How Did It Happen, Look Outside The Bubble

There's no such thing as an interactive site / app ("social media" if you have to) that *is* something.

Even Twitter / X is, for some, a lovely place where they chat with those they follow about comfortable things and Facebook even more so, a curated place for friends and family that seems like a bubble amongst the outside shite.

We live in our bubbles of followed and following, of friends, of LinkedIn connections. We see what they say and believe, "Facebook is fine, I don't get what the problem is."

This is all merely a reflection of how we live our actual lives, in wee bubbles of comfortableness, surrounding ourselves with like minded (if sometimes challenging) people.

Our bubbles become our reality.

I'm not sure, as humans, we can be any different without going totally insane. Everyone does it, Elon Musk lives in his bubble, I live in my bubbles, you live in yours.

Bubbles pop really quickly.

When they pop the outside world and their bubbles rush in to fill the void. We quickly, briefly, see the world of other people's bubbles as we choos how we will reconstruct our own bubbles because we cannot exist in a void, we must have the protection of bubbles. Some people take the path of least resistance and copy the bubble-poppers, they become bubble-poppets themselves, probably because they are scared.

Here's a trick I do. 

I make sure my bubble(s) are as clear as possible so that when I want / remember I can turn outwards and see as much of the world outside of me as possible. Yeah, I know, my bubble(s) can never be truly transparent, there's always those rainbow swirls morphing the image from outside, the shape of the bubble itself distorts what I can see. But I can see something even if it's just shapes, light, and directions.

["clear bubble" = empathy, curiosity, and a genuine interest in others experiences]

I always love letting people have their bubbles touch up against mine. They bounces along side and often change my own bubble, let's some of their swirls join with mine. Bubbles bounce suddenly or softy, with love and care or with anger and spikes.

I even, when I can, go looking for people that seem to be in bubbles I don't understand. I'm not transgender, it's not a world I love within, but many do and so being alongside those in their bubbles gives me a chance of understanding.

Looking out through your bubble removes any obvious potential surprises, it allows time to plan, is it raining outside your bubble, are their people with pins getting closer, are everyone's bubbles changing a certain colour for some reason.

Stuck inside your comfortable Facebook, for example, and never acknowledging that it is a bubble is a road to disaster. There is no "Facebook", it is all bubbles within an owned space, your bubble is buffeted by the environment, and eventually it will pop. Then what?

LinkedIn is the other example of where I see people actively guarding their bubble walls, they stare inward and don't want to see what's outside, sometimes with a degree of anger because the comfortable business-bubble world might pop. Yup, even in LinkedIn we need to recognise that the real world is increasingly scary for many.

The world is changing, the environment that we live in is changing, our old bubbles may not be resilient to this change. Look outward and be prepared for the time your bubble pops.

Note: this post has gone through a tonne of changes in order to make it even slightly legible. I'm still not sure it's getting my thinking across, sorry. I'm likely to try again without the bubble analogy that, tbh, popped (!) into my head in the second paragraph and then just took over.