On Hypocrisy

Last night I had a long conversation over Skype with a dear friend. We happened to be catching up and somehow ended up talking about friendship, Twitter, Facebook and what’s important.

In that conversation, I used the phrase “the purest form of hypocrisy”, and my friend stopped me there immediately and said, “You don’t know how right you are!”. But why did I use this phrase?

For some time now, I am observing the world around me trying to please everyone and act. One can be friends with everyone, fighting for being liked by everyone and interjecting in other humans’ communication, aiming to add value… by trying to help everyone.

One cannot be liked by everyone, simply because the former does not like the latter in all cases.
One cannot please everyone simply because the former is not pleased by everything the latter does.
And moreover, interjecting in other humans’ communication aiming to add value ends up in most cases considered as aggression, especially not being asked.

To put all this into perspective, let’s consider the social network giants Twitter and Facebook and your behaviour there:

Are you liked by every single follower/friend of yours?
Do you like every follower/friend you have there or you keep them close for some other reason?
Do you appreciate every single burp of 140 or fewer characters?
Do you like every single post of Farmville friend’s achievement posted on your Facebook Newsfeed?

The key about friendship is in quality, not in quantity. As humans, we are limited by so many factors that contribute to our stance, behaviour and environment. And we can do just that much. So we end up surrounding ourselves by true friends, hidden frienemies or enormous amount of fellows we are hoping to fill that crevice of insecurity and loneliness we feel deep down in our inner self.

Next time when you see someone being friends with 1,365 Facebookers or follow back 8,836 tweeps, ask yourself if this is candid or false! Look at your friend/following/followers lists and ask yourself who of all these people/brands add value to your life! Ask yourself whom you would like to keep on engaging and conversing with and not be afraid to click on the unfriendly/unfollow/block, delete button! This, after all, is your life and it is normal that it stretches up to its limits, but not beyond.

The purest form of hypocrisy is to like everyone… If I may add, the greatest lie to oneself is to believe that everyone likes you.