Public Displays of Affection - PDAs. Hmmm! I was on an airport bus with a male colleague and my boss last year, when a couple right next to us decided to start (if you'll excuse the expression) sucking the faces off each other. I had to turn my back on them because it made me feel... well, uncomfortable. Is that a British thing? I suspect it may be. I just want to say "PLEASE can you not wait until you are alone? is it THAT urgent?" When we got off the bus I said to my colleague "I give them 6 months". "Oh", he said, "I was going for 3." Such is our cynicism!
Over the last few years a new kind of PDA has developed online. One of my friends keeps getting boyfriends and then mushing over them on Facebook. At one time, about a week after she'd announced her relationship (which then got loads of 'ooh congratulations!' comments from her friends), she'd be sobbing over her break-up. For goodness sake girl, just keep it offline! The poor guys probably run a mile when they see all her friends slapping her on the back, it must be like being in a relationship with 20 people.
There are online PDAs that I don't object to of course; even I am guilty of commenting that it is our 23rd anniversary, but I don't start mushing over how much Mr H means to me, that is for people who write to Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs. I tell him that to his face (yes, shameless I know!).
And it's not just couples, what about all those "I'm so miserable" statuses, or "I'm so useless", or "I love all my friends so much, you are all SO amazing" that then provoke an outpouring of loveliness from everybody. Now, I realise that there have been cases where seriously depressed people have probably had their lives saved by uplifting and encouraging comments from their friends in times of dire need, and I am not denigrating that. But I know most of my facebook friends enough to know they are not about commit suicide (.....or do I?). They have friends that instead of picking up the phone or going to round to see them or take them out to the pub, or for a walk, or even sending a private message, they write my pet hate comment: "Awwwww, are you alright hun? xxxxxxx" CLEARLY NOT!!!! "You are the strongest person I know xxxxxxxxxxxxx" again, CLEARLY NOT!!
Maybe I am just someone who prefers to keep my emotional needs on a more private platform. I exchange private messages with particular friends, or talk to them person to person.
And of course, all those comments that I hate? I don't have to read them, do I?
Ya know.......you're right! It's a world that's transforming. And I get a bit concerned for how isolated we (figuratively speaking) are becoming. I've noted that time and time again. And the process in doing 'emotional' business seems to be a bit.....different than how I'm accustomed to doing it.
ReplyDeletePDA's are something I've always struggled with in the flesh.
I'm just not that kinda gal. LOL Hand holding was a very difficult thing for me to 'allow', and hand holding with an audience?! HOLY cow--are you KIDDING ME?! LOL
I've made some 'adjustments' to that line of thinking, but as a good friend of mine says--"a leopard doesn't change his spots THAT much!". ;-) Leastwise THIS leopard hasn't, I'm sure.
I'm not a FB user.
'Social network' and being 'liked' or 'friended' is a foreign concept to me..... After reading what you shared, I think I'd like it to stay that way. LOL
Somehow none of that surprises me about you Mel! Hand-holding I am fine with... it's the sharing bodily fluids that makes me feel queasy ;-)
ReplyDeleteSocial networking is what you make of it, and is on occasion very useful. But you have to know how and when to limit what you choose to look at and how to react to things (safest thing usually being to sit on your hands).
Jx