According to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, the current world is experiencing a moment of looseness in social relations. This means that, with the advancement of technology in the 21st century, people tend to relate more through electronic devices than in person.
Today, we live what sociologists call liquid love, as our affective relationships become easily disposable. Thus, the verse of the Brazilian poet Vinícius de Moraes, “May it be eternal while it lasts”, fits perfectly to what we are living nowadays. In this sense, the relationships between people are increasingly vulnerable and the reality of the virtual world provides the choice of new friends and new loves easily, or rather, in a simple “click” of the computer. Identities are forged in order to draw people's attention, as we live in the dichotomy between world virtual and real world, in which an individual can assume different personalities, maintaining little relationships. lasting.
This phase of liquid love represents a decline in solid human relationships, since through devices such as social networks, friendship, love and respect between people are easily disposables. Even though these virtual tools are important to reconnect with old friends or talk to a distant relative, they do not replace the reality of the true human sensations of exchanging words with the person you love other than through the screen of computer.
The liquid love lived today shows the weakening of important feelings in human conduct. Online dating is an example that portrays well the absence of values that were indispensable for a relationship between two people. It could be that two people who know each other through a virtual dating start to meet in person, having a lasting relationship, however, in many cases, virtual relationships are camouflaged by false personalities of "friendship or love".
The absence of important aspects for a good relationship between two people is promoted by this virtual reality in which we live in the 21st century. In this virtualization of social relationships, the construction of friendship or love occurs without many obstacles and are quickly replaced by others as if they were information without values. Therefore, what we witness in relation to love is that it is being experienced in a more uncertain and doubtful way, as there have never been so many relationship options as we witness on social networks and there has never been so much fragility and instability in our relationships as the ones experienced at the moment. Therefore, it is in this liquid society that we seek what has existed since the emergence of humanity, love.
By Fabricio Santos
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/relacoes-sociais-no-seculo-xxi.htm