Green Eyed Chameleon

You know you wish you had one of these right now

Jealousy & Facebook

My wife & I have been talking about this for a while now. We have seen our share of Facebook-related drama in the last five-plus years. We have been accused of Facebook competition before (that stings pretty badly). At times, it has been so bad that we considered ending it all & committing Social Media Suicide.

Then again, I truly love the idea of remaining a few clicks away from loved ones. I love seeing pictures & reading interesting articles & being involved in other people's milestones. There's no way I'm throwing it all away any time soon.

So why did you write this?

Dear reader, that is exactly what I intend to answer in the proceeding paragraph. Last night, I read a fantastic blog post on this topic. The article is entitled: 5 Reasons I've Considered Dropping Facebook. You should read the post, it really is very good. The five reasons are as follows:

1. Competition
2. Quality Friends vs. Quantity Friends
3. Facebook is not Reality
4. Facebook: A Breeding Ground for Insecurity
5. Lack of Tact

On a personal note, I was unable to finish reading that post before waking my wife & having her listen as I read aloud. It covered so many of the topics that we have been considering. Just look at this blog & search for the @VOne2012 posts. You'll see it has been a burden on our hearts for a while.

What's this I feel?

Most of those reasons have to do with jealousy & envy. The Bible has a ton of things to say about these two little elements. Go ahead, look up jealousy & then look up envy, you'll see!

Why does the Bible say so much about it? Probably because these feelings are natural. They are part of the human experience. We look around & build social bonds. This is how communities work, man looks to each other in order to decide what kinds of things are acceptable & what kinds of things are not. Our aspirations, for the most part, are developed by measuring our resources against people we know & then attempting to reach those goals.

The problem comes, not when we get those initial jealous pangs, but when we entertain them in our subconscious. That green-eyed monster has the uncanny ability to remain undetected while taking over the controls; disaster comes shortly thereafter.

The moral of the story is to be aware of your online activity & remember to use it wisely & intentionally.

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I Am the Other 9
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