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Hyperbolia Inundata

How's your day going? Is it 'the best you've ever had'? It is 'the most awesome thing since sliced bread'?

How about that cupcake? Is it '> life'? Are you 'experiencing multiple foodgasms'?

Do you 'Loooooove this' and 'adoreeeeeee that'?

Well, isn't that nice.

Being an avid user of Facebook and Twitter, I'm no stranger to the expressions people use to reflect their current mood or thought. What troubles me, however, is the amount of hyperbole that keeps sneaking into such statements, that it becomes almost impossible to take people seriously (not that taking people seriously on such media is a good idea in the first place, but for the sake of the current argument, let's assume that you do).

It is curious, because it's becoming unacceptable for a person to simply state how he feels, that he simply likes or loves something. No, you have to state how much you adore it, or how much it disgusted you. It has to become so bloated and grand, so expressive,  that it loses any shred of authenticity it might have possessed in its original form. Your entire life becomes this aggrandized version of itself, where everything is garishly, almost grotesquely, bright and colorful.

And, it just makes me wonder, why? Why is it that our emotions, be they positive or negative, have to be injected with dose upon dose of hyperbole, until it becomes self-mocking. Are we so starved emotionally, that every incident has to become the worst/best ever? Are we so self-conscious that our lives have to seem better than anyone else's? Do we really need so much attention that we've done everything save tape fireworks to our tweets and posts, simply to let people know that we're having the time of our lives, every single time we go out?

Newsflash, guys; happiness - like everything - is best expressed through simplicity. Recognition has never come through hyperbole, but authenticity. People can sense that sort of stuff, much as you'd like to believe otherwise, and trust me, no one is going to believe you just had the best pancakes the northern hemisphere has to offer, unless you can back that shit up with proof and samples.


An understated life might take longer to appreciate, but at least, the appreciation lasts.

Till next time,

Me.

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