That's What V Said

*Opinion*

When our parents told us as kids that we had to share, we did it. But usually because we knew we’d get in trouble if we didn’t (well, if you were a brat kid like I was…). Now, nobody has to tell us twice to share.

On a recent day at my summer internship, when I pulled my ear buds out of my bag (so I could get into some Pandora action) they were all tangled up. It looked like a boy scout went to town tying my shit up in intricate knots.

My first reaction was a sigh. #Firstworldproblems. My second reaction, well, made me cringe a bit. I took a picture of my tangled ear buds with my iPhone and uploaded it to Twitter, after pondering for several minutes whether I should have made it look fancier on Instagram first, and then pondering if it was Facebook-worthy. I settled for Twitter.

A fellow intern laughed when she saw the picture on Twitter of my intertwined ear buds, saying she can relate. That’s when I told her I was thinking about whether or not it belonged on Instagram or Facebook. We laughed again about how now everything anyone does merits some type of photographic evidence.

What the hell is wrong with us?  We share everything. Between Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, we constantly share how we feel, where we’re at, who we’re with and of course, multiple face and body shots to show what we look like. We are the sharing generation.

An article in The Telegraph has a study showing an increase in people under 25 getting their news from social networking sites rather than search engines in the UK. Well, yeah! Because our friends don’t just share their thoughts and random pictures of their faces or food, they share articles, too. And I found this article on Twitter.

I also read in another online article that the 20-year anniversary of the first photo ever uploaded on the web will be on July 18. And I found this article on Twitter, too.

Then I wonder if we’re the insecure generation. As the kids who grew into a life on the internet, are we uploading pictures of our faces and  posting our feelings just to get “likes” or retweets? Does that translate to us as acceptance or support? Are we just trying to reach out because we’re really just deprived of human interaction despite all these online-ways to connect?

Or, maybe we’re just attention whores? Gasp!

This is all coming from someone with a blog, right? Well I’ll like and retweet your face and food pics all day long, friends and followers. I admit to cringing when I Instagram a meaningless photo of ice cream, but I love the sharing. We have the platforms, we might as well go H.A.M. with them.

I love the Pinterest posts with recipes I’ll never try and craft projects I’ll never do. But it’s fun to look at, especially the pictures of baby animals and clothes. I love the Instagrm photos of the beach, the one’s without the vag-shot of the girl who took it while lying on her back. I love the Facebook statuses by  friends who got that dream job, or married his or her best friend, or is fighting with his or her man, or is still hungover at 4:00 p.m. And memes, gifs…they make my day.

It’s fun but maybe a little self-absorbed sharing. Over-sharing? Maybe. But dammit, why the hell not?