People love instagram because it secretly feeds the ever-increasing subconscious jealousy we have for all the souls you’ve gotten to cross paths with along the way, and celebrities’ lives. It seems absolutely perfect. Wow, they went on a trip to Versailles last weekend, and took an incredible photo in the midst of an expansive vineyard in the hills of Bordeaux! How luxurious and amazing is that. They look so happy together.

I think we also subconsciously know that perhaps from the ride to Versailles and Bordeaux, there might’ve been arguments, moments of not enjoying what they were doing, and worries about money, being lost in a foreign country, what have you. Perhaps we choose to ignore this though, for the pure fact that we just want to feel ultimate “ignorance is bliss” while we tirelessly workout our thumbs on these sites.

Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be popular because it partially portrays the complete opposite of what Instagram offers to us. Total, utter humility. You relate to people on a 140-character level on Twitter. In a world where everyday life is so difficult (especially for the ~millennials~ and the slowly but surely emerging ~gen z~), its comforting to know that somebody else around the globe is bitching about the same thing you do. Or relate to your “mood.”

We indulge in a fantasy, only to then feel the need to indulge in humility and come back down to earth. Seems no more distant to the quote from Wolf of Wall Street - “On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month. I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome.”

This raises the question… whats in between? Is there a happy medium? Should there be a happy medium at all? As we enter into an interesting phase of the internet where social media is continuing to take on more and more heat every day from all kinds of issues (data security, mental health, violent yet empty “threats” and endless arguments that meet in a circle), it seems that society (mainly the younger generations) is ready for something new. Yet nobody knows exactly what it is, because social media has come to reward your brain in similar ways that narcotics do.