Today’s post is late, mostly because I’ve spent the better half of it being busy with my other projects up to the point that I almost forgot I was due for another post.
“What other projects?” You ask with a coy smile.
Well, I have a few things that I have on my plate that I’m simultaneously working on. That is, at the moment;
– I’m working on a few stories (which I release as a serial on Reddit). I want to get my current ones done so that I can work on my book’s sequel.
– I repurposed my YouTube channel for gaming and game related stuff, along with Twitch.
– I’m doing some game development work with a few friends.
“Isn’t that kind of a lot?”
Why, yes. Yes, it is. But I find that being busy helps my creativity in writing and with the lock-down keeping me largely at home and largely aimless (after 9-5 work), I decided to prioritise some projects.
But enough about that. Let’s talk about today’s topic!!!
Four Things I’ve Learnt on Social Media
Oh boy. Social media is something unique. Unlike anything that has come before it. Honestly, I still think back to the days before we even had the mental concepts for smartphones. And the difference between life before and life after smartphones is something unheard of. And it brings me to my first point;
1) Nobody knows how to use it.
Which closely translates to, ‘nobody truly understands what it is supposed to be for’. I mean, think about it. What is Social Media for?
Is it to keep up with friends? We’ve got their numbers for that.
Is it to keep up with the news? We’ve got the TV for that.
Celebrities? Celebrity magazines have dedicated stalkers for information.
So, what is its purpose?
Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Tiktok and the likes will give you vague explanations to their uses but at the end of the day, we all use them the same way.
As an outlet to our lives. Which brings me to my next point.
2) Everyone shares too much.
You probably understand what I mean by this. The common example would be the people who so happen to share a lot about their relationships on twitter or facebook, listing out details that should be private or rather, dealt with in private.
You have some people completely detail the faults of their parents or partners or friends for some support in their decision to cut them off. Don’t get me wrong. If your family, friends or loved ones are (a) abusive, (b) racists or (c) on the narcissistic end of things, it’s perfectly understandable to cut them off. I just don’t think it necessarily has to be public unless the situations demand it be so.
Quick PSA: If you’re in an abusive relationship, please leave. Don’t wait until they become better. Just go.
All in all, in this area of oversharing, once you dig deeper you eventually figure out that for most of the people over-sharing, they are doing it for lesson number three.
3) Clout-Chasing.
This is something I personally detest. When people start sharing their stories not because it is particularly important but because they want some ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’. It trivialises important issues into a game of internet points which I find to extremely wrong.
And clout chasing takes so many forms.
You have the people who share fake stories. You have the people who bully others. You have the ones who post ‘thirst traps’ but pretend like that wasn’t what the picture was for. You get those who expose their DMs every single time they get a private message because of the picture they want to paint. You have people who are always contrarian. You have people who will always agree.
You have stans.
You have fancams.
You have meme accounts who only exist to take a shot at anything and everything that breathes on social media.
You have accounts who pretend to be racist just because it’s the ‘cool thing to be edgy’ on the internet, only to then turn around and ‘apologise’ when they get exposed.
Most of the lives on social net want to achieve some sort of fame that they’ve attached to follower count, likes and retweets. And I can’t say I fully blame them. After all, the advent of social media opened the doors to celebrity status via the route of ‘Influencer’. Suddenly, the pedestal that we place a lot of our ‘hollywood’ heroes are now within reach.
All in all, all of this brings me to the last thing I have learnt on social media.
4) It is having a bad effect on some people
In this point, I will leave the following so that you can read it up at your own leisure but the main crux is this. Social media is having a negative effect on some people’s mental states because we are being inundated with snippets of very different lifestyles.
And while it doesn’t sound like this should be a problem, some people can’t help but constantly compare themselves with those they believe to be successful. So, consciously and sometimes subconsciously, they start to change how they look, act, talk and behave in order to paint a picture that has no truth to who they really are.
Social media has made a lot of people live false online lives. And that’s a problem.
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