“Look At Me, Give Me Likes!” – The Rise of Digital Exhibitionism
I have been thinking a lot about social media recently, whilst looking at those around me, and I just cannot ignore how false it all is. I have written about social media before, and will be writing about this topic for my upcoming university dissertation, because it is impossible to ignore. We are living in a real life “Black Mirror” episode. We have become that dystopian society that is described in fictional stories as a warning to us so we do not become mindless robots consumed by technology. We are living our life for social media, for others to see, for the likes and validation. I am guilty of this myself and it is beginning to take its toll on me. This is a topic I feel very strongly about because I see so many around me suffering from different issues and I believe that social media and constant connection to the internet is playing a massive role in these issues. I want to find answers. I want to find explanations.
The way people act online compared to real life is very disheartening, especially when you know that person in real life and know the moment they are sharing did not go the way they are portraying it. To put it bluntly, life is not perfect, face-tuned, and filtered. Life is not about editing out the nasty bits. You can edit your photos, share exaggerated scenarios, and make yourself look like the happiest and most confident person in the world, but what is the point when you are crying in your bed at night because you feel so alone, with none of your digital “likers” and followers there to support you in real life. How long will it take before people become so overwhelmed by trying to portray a perfect life online that they become deeply unhappy with their real life because it is so ordinary compared to their online adventures? What happens when we meet people in real life that we met online and they realise that the “you” they liked and got to know was an edited “you”, an extension of the real life “you”. Will they still like you or did they only like the idea you portrayed to them through your social media presence?
I suppose a phrase for this online behaviour could be “digital exhibitionism”. The online Oxford dictionary defines exhibitionism as “extravagant behaviour that is intended to attract attention to oneself”. This behaviour can easily be identified online as social media seems to have become a global billboard for advertising oneself whilst on a quest for more likes and followers in order to boost one’s ego. The past few years have seen this to the extreme with social media viral challenges arising, some of which have been reportedly dangerous and potentially life-threatening. The tamer version of this digital exhibitionism exists in our every day life on social media where people post selfies and share quirky experiences. I think there must be some sort of positive feedback and subconscious mental reward for social media sharing, otherwise we would not do it. The positive feedback of likes from friends, family, and followers must feed the ego in some way.
The issues which arise from this topic are really starting to get to me. One of the worst things, that I am beginning to notice more, is people who feel the need to update social media as soon as they are with someone else, or someone who insists on taking lots of selfies to instantly share. I understand that photos are good for memories, but I’m talking about Snapchat photos that disappear after 24 hours, for example. When I spend time with someone, I want to spend quality time with them. I like hanging out with people without feeling the need to let everyone know that I am being sociable – because most of the people online probably don’t really care. A couple of photos is fine, of course, hanging out is fun and it’s fun to share that, but there’s no need to exaggerate it and make everything seem more exciting than they really are because you are only taking away from the moment with that friend – as if the moment with them was not special enough and needed editing. Lady Gaga, for example, has spoken out about her dislike of meaningless selfies with fans. She has said that she would rather have a real life moment with her fans, talk to them, and get to know them rather than taking a photo and leaving. She describes it as a sort of dead time, when you capture a moment digitally, it is dead and gone forever – maybe we should fill our time with memories and real life experiences rather than digital versions of life.
I do not want to just be a feature on an Instagram story that proves to others you are sociable. I want to be your friend who you hang out with and enjoy time with. I enjoy taking pictures with friends and preserving memories but you can tell when you’re the last person someone has asked to hang out with and then they fill the time by updating social media about the wild time you’re having when you’re both really just sitting on your phones barely talking.
I find myself torn right now with social media because I use it all of the time and I want to work in the social media sector so I can’t help but feel hypocritical. I suppose I just want to see a change in the way people use social media. If the internet is filled with narcissistic selfies and pointless tweets, how will future historians find out what was important to our society, how will they decipher what should be preserved for historical purposes? Or perhaps our use and reliance on social media is something to be documented in itself – the fact our lives are lived online rather than in real life.
I am as caught up in the social media fad as everybody else and I hate it. I am sick of pretending or conveying that life is an amazingly perfect photogenic journey with no flaws. Life is not perfect. You did not naturally capture that picture of me, I made you take 50 photos whilst I was posing before I was happy with one – after a filter was applied to it. That relatable thing that happened to you probably didn’t happen the way you claimed it to – you just thought it would be funny and grab attention. And that is what I hate. I want the world to stop being so narcissistic and fake on social media so that people stop comparing themselves to these lies and then go on to copy the lies to make their own life seem perfect. This only creates mental health issues, anxiety, depression, and a low self-esteem because we are all fighting and competing for the most perfect life when we should just be open about our feelings. We should be supporting each other in times of need, not just giving a person a like on Facebook. The problem is that we see everyone else having a fabulous and eventful life on social media so we feel the need or pressure to do the same, even if it means tweaking our life events to suit society’s digital narrative. And it’s a cycle that just repeats and repeats.
