Caught up creating a digital picture of how they’d like to be seen, social media users often use the likes of Facebook, Twitter and now Pinterest, not for one of its beautiful original benefits; informing and sharing, but merely for broadcasting and manipulating.
Too often, users simply create updates on their profiles to try and align themselves with a product or personality, be it a £200 designer belt or a guy who’s released an album of music made by tapping spoons on his breakfast table that he recorded through a toilet roll inner. Whether it’s a check in at a renowned restaurant or a photo upload of a concert crowd, the ego driven intentions remain.
And everyone’s guilty of it, whether it’s the five tweets a breath addict or the person behind a blog post like this one, transparently trying to disassociate himself with such vanity! Egotism is what separates man from cattle and is as inevitable and incredible as sunshine, but we do have numerous grades of sun block to deter burning. And cattle need nudging into the right fields.
When self absorbed social noise is digested, the author’s (assumed) aims are increasingly missed, by me at least for now, having been away from a computer screen for three weeks on holiday. A break like that violently emphasises the triviality of most noise I’d been consuming.
I haven’t been finishing reading people’s thought yawns and thinking ‘wow, this guy has style’ or ‘now that’s what you call being on the pulse of contemporary music.’ I’ve been internalising a loud ‘fucking try hard!’ scream at my laptop, getting jealous of the author’s clear abundance of spare time and moving on to more informative, stimulating content.
Attempts of identity through association is one aspect of social media becoming increasingly apparent as it continues to penetrate the mainstream. Since Twitter has grown from its humble (and more useful, enjoyable) days when it was largely used by news agencies and commentators, new users have subtly slipped into a mind state of self appointed stardom where they unknowingly start considering themselves a celebrity/brand/product themselves that – surely! – the whole world wants to read the every finger nail biting, arse scratching, fart passing tweet of. Of course, social media usage aside, this is reflective of wider changes in the nation’s ‘Living the dream’ X Factor imprisoned identity.
A day in to my three weeks of digital detox, on a long walk between beaches and bays on a coastline, I found myself thinking in tweets. I’d been using my social media accounts on such a close, regular basis that when I’d walked 14 kilometres away from my hostel only for a thunder storm to surprisingly leave me stranded, I didn’t at first think about finding a bus or taxi to safety. I thought to myself the ‘Oh dear. Stranded in a storm. Should have packed my umbrella, ha!’ words I would have tweeted if I’d not turned off my data roaming. For someone with a fond love of elegant, thoughtful phrases of language, thinking in short and choppy snippets like that is obviously a little alarming – and mental.
Several further days isolated, freed, from the constant brain flood of ego tickles by the people I’d been following and those of my own, I started feeling a sense of liberation. I’d be exploring a park, museum or dining with friends and not feel tied to my handheld device to keep up with ‘buzz’ that now seems to hold less merit than my kitchen fridge’s hum. Previously, it had been ‘God forbid if I don’t find out what so and so is eating for breakfast’. It became ‘Who gives a flying fuck?’.
Forgive the cringeworthy self help terminology, but I’d somewhat become ‘awakened’ or at least reminded as to who I was and what I thought or felt beneath the distracting fuzz of empty detail. Disconnected from the penetrative onslaught of nothingness, I had more space to make reflections, form solid opinions and relax, or if you liked the self help shit, ‘just be’. For an introvert who sometimes struggles socially, switching off helped me to switch on and exercise a personality so much harder to feel, develop or sustain when plugged in to a virtual one that runs at a higher, less pure voltage.
The most charismatic, inspiring people I’m friends with spend little, if any time, building up a digital persona. My favourite musicians, film stars and writers are so because they aren’t on chat shows every afternoon or in my inbox or news feeds fifty times a day. Their output is less frequent and richer for it because there’s more intrigue.
To the 30 odd real life friends I’ve recently unsubscribed from, it’s not that I don’t care about you. It’s because I do. Communication in person shouldn’t be a repetition of something I already know because you published it in an intangible arena. What’s the point in talking to someone when you know what they’ve got to say already?
Working at a digital marketing agency as a Social Media Manager and having ‘anti social media’ thoughts like these sets up a stage for conflict, but the disdain is towards how social media is used by certain people, not social media itself. My respect and love for social media remains.
I’m in a long distance relationship that began on a dating site and would be much more difficult without Facebook, Skype and the like. Keeping up with the niche underground hiphop music I adore would seem impossible. Sharing holiday photos with relatives would become a more long winded and expensive process. Keeping abreast of current affairs and sports results would only be possible in one hour television news broadcasts at the end of the day. I’d find it harder to discover new, highly regarded places to eat, drink and travel. *Insert the many other benefits of technology here*.
I just wish for the impossible, that people, if they really must consider themselves as a brand, do what brands do and run content through ‘usefulness/entertainment factor’ filters before sounding off. Then, just occasionally, Twitter’s top trends might be reflective of what’s going on in the world again, not how much better Harry from One Direction’s new haircut might be.
In terms of brands, the abundance of triviality in many people’s inboxes, news feeds and palms of hands emphasises the ever present and not nearly exhausted enough point; content is king. It’s everything and always has been. Brands and agencies have the time and resources that average Joe doesn’t to create incredible content. Create a solid identity positioned around a focused point of shared interest and serve useful, entertaining content around that. Your desired audience will come and will stay.
Orchestrated persona in this article:
I’m really cool and worldly, having walked bays, beaches an’ all.
I’m really dedicated to my other half.
I’m totally settling back into day to day life following my holiday.
My newly cleansed Twitter channel includes:
@ComicBookGuy – My favourite character from The Simpsons who regularly gives me a chuckle.
@WappingLondon – Cute updates about an area local to me.
@kanyewest – A rapper I’m a fan of who regularly entertains and talks about his creative process.
@MarsCuriosity – Who doesn’t want tweets from space?
@Prefixmag – Humble, informative music news site.
