welcome to the real world

I saw the Social Network last week, there was a phrase in how I want to be becomes I am on FB. I then I also came across a great article in Russian. I thought it is so great I set down and translated it. 

The original article in case you can read and understand Russian and my translation is below. 

Simulacra and Simulation

If you look around, it turns out that the world is populated by Thingumys and Bobs. 

A friend dropped by accident a pair of scissors in the washing machine and those spinning in it have made holes in his favourite shirt. Our mutual friend, trying to console him made a joke that this is the cheaper version when your ex-girlfriend in a fit of jealousy cuts all your expensive shirts. This cheered my friend up and in the evening he wrote in English on Twitter how he is taking out of the washing machine his shredded Hugo Boss shirts and on went the joke about the ex-girlfriend. “This is my joke and he has only one proper shirt, I know for sure.” Our mutual friend complained the next day. We started at first blaming our friend, but soon we realized that it was a reasonable behaviour. The silly mishap became a 140 characters essay on human nature and brought joy to 78 people in different parts of the world (and this is not counting those who read the retweets). A moderately funny joke has gained immortality. And as far as the shirt is concerned – who has more than one normal shirt these days anyways? 

According to Facebook status updates all my friends live on airplanes flying from one interesting place to another. Do hell of a lot of reading, re-watch Godard by night and drink champagne in the morning. They masterfully cook something and eat it with pleasure immediately. Their lives are full of paradoxes and lucky coincidences. Rare failures, mistakes and the sudden fever cast just a mere shadow over the course of their otherwise brilliant lives, not allowing them to finally turn into monuments of their own coolness. I hate them all.

The exception – those who I sometimes meet personally. About them I actually know they are boring and borrow 150 rubels until pay day. The airplanes are not taking them where they want, but where it happened to take them. They are in a mid life crisis (especially those at the age of 25) and have a job where they sit until 2 am finishing something they should have finished a week ago. If you stop by on a weekend it will turn up they are lying on the floor and are watching the rerun of Dady’s daughters (a Russian sitcom). They take anti-depressants. They are losing weight and do not pay back their loans. They talk non-sense, but more often do non-sensical things. You cannot help liking them, especially reading the kind of stuff they write about themselves on Facebook.

Social networks of course are not the ones to blame. The habit of loving and hating not the actual person, but rather their personally created phantoms appeared a thousand years before Twitter. From early childhood we are taught to consider poor writers bad people, and the good ones – role models eventhough their biographies show it is the other way around most of the times. Not a long time ago on the St. Petersburg - Moscow train I met one of the worst directors in the country, could be even in the world. He turned out to be a most likeable person, a fan of Morrissey and the Riga Film Studio movies about the capitalist countries. Approaching Leningrad train station, we simultaneously confessed to each other that before this meeting we considered each other monsters, we than exchanged a hug and our phone numbers. 

Wasting half our lives to look smarter and better we naturally forget that the freak that comes out as a result – is not really us. It is not us on the NTV channel who are talking in such a manner as though someone has pinched our nuts. It is not us who half an hour before the deadline ridicule an old filmmaker who has shot a harmless non-sensical movie. It is not us who are loudly commenting on things that we have no idea about and make sharp jokes in a situation where it might be better to shut up. We are actually better, and if not better than at least easier to understand and more touching. Even Putin is, even George Bush is, even the girl, who is once again photographing her legs on a Leica camera is.