is not one that would be sent onto the conveyor belt itself. Whilst it sounds like a dystopian mirage constructed in Charlie Brooker's imagination, this is a reality that lies much closer to home than 90% of what appears on our screens. 

Yet our brains don't agree. Whilst our exteriors represent a glassy haze, our minds are going twelve rounds. Every photo represents an opportunity for our self-esteem to compare and contrast, collating evidence by which to cripple itself. We put ourselves up against selected, filtered, edited supermodels in the most corrupt game of Top Trumps the world has ever seen. 

adulthood

As the 07:41 train to Horsham trundles towards the platform, at 07:43, auto-pilot is in operation. In fact, the body is in cruise control from the moment the alarm goes off: snooze, alarm, snooze, alarm, up, shower, hairdryer, clothes, teeth, breakfast, walk, station, machine, ticket, platform.

The day's first hour leaves the brain dormant. In such vacant moments, the realities of post-university life dawn. On the platform, one glance left and right reveals generations of routine. My one month of commuting into the city is a microcosm compared to those alongside me. The biosphere of adulthood drifts towards responsibility, one train at a time.

A train carriage is a melting pot of professional diversity. All it takes is a sense of intrigue and you're whisked onto a safari of the British commute. C-level executives send micro-troops into virtual battle on their iPhone screens, sometimes even paying for bonuses with their corporate coiffeur. Others engage in personal conversations via WhatsApp, sending loving, angry or even sexually explicit messages to their respective other halves. Then there's us, collectively observing the above.

Some of these people have been programmed into this routine for longer than I have been alive. The previous 23 years probably seem like a bit of a blur for them, a frightening prospect for this year's rookie. From the up, down, left, right dynamism of university, travelling and every adventure that graces our early adulthood, we suddenly attach ourselves to a binary cord between home and office, receding to the mean. Damn.