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SIX

THE DANGERS OF SOCIAL VOYEURISM

I can remember the day Facebook launched. Everyone was suddenly logging on to their computers simultaneously, creating Facebook profiles, and immediately started adding friends. We only added people we knew personally, and we immediately started talking back and forth on our Facebook “walls.” These were the early days of Social Media, when it was initially intended as a two-way platform. But today, most people aren't using it to communicate back and forth in this way. Instead, it functions more as a broadcast style of communication. There are those who are creating content (the minority) and those who are consuming it (the majority). It is far from a two-way communication stream. 

The way the masses are consuming Social Media, such as Instagram, has gone beyond mere spectating and has become voyeuristic.

voyeuristic (adjective)

To be voyeuristic is to get excited or interested by watching others. Although this word often has a sexual connotation, it can also be used to for any kind of secondhand excitement.

I never really understood what the word voyeurism meant until I was in New York a few years ago and I attended a play. This play wasn’t really a play. It was more of an interactive experience. To be honest, it was an absolutely wild experience that taught me what voyeurism is by getting me, along with the rest of the audience, to experience it. The purpose of the play was a critique of human behavior and our natural inclination to want to watch one another. All audience members became voyeurs. 

Okay, now I have probably really confused you! But let me explain how this play worked. We all bought tickets and waited to go in. The “theater” was an old hotel, with tons of big rooms and hallways leading to other big rooms. Instead of being led to seats, we were led into a room where we stood until the actors appeared. There was a huge mass of us standing all together in the room. As we stood packed in the room, the actors began their performance in front of us. It was wildly different from watching a play with actors on a stage. We were IN the room with them, and they were drawing off of our energy, making it clear they knew we were in the room with them, watching them. 

The actors then moved to another room. And the audience, or spectators, followed along to keep watching. The spectators became increasingly intrigued by the actors as time went on. Whenever the actors left the room, the audience began to run after them, hurrying so as not to miss anything. Sometimes, the audience would move so fast it would almost beat the performers to the next room. Their voyeuristic curiosity was so intense! I was more fascinated by the way the other audience members were behaving than by the performance. It was amazing watching behavior change as the performance went on and as people’s curiosity intensified. 

I had an a-ha moment standing there: THIS is what Social Media is doing to us. It has harnessed the essence of voyeurism, and our curiosity has turned us from interested observers to voyeurs. The overall interest is more connected to the act of watching than it is to the individual being watched. In a modern application, voyeurism is more about gaining an intimate look into someone else's world. This doesn’t have to be something sexual or physical. I would argue that seeing inside someone’s home is, in itself, intimate. This is what people are now doing every day through Social Media. They are opening their homes, allowing their daily lives to be observed, often VERY voyeuristically. 

Have you thought about this? Until I saw that live production, I never thought of it this way. I was constantly filming in my home, never realizing I was opening my life in such an intimate way to people I would not necessarily let into my real life. I mean, when you put it in terms of the play I watched, posting on Social Media in real time is like having a crowd of people following you around in your day and in your home! I would argue this is modern-day voyeurism! While I still do film and post updates from home, I’m now much more conscious of this aspect of Social Media, and I’ve scaled it back considerably. 

The real reason I am talking to you about all of this is not to crucify Social Media or media in general. Really, the bottom line of all of this is to remind you we are not meant to be spectators in our lives. We are not meant to be merely entertained or watch others voyeuristically, because if we become consumed by consuming, we aren’t living our lives. And, as I mentioned earlier, when you are consuming, you cease to create. You can’t really be doing both. I do not want you to get stuck in the trap of consuming instead of creating.

You are meant to create! Remember, the Universe wants you to create and expand. You ARE a creative being, possessing powers to achieve unlimited potential in your life. It is time to declare it. Claim that power. I’m encouraging you to take back control from anything and everything out there that is conditioning you to feel the opposite. 

The system steers us away from our intuition and strips us of our creative inclination. It disconnects us from our core energy, our soul, our inner spark. Now is the time to take that power back. The School of Soul series is your curriculum to release yourself from the grip of the system’s conditioning, which has been holding you back from your soul’s purpose and from your limitless potential to create in your life.

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