Wilde Wasn't So Wild

You’re scrolling through your Instagram feed and you come across a picture of your best friend in the Bahamas looking fantastic in a stunning scenery of luscious palm trees and a slow-moving sea. You instantly comment  “I LOVE YOU YOU LOOK AMAZING,” giving your friend the ego boost you internally crave. The expectation you’ve built up regarding your friend’s trip suddenly plummets when he tells you how much he hated it there. Regardless, he looked like he was enjoying it. Was he being fake or just controlled by the social network, the matrix of superficiality that encapsulates us all? To understand the grip of the network and its dangers, we can go back in time and grapple with Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” and Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Three Girls.” Though dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries, these pieces of literature can educate us about the pervasive desire to portray false personas and its consequences. Furthermore, the pursuit to meet social expectations and align ourselves with people’s perceptions impede self-attunement and meaningful relationships.

In “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Jack Worthing and his journey to woo Gwendolen portray how he never finds his Earnest self nor an earnest wife. When interviewing Jack Worthing as a worthy candidate for her daughter, Lady Bracknell dismisses the location of his home because it’s “unfashionable” and concluded without hesitating that it could be “easily altered,” quickly simplifying his childhood home in a matter of minutes because it doesn’t seem satisfactory to her (Mays 1918). His future mother-in-law becomes nothing more than his superior who dictates all that Jack must be to marry her daughter; on the other hand, Gwendolen idealizes an ulterior persona of him that he must assume to marry her. However, Wilde goes a step further to depict the overwhelming need to meet social perceptions when Jack cries, “Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth” (Mays 1924). At this point, it is blatantly obvious that this play effectively portrays the nature of the relationship that will ensue between the two – the basis of trust has been overridden by Gwendolen’s yearning for “Earnest,” not her husband but an ideal. Gwendolen and her mother’s focus on Jack’s class and status and ignorance of his character and values, though the foundation of a respectful and caring relationship, may undoubtedly lead to a superficial marriage between the couple (Benham-Clarke). Only a placeholder for his wife’s desire, Jack has not only sacrificed his identity to someone who doesn’t value it but is pursuing a relationship that will never truly be genuine. 

Let’s take a step back. As a teenager, I’m a part of the 81% of teens that use social media according to a 2018 Common Sense Media report (Allen). Do I need to be worried about losing my identity or having fake relationships with my friends and family? Wilde certainly wasn’t “bunburying” around with his ideas, but his work is a satiric drama. We may not be as far gone as the characters in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” evidenced by self-actualization and body positivity movements growing day by day, but the false sense of “validation” still plagues many social media users (Solomon). 

In the modern context, we can utilize Wilde’s work to understand the extent to which caring about people’s perceptions changes us. It can convince us of a new identity and force us to make irrational decisions. Of course, Jack wasn’t a victim to Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen. He was equally responsible for his situation as they were. At the end of the day, we do live in a social network, but what can we do about it? It’s becoming increasingly impossible to go about our days without interacting with the web. There are several benefits associated with social media too, including allowing us to connect with our loved ones instantly through text, video calls, or email (Allen). 

However, we can reorient ourselves to utilize social media and still live fruitful lives filled with vibrant experiences and relationships: Joyce Carol Oates’s story, “Three Girls, can open our minds to show us we can capitalize on meaningful experiences when we escape the self-image we pretend to uphold. Captivated by the “garish blond showgirl,” Marilyn Monroe, dressed modestly and fascinated by literature, the two girls begin to see how Monroe’s shallow on-screen depiction is only a fragment of her life, full of rich interests and academic inquisition (Oates). It’s remarkable to see the manner in which Monroe slyly notices the girls staring but goes on reading; her persistence illustrates the significance to pursue our intellectual curiosities, whether it be in literature or elsewhere (“Three Girls”). These interests may detract from people’s constructed image, as it does for Marilyn, but it forces people to be vulnerable, a fundamental experience in leading a fulfilling life (“Three Girls”). The power of the experience can be attributed to how the girls are so moved as to engage in a shared romantic interest after Monroe gives them the poetry collection (Meyer 89). At a time when women “were pigeonholed into limiting gender roles,” these women were encouraged to reject the perceptions that preempt these girls from being their true selves (“Three Girls”). Ultimately, allowing themselves to feel vulnerable with each other will help them lead a far more healthy relationship.

Wilde’s work demonstrated the absurdity of portraying a false identity, through the sacrifices Jack makes and the manner in which he loses himself to the people he intends to please. Oates starkly contrasts that by showing how someone whose entire identity is an extension of society’s perceptions doesn’t need to withhold a woman from being herself. Perhaps Jack could learn much from Monroe, but we must continue fantasizing that they meet someday. Both texts can be hard to relate to, where in one, human irrationalities are exaggerated, and in the other, a celebrity only seems to be sighted by 2 innocent girls in a New York library. Despite these complexities, these texts can be scaled in context and force us to consider how we lead our comparatively unextraordinary lives (any maybe Wilde wasn’t so wild).

It’s challenging to chase authenticity when it can be lost within a matter of seconds online. Within a few taps, the compulsion to share and post about your life can take over. However, it can be even more exciting to be present in your experiences and live them out as they occur, without scrambling to capture them on a phone. Just 2 weeks ago, I was in the lively streets of Morocco and I found myself rushing to capture every sight I saw to post pictures on my Instagram story. Although I felt excited to share my trip with my friends, I had to catch myself every so often and remind myself to take in the scene around me. At the end of the day, pictures could be taken at any time, but how often was I going to be in Morocco and learn about the country’s ancient culture and history? We all feel pressured seeing others, especially influencers and celebrities, and even friends post about their trips, but imagine how much more we can invest in our experience if we simply soak it all in. The experiences you live can be shared through stories, far more personalized than a photo will ever be. I challenge you to consider putting your phone away the next time you’re with your loved ones on vacation and allow yourself to become one with your surroundings. 

The real challenge becomes when we consider how to prevent socially detaching ourselves from the people around us when the internet allows us to get entangled with practically anyone on the planet. Although social detachment – the idea that “time spent on social media sites is eating away at face-to-face time” – has limited empirical evidence, people find themselves feeling more lonely in a digital world that is supposed to make us more interconnected (Allen). It’s hard to argue that social media isn’t changing how we think, emote, and interact with others when people are showing serious metacognitive changes after becoming a part of the network.

This can be especially dangerous for youngsters in society, who are still going through cognitive and physical development. For instance, teens can be highly at risk for cyberbullying – 13% report having experienced this form of bullying at least once according to The Common Sense Media survey (Allen). As inviting as assuming multiple personas through social media can be, maybe to woo the romantic interest of your dreams, as Jack did, it can as easily turn your life upside down. 

Now now, social media isn’t a dark place filled with dangers at every turn. The digital culture is constantly changing. Risks will continue to be present in our life, whether online or not. Recently the “BeReal” app has been making headway for the youth to share their lives without the chance to filter it. It’s real and it’s working, and there are several other initiatives that are in action working to help people love themselves and make lasting bonds with others. It’s a challenging world, and we must be aware, but not afraid, of the tendencies of social culture to warp our behavior. If we live moderately, leaving adequate time to build up ourselves away from social media and use it as a tool to share meaningful experiences, we can surely live in harmony with the looming social network.