People are trying to perfect a perfect version of themselves on the internet, someone who looks happy, well travelled, beautiful. Social media will have you believing that a hoe is actually a respectable girl, that a dickhead knows how to treat a woman. It’ll have you believing that a straight little nerd is taking drugs they don’t even know about, and that the guy with a yacht and 5 cars is happy and living the dream.
I touched on the minor aspects of social media in the last post, but I’m about to get into the better part of it. In a nutshell, an addiction to social media makes people miserable or narcissistic. Probably both.
Children
Anybody under 16 should not be on social media! Especially instagram! I’ll let Facebook slide because the majority of kids have their adult family on Facebook, but Instagram?
I remember when I had Instagram, I would see little 10 year old girls dressing and acting like they’re 20 and it made me so angry. I can’t stop my daughter having an instagram, but I can raise her to know her worth lies outside of these things, hopefully preventing her from ever posting anything like that. I’m not saying the parents are to blame, because a lot of the time it’s not the parents. Sometimes a couple will raise their children as best they can, teaching them manners and self worth and respect, and their kid will still be posting pictures of themselves holding money and sitting on a bathroom sink. Why? Because social media told them that they have to!
Trends are always changing, and millions of people are always trying to fit in to society’s perfect mould, which can only be done by following these trends. No girl-child (I see you, Lolita.) should be posting half naked, pouty pictures on Instagram. And no boy-child or GROWN MAN should be commenting inappropriate things on these girls photos. I FEEL SICK.
…and not children.
Children are like wet cement, as the saying goes. Except in this case, it’s not just children being influenced by adults. It’s everybody up to and including those in adulthood being influenced by the perfect prototype that social media has created. Like children, people have become so easily impressionable by what they see, that individuality is slowly becoming extinct. Suddenly, everybody is ‘different’ and yet somehow all the same. Suddenly, all girls look exactly the same with their fleeky eyebrows and fuller lips, and all guys are saying the same things.
Girls are looking at celebrities like Kylie Jenner, full of plastic and something that isn’t attainable without money, and praying to be like them. But obviously, unfair as it is, they can’t, because it’s not real. Thus, upon learning that they’ll never be that ‘perfect’, self esteem drops and the road to validation via selfies begins. Women are looking at other women and wishing they could look like them, not knowing that the woman they’re looking at has edited her photo, applied 3 filters and taken it from a strategic angle. That, and she looks like about 700 other women.
Suddenly, the female population in 2016 have become ‘instagram girls’, all sporting the same look that I mentioned above. Suddenly, there are clones, literally they all look the same.
Adults become miserable seeing people their age in a better position in life. Jealous over seeing their old classmate Bob with a big house and a picket-fence whilst looking at the clock and learning they only have 4 hours left until they need to wake up for their 9-5 job. Little do they know, Bob is desperately lonely after his wife and children left him due to his gambling addiction, and the picket-fence is just to make people believe he’s still got a family. People are seeing what others post about and are wishing their lives were like that, not knowing that the successful person in question is desperately trying to make other people think their life is perfect whilst also battling something that is crippling them and making them miserable.
It’s madness.
Delete your ex. Delete all the people you went to high school with unless you’re still friends and have met up with them in the last 6 months. Most people have hundreds of friends on their social media, yet are only in contact with a handful of them. The rest is just for being nosy.
Ego
And here, all rivers lead to the same ocean of the ego. The majority of people in their late teens and 20s are using social media. And this has a huge effect on the ego, so much so that online bullying is actually a thing! Turn off the computer!
But it’s the feeding of the ego that is most common. For guys, it’s posting about their money and their possessions. For girls, it’s posting their face/body. Now, I don’t care about what guys are doing but I will say it’s pathetic and no girl in her right mind should find anything like that attractive. But girls I know about and saw very, very often.
Girls often use social media to feed their ego as they’ve found a new endless group of people to tell them they’re pretty and give them attention. Not all girls. But a lot of them. We’re programmed to believe that unless we can gain validation from other people, we’re not worthy or desirable. Which is why even those who disagree will get upset if they get no likes, or no retweets on their picture. I literally wanted to vomit when I saw a girl’s profile was literally full of selfies.
“I post pictures of myself because I’m confident and not insecure“, constantly posting pictures just to receive compliments and flattery is confidence? What are you, afraid that people will forget what you look like? I like to call it denial.
Strategically waiting until you gain a huge following before going makeup-less so you can show that you’re “real” and can receive the “you don’t even need it!” comments is confidence?
Deleting a photo that doesn’t get more than 30 likes is confidence?
“I look good but I’m going to caption it “I look like shit”, knowing that people will reassure me” is confidence?
“I know I look good so I’m going to post photos of myself, but it’s not because I need people to tell me I look good because I already know” ?????????
I like to call it vanity and insecurity.
The biggest mark of insecurity is the need for validation from everybody – especially strangers. So many people are desperate slaves to social media, excitably trying to reach ‘milestones’ of followers and likes. Do these likes further you in life? Some of us are excited by an achievement in our personal lives, and some of us feel like we’ve achieved something by reaching 5000 followers.
If you have an instagram full of pictures of your face, but it’s an extension of a successful beauty blog or youtube, then that’s fine. If you have a twitter to promote a blog or something you do as a hobby or for work and you’re excited about a new 1000 follower milestone, then that’s fine. Because that’s what you do.
I’m talking about the people who get ‘famous’ for nothing. What do you have to offer? Are your parents proud that you’re sharing yourself on the internet to everyone for no purpose other than to fulfil your egotistical needs? Is your mother proud that you log onto the internet everyday just to feed off attention? Are YOU proud of yourself? When you lay down and think for a second about how happy online flattery and popularity makes you, are you satisfied?
Really think about that for a second.
‘I need constant validation and assurance that I am desired, envied and admired by people I know and don’t know. COMPLIMENT ME, DAMN IT’.
There comes an age where you need to look in the mirror, say ‘damn I look good’, take a photo and not feel the need to post it everywhere. It’s not even just about thinking you look good. It’s about needing attention from other people, about anything.
There comes a time where you need to pay less attention to social media and get on with your life without needing to check what everybody else is doing. Post about the things you’ve done, the things you’ve seen, the things you love. And don’t do it so other people will think better of you.
Get over yourself. This isn’t bitterness. It’s incredulity at the fact that one can do this and still claim they are happy with their lives.
Get over yourself, and get on with your life.