Tweet and Shout

We have entered a brave new world of full exposure—more like full self-exposure.  Social media has presented all of us with the opportunity for (maybe the illusion of) fame.  If not given the full fifteen minutes of fame Andy Worhol predicted we would all get, most of us can achieve at least few seconds of notoriety.  If by design we don’t desire our lurid-selves to last, we can Snapchat a fleeting image that flares but for ten seconds and vanishes like a shooting star.

So here we are, Andy.  Here we are Marshall McLuhan.  Here we are Marshall Mathers.  We post thoughts on Facebook, quip on Twitter, share photographs on flickr, present blogs on Blogspot and likely share in a dozen more openly public ways.

We have become a spectacle in ourselves.

We cell our selfies and send them off in seven directions.

We tweet our clever this-and-that’s.

We twerk and flash mob in the glow of light—hoping someone notices.

We text and sext and hook-up and link-in and maybe it is not all bad, but at the end of the day  we sometimes end up more lonely than when we started.  We have, as we turn off the lights, only our thoughts and our electronic devices nearby—all of the devices charging-up at half-glow and awaiting the press of a button so they might burst with a new color or discharge a word or two in upper case letters.

And by the simple fact that two or more of us have reached this exact spot of reading in separation… my point is made.

--Mitchell Hegman