Our first thought after a night out or an event shouldn’t be about posting it online. Nobody needs to know that you gave £5 to a homeless person, and nobody needs to see a photo of you doing it. Just be a good person and help those in need. We don’t need to see that you are now an everyday hero and have done your daily dose of kindness. Just be a good person in your everyday life instead of only for the digital praise. The world does not need to see everything you do and we should feel happy in ourselves if we have done something good to improve the world a little. You know you can do stuff without letting everyone on social media know, right? You don’t need the validation or likes from others to boost your ego or prove that what you are doing is unique, funny, or relatable. Just enjoy real life instead of living your life for social media. Maybe when we stop trying to portray this perfect persona of ourselves and stop editing and censoring our lives then we will learn to enjoy real life, appreciate our friends more, and feel more confident in ourselves. Maybe if we disconnect from the internet for a while then those who really care about what we are doing or who want to make plans with us will contact us directly and ask how we are doing. Those who really care will always find a way to get in touch with you.
The last point I would like to make in this post is about what is going to happen to our social media presence once we die. This is a point which you could write so much on but I want to put across some brief, but important, points. Our activities on social media are constantly monitored and being recorded and, when we die, there will be a digital record of our online activity. This raises the question of “if it were possible to create a digital representation of yourself after death, how accurate would it be to the real you?” Of course this ‘creation’ would never be the real you as there are many aspects of our personal life that aren’t online but if the parts that we do put online are exaggerated or edited then the digital recreation would be very little like us. People will remember us for what we leave behind and if our online presence is the only thing people have then will you be happy for people to remember you like that? I suppose for most, the answer for that may be yes because many people try their hardest to make their online life look perfect so to be remembered as a perfect person is desirable. But again, it is not us and people won’t be remembering us. They will remember the persona we created in an effort to hide the nasty bits in life.
Social media is fascinating and has the power to be an extremely useful tool. However, humanity’s obsession with looking perfect and being the best is influencing our behaviour online. As we constantly compare ourselves to perfect images we see online, we are feeling pressured into being that perfect image too. This is many steps further than the airbrushed magazines that made young girls follow dangerous diet fads, this is affecting everyone. Because we never switch off from the internet, we are constantly exposed to these images which, I believe, we do not understand the full impact of on our mental health because we are the first generation to experience social media throughout our whole lifetime. Perhaps, in the future, research can be carried out on the effect of social media on our behaviour and mental health so we can fully understand the digital exhibitionism that dominates our society.
The way people act online compared to real life is very disheartening, especially when you know that person in real life and know the moment they are sharing did not go the way they are portraying it. To put it bluntly, life is not perfect, face-tuned, and filtered. Life is not about editing out the nasty bits. You can edit your photos, share exaggerated scenarios, and make yourself look like the happiest and most confident person in the world, but what is the point when you are crying in your bed at night because you feel so alone, with none of your digital “likers” and followers there to support you in real life. How long will it take before people become so overwhelmed by trying to portray a perfect life online that they become deeply unhappy with their real life because it is so ordinary compared to their online adventures? What happens when we meet people in real life that we met online and they realise that the “you” they liked and got to know was an edited “you”, an extension of the real life “you”. Will they still like you or did they only like the idea you portrayed to them through your social media presence?
I suppose a phrase for this online behaviour could be “digital exhibitionism”. The online Oxford dictionary defines exhibitionism as “extravagant behaviour that is intended to attract attention to oneself”. This behaviour can easily be identified online as social media seems to have become a global billboard for advertising oneself whilst on a quest for more likes and followers in order to boost one’s ego. The past few years have seen this to the extreme with social media viral challenges arising, some of which have been reportedly dangerous and potentially life-threatening. The tamer version of this digital exhibitionism exists in our every day life on social media where people post selfies and share quirky experiences. I think there must be some sort of positive feedback and subconscious mental reward for social media sharing, otherwise we would not do it. The positive feedback of likes from friends, family, and followers must feed the ego in some way.
