Botoxalips Now

Curious "beauty" standards, online swiping digital vapors, and the end of amore.

How could I compete with their love for themselves?

— Every lover of every “influencer”

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To love the statistics of a heart button is to love deeply, with a now socially nourished and fiscally rewarded soul-crushing narcissism that has become so deeply entrenched in the world that not putting all of one’s energy into seeking the artificially fleeting admiration of others will soon probably render a diagnosis of schizophrenia or autism.

For nearly two decades, hearts have been everything.

When the idea of Amore moved online the predictable transformation of digital vapors worked its diminishing magic with disconnect and despair. Heightened expectations through transitory fantasies from behind a protective veil of distance and asymmetry dispelled the need to think and react to a moment, in the only manner non-sociopaths can—honestly.

Vapid pretense and performance took center stage distancing those expectations further from reality as the truth of individuals became buried by the impressions they sought to convey. Earned trust, which was once built by past human interactions over time turned into faith.

Having faith in the honest digital re-presentations of strangers about themselves is quite a leap, but people took it because it was safe. One generation, then another preferred safety over having skin in the game and potentially taking risks that might result in unwanted human emotions that arise from rejection and disappointment.

The more the fantasy of future relations became disconnected from reality, the greater the disappointment. The more one disconnected their digital re-presentation from reality, the harder they were rejected when truth displaced fantasy.

The process was ugly and lonely souls became even more lonely as the armies of disconnected and disappointed stopped taking any risks at all, but only of the emotional kind.