After Dinner

After Dinner

The clatter of dishes being cleared from the table and deposited into the sink paled in comparison to the too-loud music blaring in the kitchen. I turned it down so I could hear what Sue was saying.
"I think she’s really depressed," she explained. "You should see what she’s posted on Facebook lately. Everything she’s written has been so depressing."
I considered this a moment, and thought about all the time I wasted reading Facebook updates, Twitter posts, and blog entries. Too much time. But perhaps in all that I’d learned something.
"Maybe," I told her. "But consider this. When people are happy and having fun, when they’re eating ice cream and watching movies and dancing with the love of their life, they’re not sitting in front of the computer. They don’t have a lot of extra time on their hands to update their status or tell us about their day. They’re not hanging around with nothing to do, staring at a computer screen. But when they’re sad, lonely, sick, or bored, that’s exactly what they’re doing. So you’re more likely to hear about those things than the happy ones. The Internet, for that reason and probably a hundred others, always leans more toward the negative rather than the positive. When you read people posting online about themselves, you have to adjust your expectations."
She nodded and started running water in the sink to wash the frying pan.
As I brought the rest of the plates into the kitchen, I thought about posting these thoughts on my blog. But how would I end the entry?
I had no idea.