What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone says fairy tales? I don’t know if it’s different to kids today, but to me, I associate fairy tales with stories that my mother told me as a little boy. Stories of courage and strength and sometimes magic. Stories “good” finally prevails over “evil”. Thinking back, I suppose they were meant to help the child in me believe that there was goodness in this world. To believe that someone would have your back. Something to give you hope when all seemed lost. But even as a child, while relating to the hope and the faith in the future, I guess I was also made to realise that these tales were not entirely based on reality. Somewhere in the back of my head, I did realise that these were mere stories.
So the other day, a friend casually asked me this – “How would Fairy tales change if they happened today”. What began as friendly banter, brought to mind something that I hadn’t really thought about. I realised that there is indeed an over prevalence of Fairy Tales today, and they’re found on Instagram. A magical world, where you find stories of people leading a “fairy tale” lifestyle. Stories about travels, about adventure, about fashion, the sun, the moon and everything in between. Stories posted by “Influencers” who do exactly what the name suggests. They influence us into believing that they’re having the best time of their lives. However, where these stories inspire some of us, they fail to make others realise that they don’t show us the complete truth. They don’t tell us that these are just snippets from their life, that only project the highs while conveniently dismissing the lows into oblivion. And when a generation of impressionable minds are exposed to these “influences”, I’m skeptical that they’d be able to see through the smoke screen and realise that everything they see on Instagram isn’t real. They’re just fairy tales designed to look like reality. And perhaps over time, that line between what’s real and what’s fantasy will appear to fade away, and we’d have opened another of Pandora’s Boxes. Oh how things have changed!! Sigh….!!
