Making Believe in the 1950s

I have always been intrigued by the 1950's; it is the decade that validated the American dream, created the concept of suburban living, and birthed an era of materialism. The 1950's laid the foundation for a culture based on envy and image. People today are more interested in creating the illusion of happiness than actually achieving happiness. The US is ranked low compared to other developed countries when it comes to happiness, and many Americans attempt to fill that void by making others envious of their lives; it's as if they believe that if others believe they are happy, then they are happy. It is almost the opposite of the saying: "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?" Americans believe that if no one sees them being unhappy, then they must not actually be unhappy. This mentality has led to a constant need for validation.

The example of this most relevant to my life is College ACB, a gossip website that is essentially a milder version of the late Juicy Campus. The university I attend has a page on this website, as do many other colleges all over the nation. The school I go to is an academically respected and elitist institution on par with the Ivy League. It is full of overachieving students who are juggling a double majors, internships, and thriving social lives. Thousands of dollars worth of tutoring, hundreds of hours spent pouring over SAT prep books, and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on private school educations are what has gotten these bright, motivated students to where they are now. However, despite all this, their self esteems seem to be completely dependent on these gossip websites; girls scrutinize over "Hottest freshmen" posts and guys obsess over arguements about which fraternity is "top tier."

WHY? Because we are obsessed with image. As a generation, we grew up with Facebook and MySpace; we are experts on creating a cyberimage of ourselves that represents the people we want to be. We can control which pictures to put up; which parts of ourselves we want to show and which we want to hide. We can exaggerate and portray our lives the way we want them to be portrayed. My generation are publicity experts; we have been trained to be able to create positive images of ourselves, and gossip websites are the perfect outlet for self-promotion. The sad part is, that is all it is. An image. We have forgone substance for the illusion of substance. For every real friend each of us has, we have 10 frienemies, 100 fake friends, and 1000 Facebook friends.