/ˈʃɛrɪŋ/:
Sharing means dividing, splitting, or having something in common with others, either concretely (an object, a good) or figuratively (an opinion, an experience, an emotion). It is the act of making something you possess accessible to others (information, knowledge), or of taking part together in an experience, strengthening bonds and creating connections.
Take and eat, all of you: these are my own damn things, offered on social media for you.
There was a time when people shared a fire to cook food on, a roof to shelter under, tools to work with.
A time when ideas were shared, and people fought to be able to say them out loud.
A time when discoveries were shared, in the pursuit of progress.
A time when workspaces, journeys, and lodgings were shared.
A time when sharing meant enrichment. It was the courage to expose oneself, and the willingness to split with others something that had value for both.
A time when “shared trouble is half the trouble”.
A time when sharing was an act of generosity and openness. The opening of a two-way bridge.
Then sharing changed shape, in a subtle way.
We make a large part of our private lives public, losing any sense of what is special and what is not.
We want to be noticed. Desperately.
The more we try to be noticed, the more we are ignored. Scrolled past.
There is so much to look at. We move on to the next.
We move on to the next, and the one after that. Hours go by, and we are still there: sitting on the toilet seat, or at a restaurant table with our family. But it makes no difference.
We think we know others because we spend our days looking at fragments of their lives, the ones they choose to share with us.
We take them and make of them whatever we want.
At least we have something to talk about.
We think we are better than others and we want to prove it; we share everything we do, because volume creates interest.
We need to saturate the scene: the more we tell about ourselves, especially intimate things, the more interest grows, the more the desire to follow us grows.
The goal is to create dependency and, once it exists, to feed it with lots of carrots.
It does not matter if they are all just carrots. It only matters that there are many.
Dividing something with others has quickly become dividing others.
We think others are better than us, not because they have put in the effort, but simply because they are lucky, or helped.
Others may have shared a second of their day. The rest they spent working hard, doing their own damn business.
We, instead, spent that time watching their damn business. And, since that was not enough, the damn business of others too. With a few interludes of self-pity.
We share endlessly. Constantly.
What?
Food for those who have no business of their own to feed on. And they do the same with us. This is sharing.
An act of charity.
Happy 2026.