Recently I thought to myself, isn’t it better to use each platform for its original purpose. Before Instagram became a portfolio for all creative work, a tinder profile of your life for all your friends so that they can see how cool you are, it was simply an image sharing platform. A place to share aesthetics of life. Little text, the odd quote here and there. Feeds full of random photos.
There wasn’t much backlash for someone’s profile for being unreal or fake since it wasn’t about being real about your personal life, it was simply for sharing pretty images (and now videos as well).
I noticed how it’s easier to connect with people I barely know over the internet and how I get so much joy of seeing the updates of the people I met once in my life. It’s like I enjoy interacting with them more since we only know each other’s online persona.
And that’s the thing, no matter how real we try to be, whatever profile we build online, it will be an online persona. I’ve tried to be authentic and genuine (and succeeded) but it will never be an accurate representation of the me in real life. Of the nuances that my friends and family know. That’s why I sometimes think insta is better to share with people you don’t know because the connection is only online.
If you think about it, the internet has always been a place to connect anonymously. And I admire those who have social media accounts that are not showing their identity. I actually think its cool. One thing is having a private/closed account to simply consume content. But even if you post, I think its cool when people post for the quality and depth of their content and not the personal gain or praise they may get. You can make amazing content but not link it to your identity. I think this is the path I’m going towards if I want to keep posting content.
What has helped me tremendously is to use other platforms:
Letterboxd for movie reviews, critiques and funny comments (excellent place to remain anonymous too)
Goodreads for the same as above but for books
Substack, the platform we’re on now, although most do use their real identity for their postings. I just love reading people’s writing, notes and even the discussions under posts. I am in awe of the ideas people put out and the words they have strung together to express themselves. But again, I would in general love to remain anon over here.
Tiktok can honestly be informative and a great place for dance inspo. I like that I barely ever post on there so I’m simply a consumer of content.
The feeling I get when opening insta (where I have an account with 1.5k followers and where I use my ‘real’ identity and post my life) versus the above listed social media outlets- what a difference!
I get anxiety when opening insta. When did it become normal to post about your real life online and wager it with likes and comments as if your personal life is up for judgement. I don’t like it. But as any other human being who grew up and made account -we’ve all started posting pics of ourselves, our holidays and interacting with friends on there. Slowly, especially if you have a public account, insta has become a sort of landing page that people visit to find out more about you. It’s weird since when is an online profile ever going to represent you accurately with your complexity and quirks and beautiful details?
It gives me an icky feeling that we post our friends and our personal lives because it gives other FOMO (fear of missing out) and a sense of lack. And at the same time we all know that its simply a highlight reel. It also gives people the wrong idea if you only ever post fun and happy things, as they won’t know the nuances of all the ups and downs you go through. I don’t think we’ll ever fully get an accurate representation of someone online but it’s weird that people we don’t know can think that they can get to “know” us by watching us online. It doesn’t feel right. It feels misconstrued to me.
I haven’t completely found my groove with managing my time on social media and off since my work as a model/actress/dancer unfortunately is connected to me updating my insta profile. However, I have come to an agreement with myself that the only purpose of insta that could seem logical is to purely use it for work purposes. If ever I were to make conceptual videos, I could post them on there since I’m proud of it. The occasional photography dump of a beautiful holiday. Anything I’m proud of presenting really. From being someone who was chronically online, posting every day, a lot of thoughts and feelings- it became addictive to have this online personality. But eventually getting so many notifications became exhausting. Even if they were filled with likes and replies back on stories. Most comments and replies are superficial, a dopamine rush. Now I think, if someone really has a question or a burning observation or compliment they will DM me (since I turned off story replies). Also, since I’m trying to be less on the app, I also don’t want to waste other people’s time by posting frivolous things about my daily life. If we all posted less and posted only what we’re proud of (works of photography/writing/videography) I think it would be a more efficient platform. It’s like we’ve gotten to a point where we’re all trying to limit our screen time and not be on the app. So when we post we want others to pay attention, but are you paying attention to other people’s posts? I think this is a good question to ask yourself.
I watched sex and the city the series for the first time and envied how these ladies got to live in a time period in the 90’s before the smartphone. I deeply crave a life which is not chronically online. It can be depressing. I’m was born into an era with internet so it’s inevitable that I grew up with this. I’m curious if anyone has studied this; made statistics on how much our brains are changing? dopamine receptors and mental health wise, what is happening to us as? Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha especially.
I feel sad that we have to miss out on this aspect of life. I reminisce on a life where we aren’t bombarded with information and one where we are more present with those around us. More present to feel and sense things. I’m curious if this will change or if we really are encroaching on a technological era where as a culture and society everything will be shifting to be online in one way or another. Also, how are we going to make this happen technology wise? More mining and depleting the earth? Child labor in the Congo mining for cobalt? I’m just not sure if it’s all worth it, physically and mentally to go towards that ideal. Does it really do us better? Is this modernity? or advancement?
I enjoy the internet as how it was meant to be:
anonymous
:) a real escape. Linking your identity to it is i think a trap!
Note: I love content. Learning things about people’s real lived experiences. Their thoughts and philosophies, however you don’t need to share your personal identity with the content right? The whole existence of likes/comments/shares/subscribers builds the attachment. An internet without this ego trip would be great, thanks!