Everyone has Wi-Fi but we've lost the connection.

I have really been yearning for the days of chat rooms, message boards/forums and LiveJournal and the like. There are so many other forms of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat but I feel like somehow, over time, much in the way a photo online will degrade the more you transfer it from one place to another that the same thing has happened in the form of social connection and interaction on the internet. It seems like all the sites have gotten fancier and snazzier. All the photos are prettier and more filtered. Everything has gotten sleeker, glossier and incites more desire to have the person or things pictured or to wish you were the person in the picture or that you could post a better picture.

Something has been lost and I can't help but feel like it was the most vital thing that made it worth something in the first place. The raw connection that I used to feel when I was plugged right into the deep underbelly of online communities, feeling like I was a part of multiple little close-knit families, has been severed somehow. I'm not sure what happened. I think maybe people used to be more raw and more real and share more of the dark and ugly bits of themselves along with their hopes and dreams and insecurities and small triumphs. Anymore it seems like people are more worried with keeping up with appearances. It is less about connection and more about competition.

Does that girl look better in her Instagram pictures? Will this Snapchat filter make people think I look hotter? Is that high school rivals family photos on Facebook nicer looking than mine? It has all become so superficial and trivial. We are not connecting on a meaningful level anymore. Where there used to be deep conversation via forums and chatrooms and long insightful blog posts now it is seeing how risque our Instagram photos can be or how awesome our family vacation seems in our Facebook post.

We are all plugged in and turned on but it seems like as technology has gotten sleeker and smarter we have somehow lost the connection.