How Will I Get Noticed If I'm Not On Social Media In 2022? / Respond! Respond! Respond!

We Americans celebrate, relish, elevate, & award ourselves relative to our penchant for creating and consuming entertainment.  It is a mainstay of who we are as a people.  And almost all of it is exported around the globe to other western (& even some eastern) cultures.  Hence, it is a massive component of our economy and therefore our identity as Americans.

With the advent of the Internet, social media eventually came on the scene, and it was there that our obsession with entertainment truly went into overdrive.

Interestingly, social media eschewed the stigma associated with other forms of interactive electronic media (video games).  Instead, it vaulted into the mainstream as the next must-have gee whiz experience, and of course what helped in that regard was its "pro bono" availability.  Therefore, per my research, there are billions of people engaging therein (mostly via their pocket computers).

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Do yourself a favor this year.  Delete your social media accounts and remove their apps from your pocket computers.  

If you'll do this, I promise you your quality of life will improve, and this will primarily occur within the category of your walk with God.

Three fantastic benefits of dumping social media in 2022:

-  You'll no longer be influenced by the endless barrage of stupidity that's thrown at you via these networks.

-  If you're a parent, you can set a great example for your children of how best to use their time online (& offline).

-  You'll no longer be hooked on the notion that others actually care about your posts (via their responses).

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Let's break these down further:

1.  Everything you watch, read, listen to is making an impact - Christ affirming or not - on your brain.  If you're a Christian, and as such, consider the Bible of utmost importance, it's clear in this regard.  Therefore, being extremely cautious as to what you allow yourself to be exposed to is a no-brainer for God's people.

Social media is designed to keep you engaged.  Similar to broadcast television, viewership is of primo importance because the more viewers, the more the corporations behind these entertainment venues can charge for advertisements.  It's important to understand this, I believe, in order to best remain focused on their true intent.

2.  Entertainment's hierarchical place within we westerners is typically seeded when we're children.  And it's our parents / guardians who demonstrate / educate us in this regard.  

I would argue that if you truly care about your children, you'll swallow hard / make your priorities what you want their priorities to be (as grown ass adults).

3.  Gloating is what social media is built on.  Whether you're gloating about yourself, your family, your work, your hobbies, your pets, your vacations, and on and on.  But the hook is in the response(s).  You know, those little thumbs up symbols or some flippant comment someone makes about your posts.

If you're into gloating, you likely have a penchant for envy.  Envy is sin.  Social media is a wide-open playing field for envy.  24/7/365.  Envy is such the toxin that it catalogs.  Monitoring / tracking others' lives over time.  It's a horribly pagan activity that's inexcusable amongst God's people. 

Human beings care exclusively about one thing:  themselves.  We may pretend that we give a damn about others, but in comparison to our self-centeredness, it's a miniscule amount.  Hence, the notion that we engage in social media in order to "keep in touch with our out-of-state family / friends" is bullshit.  What our wretched hearts long for is attention, comfort, exclusivity, and entitlement.  Social media feeds into that wretchedness.  It was invented for it.  And that's ultimately why it should be avoided by Christians.

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2022 is going to be a great year.  Think of how God will honor / bless your decision to decouple from social media.  For good.  

Lagniappe  

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Unpack It & Grieve (If Appropriate)

Compartmentalization is the process of capturing and subsequently locking away pain.  That container is constructed of a series of emotionally reinforced mental partitions, often hastily and no doubt in reaction to the intensity of the (oft unexpected) situation.  

For experience (life) is like a river that carries you along.  Especially during childhood.  But when you find yourself unexpectedly dejected (or otherwise) like I wrote about a few posts back (Wednesday, 1/5), the most viable reaction at the time may very well be compartmentalization.  For emotional overload is just that.  Overload. 

Please consider this post as a "Part 2".  I'm going to detail how I successfully unpacked my aforementioned childhood swimming pool physical assault experience - over the course of our end-of-2021 vacation week - prior to discussing what I've determined to be the next step (within an inevitable "Part 3" post).

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Unpacking takes strength and visibility of oneself (whilst in relation to what was compartmentalized) relative to both the why and what is compartmentalized.  The strength is what powers the workload, and the visibility of oneself acknowledges your ownership ("You did this.") of what actually got packed away.

What's lovely about the strength component is, as I've found personally, there are opportunities where within certain circumstances, other men can indirectly assist.

