Keeping it real. There’s keeping it real as in real life but then there’s keeping it real as in what you want people to see on social media.

I don’t live a fake life on social media but a lot of people do. They don’t want you to see you haven’t put your laundry away or you have dishes in the sink. It’s supposed to be like the perfect little Susie Homemaker of it all.

And I think that is something that people put forward that I think is wrong. Which is one reason why a lot of the local “influencers” drive me bananas. They help keep it fake. And I don’t think that’s doing anyone. Any good anywhere.

The thing about these “influencers“ is part of what they’re supposed to do is good. But you know they’re not going to that peony field so you can see what it’s like. It’s so somebody can take a picture of them in an absurd outfit in front of the peony field. And then there are the ones who always seems to order the same kind of food at every restaurant and lots and lots of cocktails and you have to wonder who’s footing the bill? And it’s somebody that no one takes seriously so how much business do the restaurants get? Or the ones who are supposed to chat up the food when invited to a food thing and the only thing you see is them in front of a parochial step and repeat.

And can we talk step and repeats? I mean just because you’re standing in front of one doesn’t make you a Bravolebrity that Andy Cohen’s going to invite to the clubhouse for a chat.

So that’s what a lot of people have as a perspective of reality. But that’s not the real world. It’s an artificial world designed for social media.

And then there are the people, women especially, who want you to think that their world is perfect. And they want to have a social media brand, but if something messes with that brand, it has to go. And that includes even if it’s their children. It blows my mind that these people put their kids and family in a back seat position from their mythical “brand.”

And the people in general who just want you to think they live a flawless life out of a Better Homes & Gardens magazine. If they are a designer and/or a professional stylist, then I believe them. Otherwise I don’t, and I think the reality is the dust bunnies are poised on the edge of a revolution.

So we live in this influencer era. It’s not merely social media, it’s them. The often phony looking folks who aren’t even necessarily attractive that people for some damn dumb reason think they’re supposed to emulate. Influencers are just the evolution of compensated mommy bloggers.

Sorry not sorry about my opinion. This is not the real world. It’s just not.

Then there are the people who are told that they have to feverishly market themselves on Facebook and Instagram. They. Have. To. Appear. Perfect. Always. Life is too short to be so uptight. And rigid. Life is not a giant marketing opportunity.

Followed by the overachievers are the uber competitive and watching them go by on Facebook and Instagram are exhausting. Anything that you can do, they have to be better. Look at me, look at me their selfies scream. I always think the same thing: why?

There are those who are sadly watching life starting to pass them by and they don’t know why. Some of these are very nice people who fell into the trap of over-striving and over-compensating and the ultimate sin: treating friendships like transactional exchanges.

Friendships that are real and true are not transactional. It’s appalling and hurtful I have been on the receiving end of such people. But in the end they are merely sad because they don’t get that true friendship is not about only valuing someone when they have a use.

Today I spent time with a friend that I met literally when we were both girls. We were 11 or 12 and our fathers were classmates in high school. And that’s how we were introduced to each other: our fathers were friends, so naturally we would be too. And we were starting to be friends and then life intervened. Our parents ended up sending us to different schools and soon if we saw each other it was mostly at mass on Sundays.

Then the years went by and she literally left on the other side of country. But because of one of the nice things about social media we became reconnected.

Today we sat for like five hours on my deck and caught up with some of the time that had gone by and I am very grateful for that time as sometimes I feel like people don’t actually see me and she’s always known who I was and I’ve always known her she was and then we had the commonality of the fathers. As a matter of fact her late father was a pall bearer at my late father’s funeral.

We didn’t have nearly enough time together, but it made me so happy. I even had a little cry later this afternoon because I was happy which is totally weird, but I am half Italian so it does happen.

I really value the people in my world who are kind of lifetime people. It restores your faith in humankind when you have time with these people from your world. Part of that is because they know you you know them, there’s no artifice. You don’t have to have your guard up you don’t have to worry you can’t take your guard down and you don’t have to be anything other than yourself. And I think a lot of people do not know how to be themselves. Or they are afraid to be themselves.

I have been increasingly world weary with women especially lately. Today I had one who is easily 25 or 30 years younger try to do a passive aggressive social media cancel on me today because of my reaction to her urgency and virtual stamping of her feet that she needed to have a harmless garter snake removed from her garden. I mean what adult expects to be taken seriously referring to a garter snake as a “nope rope” or “Satan’s spaghetti” or “nope noodle.” For Christ’s sake.

Well the cancelling Christian perfect mommy on Facebook just made me compelled to comment. It was just crowd sourcing dumb ass to a degree over a garter snake.

First of all, everyone knows I have issues with the outdoor reptiles when they pop up unexpectedly in my garden. And we had a snake that this woman would have had the vapors over. It was a 5 foot plus garter snake. It was huge and it scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it and then I just sort of got used to it. It got used to me and nobody bothered anybody and eventually the snake moved on because it outgrew the area because that’s what they do.

And I actually TRY to be patient of these so-called younger generations from myself, but I found myself being like cranky granny today, when this woman literally tried to cancel me in a Facebook group by being utterly passive aggressive and saying I was using my inside thoughts outside. I mean WTF?

And she was using the we word when referring to me. We lady are nothing alike, thank God.

Seriously “inside thoughts” like I am a freaking toddler at a Bouncy House place or Chuck E Cheese for a birthday party. Now when I was just a smidge older that toddler category, I couldn’t use my inside voice outside just ask my mother since she had to bribe me with Minnetonka moccasins from the Ocean City, NJ boardwalk to speak softly. It didn’t stick.

This is the generation who had the first so called helicopter parents, and now they are becoming more helicoptery than their own parents, but I digress. The nouveau Main Line needs to up their game. Queen Elizabeth might have been able to use the royal we, but a mommy and me graduate? I don’t think so.

And what freaking self respecting adult calls a snake a nope noodle? Can’t even imagine what she has named her lady parts, so to speak.

And then there are the women I actually know, and in some cases for years. They have their overly chipper, life is perfect and we must network vomit all over social media. Only what they don’t get is they are alienating the people who have been loyal and supportive for years. And then when they get caught in their own web fibbing to those who have been supportive? Essentially they start losing people who cared about them, pretense aside.

But hey what do I actually know? These are just my thoughts and keeping it real.

Sign me speaking my mind to my own delight for decades.