Social Media is a platform that gives people the ability to share
events throughout their day with people across the internet. Profiles are
created on social media sited that are all about the user and how they wish to
express themselves. Whatever they wish to post, share, like, comment on or what
be it, all contributes to their online personality. Online, people have the ability
to express how they feel, what they do, and can express themselves in almost
any way. It is not often however, we see
people posting things that show that they are unhappy, even if they truly are. That
is because social media acts as a sort of mask that users use to cover up parts
of themselves that they wish not to share.
With
Cues filtered out it is easy to give people the wrong impressions on social
media. Weather that wrong impression is imposed on purpose or on accident is up
to the user. With this type of hyper personal communication there is plenty of room
to imagine other users across platforms. People tend to share content that implies
they are living their best life. They are choosing to show their most
attractive self which can lead to misleading thoughts and impressions of
characters and events. People quickly flash falsely generated smiles to snap a quick
shot to post online and then continue on with their day, leading other users to
see a picture of them smiling and seemingly having a great time when in reality
they just quickly posed for a picture.
This Twitter
thread shows multiple examples of fake happiness on social media.
The original
post encouraged people to post pictures of themselves when they were going
through a hard time but appeared to be fine in a photograph they had previously
posted. This thread is interesting to say the least, it is extremely eye
opening and what I consider to be a true social media experience. People
disclosing how they really felt at that time and other people sharing their
similar experiences generates a safe place to share sensitive content and
potentially receive support from other users. To me, that is the wonder of
social media.
Fake happiness. This hits home pretty good for me. I was married for 7 years, and during the last few years of it my ex-wife had gotten involved in some bullshit MLM scheme. One of the biggest factors of being a successful MLM product peddler is projecting that your life is amazing, that everything is fine, and that you are happy and content as a result of the product you are using. I rarely took pictures with my wife, but the deeper into this MLM thing she got, the more she began to ask to take pictures of us kissing, or front the appearance of romanticism. It was incredibly fake, and felt awful. I honestly don’t know how people who falsify their lives, or lifestyles can sleep at night. I get the part about wanting to project your digital self with a little flaws as possible, but being entirely fake is another story. I imagine that individuals who present themselves falsely are somewhat tormented inside, or borderline sociopaths.
ReplyDeleteI recently saw a friend of mine who let me know that things weren't going great at home, the family was arguing, etc. I said that I was shocked, because they all look so happy and family-oriented on Instagram. Her response was, "Doesn't everyone?" and I was struck dumb because she was so right. Everyone's lives look better online. No one is truly that happy all the time; people post the best version of themselves on social media.
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