And this is where I'm going to descend (go deeper personally).  I'll do my best not to confuse you.

My defectiveness (see "Part 1" post) is centered on me having such a weak, if not completely absent sense of masculinity, therefore whilst relating to certain other guys, I do find myself, at times, leaning into theirs.  But only if I sense that they're respectfully relating to Rob.  

And when I say respectfully, I'm not referring to mannerisms.  That's not it at all.  I'm referring to the root word:  respect. 

Respect:  a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

Too often, this respect is hinged on their seeing me as a mentor-type friend, but I digress.  It's the respect portion of the relationship that's critical for me to slip past my shame long enough to do some covertly coupled (to them & the situation) internal work.  

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We all have our childhood selves living inside.  In spite of our physical age, they're there.  I believe they can be especially present (during adulthood) as it pertains to a traumatizing childhood event(s).  For Rob, that subconscious boy is who's appeased / entertained when I choose to look at gay porn.  It's his eyes who're satiated with imagery that harken back to teenage lust-filled fantasies.  

Realizing this truth, I have found that one of the best questions to ask of that inner child is "What do you really want?"  

Mine inevitably answers "I want to be pursued by my masculine archetype in order to receive the affirmation that was held back from / escaped me when you (adult Rob) were my age."

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Whilst vacationing last week in Sandestin, I spent a good bit of time in the resort Fitness Center either alone or with the girls.  On the third day of me going about my routine there, there was an older white male patron who was being quite the prick.  His MO (hopefully only during that particular day) was to obnoxiously chide others over his insistence that equipment be thoroughly wiped down (after usage).  He'd stationed himself right in the center of the space, moving back and forth between two benches, all the while eyeing everyone with eagerness as he anticipated antagonistically barking their way.

I remember taking note of a few of the younger clientele simply aborting their workouts in response to his noisy outbursts, though most chose to ignore him (as I did).

This man was well into his 70s or perhaps 80s, and he was going at it like quite the stallion there on the floor.  The decidedly heavy dumbbell free weights, incline barbell machine, and one end of the cable weight rack were his mainstays.  

I stationed myself directly in front of him on an adjustable bench well before even sardonically considering leaning in.  As such, I was simply determined to outlast this geezer, but my cockiness eventually segued to respect.  From there, I found myself pumping iron for far longer than I'd normally commit to.

And yes, after I finally concluded my ad Hoc routine there under his cantankerous eye, I took a moist towelette and did the right thing.  That was my way of subtlety thanking him for garnering my inner boy's respect.

After the fact, I could not remember a time when I'd worked out for as long and with as much fortitude.  In spite of this, I felt renewed and energized.

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The photograph of the two boys wrestling at the bottom of "Part 1" of that post isn't an arbitrary image.  The boy facing the camera is the Minnesotan (older of the two brothers).

From what my inner boy Rob recalls, this athletically built teen looks very similar to and has the same masculine swagger of the teen who physically assaulted him / me as a child.  Yet, other than that, the similarities drop off.  

As you might imagine, it took a number of evenings last week to finally coax my inner boy to come around, but once he did, he leaned into this kindhearted jock no holds barred.  And you should know that I believe wholeheartedly that the nighttime swimming pool setting was God breathed for this opportunity to present itself.  

And oh my goodness, it was such a healing experience for boy Rob / me.  

So what do I mean exactly by leaning in?  Respectfully acknowledging (cross pollination) the attention / respect.  That's the first step.  From there, it's observing very closely who the individual is / how they're engaging - WITH ADULT (IN RECOVERY) ROB EYES.  And that's super important.  Because the last thing I want to happen is to fall back into juvenile lust.

As I'm sure you've figured out, this respectful observational process is where the unpacking occurs.  For as I'm annotating / updating my childhood experiences with these new experiences, I can't help but see my boyhood self gleefully taking part whilst using my adult Rob strength to pull it off.  And no, this doesn't change or blot out my childhood trauma, but I can now at least sit with it out of the box.

  

Throughout all the years that I've had the privilege of being involved in Samson Society, there's been no better lesson learned than how to do this.  For if you could quantify the amount of compartmentalizing I've accomplished, it would amount to the contents of an entire set of 1980s Encyclopedia Britannica's.  Hence, there's a boatload to unpack.  Thanks be to God for the men who've come in and out of my life, who've allowed me to lean in for such a time as that.  I'm no doubt a better, more settled man for it.  

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