When I was in middle school, Colleen Ballinger's kooky musical YouTube persona, Miranda Sings, hit it big time. My friends and I loved watching her video "covers" and regularly urged the "haters" to "back off!" She has been a source of much laughter at my house, and her videos, whether in character or not, have always been some of my favorite. Over the years, I have kept up with her story.
Recently, in scrolling through my Facebook timeline, I saw an article about Colleen and her husband, Joshua Evans; they were getting a divorce. I felt myself gulp. These two were so cute together, and, of course, you never expect anyone to be getting a divorce. But they had cultivated their online personas and showed us the happy parts of their relationship, leaving the tough parts for themselves.
Each of them posted separate videos, divulging what they thought necessary to their fans:
Just a little over a year after these two got married, they will be ending their marriage. I have never met these people. I know nothing about them other than what they release, of themselves, on the internet for me to know. Still, I felt the sting similar to that I would feel if close friends were going through this grief and pain. I felt sadness for these strangers at the loss they were experiencing.
I read a lot of articles and hear a lot of criticism thrown at high school and college-aged people for the amount of time we spend on the internet and the way we share our lives on social media and other online platforms. We get a lot of flack for "oversharing." At seeing the way that people have surrounded Josh and Colleen with love during this difficult time for them (to provide only one example when I can think of an endless list), I would like to argue that maybe it's not such a bad thing that the internet has provided us another way to share our lives with each other.
How can it be a bad thing if we are identifying with people we may have otherwise known nothing about? What's wrong with expanding our knowledge of the wider world than our backyard and the people within that world? I don't think something that not only allows but encourages us to gain empathy for other human beings is a bad thing. When we live in a time where our society is so polarized, I do not find a negative in something that brings people together, allowing them to find similarities and points of relation with other people.
As someone who is incredibly fascinated by the human condition and the ways in which we all are the same, I think using social media and video platforms to tell our stories and engage in other's stories is a wonderful advantage, and we should take that opportunity to learn more about others and, in the process, ourselves.
