Social, Anyone? – Mr. Unfriendly Reloaded

Social media on the plate. Good Fridays have a long established history. And we had a very intensive one this week. In terms of music and mood, it was almost identical with a wedding but lacking the bittersweet act of anyone having to give up on their sovereignity. Surreal, ain’t it? A good Sunday, however, is way more complicated. Depending on the severity of the preceding Saturday night, friends might be sleeping, lost, still drunk, in love, dead, deadly in love, or – worst of all – offline.

Breakfast first

I was in the process of locking up my apartment to leave for a decent breakfast, when I got called by my fellow ‘cavalryman to’ join forces. One of the few places where you’re supposed to reserve a table for a breakfast is a villa style restaurant in Budapest. The venue is absolutely exclusive, the service is correct and the food is just perfect.

We both decided for a folded omelette, featuring sausage – you can’t go wrong with that ‘configuration’. Then, for the sake of curiosity, we also tasted the bio ischler – a cookie the classic version of which comes with a history of over 150 years – clearly being one of the major accomplishments of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

Despite all that good stuff, the most impressive experience has been the bright sunshine we had, and the fact that I could spend all this time in the open air, bright as an Autumn day would rarely ever be. With all that momentum gained, we made our way to the 120 years old cafe, ranked as the “Most Beautiful Coffee House in the World”. The perfect spot for ‘designing’ some items of the soon-to-come year 2015 and recalling some of the greatest episodes of 2014.

That was it for the morning. Not too bad. Not only for the gastro-attractions but also for the value added conversation. So what was so cool about this Sunday discussion? We mainly dealt with social media topics. A world, in which we both had an de-facto insight.

Mr. Unfriendly

One guy I keep quoting is my literature teacher from high school, whose name translates to Mr. Steven Unfriendly. True that he is by far not the most refined person I’ve ever met (none of us could ever forget how dividing his eyebrows were), yet he left a major, irradicable footprint in at least 34 people by making one thing clear to all: pieces of art that don’t raise a problem and/or don’t solve such, mean no value.

So, with that filter on, we started out from trying to recall anything of value or remarkable quality from the content we digested as members of the #1 social networking portal.

And all that we could come forward with was more or less:

• girlies with lost focus, frequently quoting from Paulo Coelho
• photos shared of poor dogs with bad injuries
• selfies taken by people popping up all over the place, often through the mirrors of restrooms of various night clubs
• unsolicited demonstration of love to the family ‘look, Grandpa is already 85′

That was it, meaning the user contributed content. As for discussions, we commemorated some famous chat sessions with girls getting bored from time to time, consequently reaching out to us saying ‘howdy’, maybe setting an appointment, and sometimes cancelling them during the last hour. Not much of worth… So it was in 2014, when I became overly interested in getting my account deleted.

Social recalculation

Talking about that ambition, I found that most of the people of and below my age considers deleting ‘yourself’ as an act of social suicide. But at least getting estranged.

The other, less violent yet absolutely significant influencer of my high school years (next to Mr. Unfriendly) was Axl Rose, who introduced his song Estranged in Tokyo in 1992 as follows (see the frame grabbed from the video clip):

“Tonight’s happy song, kinda’ like a walk in the park … sun coming through your window in the morning n’ it’s a beautiful day … and you’ve got nothing better to do than commit ‘hurry curry’.”

No matter how we explain, recognizing the lack of value as warned by Mr. Unfriendly, or for the sake of an Axl-style social-harakiri experiment – I clicked delete just ‘like a walk in the park’ and neither of us is a member anymore.

As I see now, and we’re entirely unanimous about that the social portal is – if not a driver – still definitely a strong enabler for one to lose focus about important aspects of life. Life that without such affective factors is more random, more exciting and a lot more lively.

Then back into the sky, with one good look taken back at Amsterdam by night.

And closing my Sunday with studying some Latin – the language we use when raising and solving the most important problems.