In our pockets we hold a portal, to instant beauty

When our daily existence is flavoured mundane, or laced with pain, easy access to pleasure and peace is a real salve to the spirit. Entering social media, we can immediately find beautiful content – a subjective definition of course.

Landscapes, plants, creatures.

Human bodies, faces, interactions, efforts.

Music, poetry, art.

We can hop onto our feed and let the algorithm surprise us, though there will be a web of adverts to slash through and the risk of falling down the scrolling hole, chin to chest. Alternatively we curate folders of our most prized beauty finds, saved ready for dull moments when life feels cold.

Even better is if our exposure to beauty via social media helps us notice the tiny beauties around us, and show them to others.

A fearsome beauty

We can feel something even more than simple sensory pleasure. A friend told me about Human Online while I was getting over a bad break up. You enter a waiting room and are matched with a stranger for one minute, purely to make direct eye contact. There’s no speaking. It’s a lot. I was not ready for the weird nerves beforehand. Once the minute begins, it’s pretty profound.

Human Online took me outside my emotional comfort zone and I liked it. Lockdown aside, loneliness is a big issue for many. Ads and overexposure numb the positive effects of social media. Human Online is a 60 second concentrated shot of soul.