Our Connected World

Over the weekend, I witnessed someone having a very difficult time online.

I am on some social media apps to share my art n stuff and on said apps I tend to follow other artists (and lots and lots of cute dog accounts yay!  ahem).

Well on this one particular app, you can share live videos (or not live videos) and no not everything shows up in your feed of course, but when I popped on on Friday (I think) evening, this person's videos showed up in my feed.

They... didn't make sense.  

She, in several posts over the span of an hour, asked people to call police and send the army and press to the restaurant she was at.  She posted live video.  Of... nothing that seemed unusual.

I read through the comments.  Apparently in other videos she talked about a shoot out and being stuck and other things that made me, knowing nothing at all about what was going on, think that perhaps she was having a mental health episode.

People had a range of reactions to her posts.  Some called the police local to the area indicated.  Some asked if she had been drugged, or perhaps was having a crisis of some sort.  Most were as confused as I was as nothing unusual seemed to be happening from the random videos being posted.

After about an hour, people started commenting that the police and the restaurant had been called by people "from all over" and were sending someone, but by that point I believe the individual had left and things are so hard to figure out when it's second hand and via bits and pieces.

The next morning all of the posts had been taken down and I do hope the artist eventually follows up when she's safe and well enough to do so.

Over the years at least two "big" artists that I follow on social media have been public with their extreme mental health breakdowns and I appreciate the honesty they have shown in doing so.

It's a strong reminder that what little you see of people online may be extraordinarily far away from where they actually are mentally, physically, emotionally, and so on.

Even I have struggled with being honest about my mental health and that's HERE, where I'm pretty anonymous and not putting forth too much of a persona that's not truthful.

On my social medias?  I don't really talk all that much, if at all, about my struggles.

It is strange to be living in this oddly connected world, especially having grown up in one that was very much not.

Would I think to do a live video if I were in trouble while out and about?  Probably not, to be honest.  But this person did, even if the trouble was only in her mind.  I don't know.

I'm not always a super fan of the ability so many of us have to stream and "go live" and share all the things, but I don't think there's a going back.

I do hope that person is alright.  Mental health issues are incredibly scary when you're in them, and I've (knock on all the wood) never had something more terrifying than a panic attack and I am incredibly grateful for that when I see or hear or witness some of the things others go through.