The issues which arise from this topic are really starting to get to me. One of the worst things, that I am beginning to notice more, is people who feel the need to update social media as soon as they are with someone else, or someone who insists on taking lots of selfies to instantly share. I understand that photos are good for memories, but I’m talking about Snapchat photos that disappear after 24 hours, for example. When I spend time with someone, I want to spend quality time with them. I like hanging out with people without feeling the need to let everyone know that I am being sociable – because most of the people online probably don’t really care. A couple of photos is fine, of course, hanging out is fun and it’s fun to share that, but there’s no need to exaggerate it and make everything seem more exciting than they really are because you are only taking away from the moment with that friend – as if the moment with them was not special enough and needed editing. Lady Gaga, for example, has spoken out about her dislike of meaningless selfies with fans. She has said that she would rather have a real life moment with her fans, talk to them, and get to know them rather than taking a photo and leaving. She describes it as a sort of dead time, when you capture a moment digitally, it is dead and gone forever – maybe we should fill our time with memories and real life experiences rather than digital versions of life.
I do not want to just be a feature on an Instagram story that proves to others you are sociable. I want to be your friend who you hang out with and enjoy time with. I enjoy taking pictures with friends and preserving memories but you can tell when you’re the last person someone has asked to hang out with and then they fill the time by updating social media about the wild time you’re having when you’re both really just sitting on your phones barely talking.
I find myself torn right now with social media because I use it all of the time and I want to work in the social media sector so I can’t help but feel hypocritical. I suppose I just want to see a change in the way people use social media. If the internet is filled with narcissistic selfies and pointless tweets, how will future historians find out what was important to our society, how will they decipher what should be preserved for historical purposes? Or perhaps our use and reliance on social media is something to be documented in itself – the fact our lives are lived online rather than in real life.
I am as caught up in the social media fad as everybody else and I hate it. I am sick of pretending or conveying that life is an amazingly perfect photogenic journey with no flaws. Life is not perfect. You did not naturally capture that picture of me, I made you take 50 photos whilst I was posing before I was happy with one – after a filter was applied to it. That relatable thing that happened to you probably didn’t happen the way you claimed it to – you just thought it would be funny and grab attention. And that is what I hate. I want the world to stop being so narcissistic and fake on social media so that people stop comparing themselves to these lies and then go on to copy the lies to make their own life seem perfect. This only creates mental health issues, anxiety, depression, and a low self-esteem because we are all fighting and competing for the most perfect life when we should just be open about our feelings. We should be supporting each other in times of need, not just giving a person a like on Facebook. The problem is that we see everyone else having a fabulous and eventful life on social media so we feel the need or pressure to do the same, even if it means tweaking our life events to suit society’s digital narrative. And it’s a cycle that just repeats and repeats.
Our first thought after a night out or an event shouldn’t be about posting it online. Nobody needs to know that you gave £5 to a homeless person, and nobody needs to see a photo of you doing it. Just be a good person and help those in need. We don’t need to see that you are now an everyday hero and have done your daily dose of kindness. Just be a good person in your everyday life instead of only for the digital praise. The world does not need to see everything you do and we should feel happy in ourselves if we have done something good to improve the world a little. You know you can do stuff without letting everyone on social media know, right? You don’t need the validation or likes from others to boost your ego or prove that what you are doing is unique, funny, or relatable. Just enjoy real life instead of living your life for social media. Maybe when we stop trying to portray this perfect persona of ourselves and stop editing and censoring our lives then we will learn to enjoy real life, appreciate our friends more, and feel more confident in ourselves. Maybe if we disconnect from the internet for a while then those who really care about what we are doing or who want to make plans with us will contact us directly and ask how we are doing. Those who really care will always find a way to get in touch with you.
The last point I would like to make in this post is about what is going to happen to our social media presence once we die. This is a point which you could write so much on but I want to put across some brief, but important, points. Our activities on social media are constantly monitored and being recorded and, when we die, there will be a digital record of our online activity. This raises the question of “if it were possible to create a digital representation of yourself after death, how accurate would it be to the real you?” Of course this ‘creation’ would never be the real you as there are many aspects of our personal life that aren’t online but if the parts that we do put online are exaggerated or edited then the digital recreation would be very little like us. People will remember us for what we leave behind and if our online presence is the only thing people have then will you be happy for people to remember you like that? I suppose for most, the answer for that may be yes because many people try their hardest to make their online life look perfect so to be remembered as a perfect person is desirable. But again, it is not us and people won’t be remembering us. They will remember the persona we created in an effort to hide the nasty bits in life.
Social media is fascinating and has the power to be an extremely useful tool. However, humanity’s obsession with looking perfect and being the best is influencing our behaviour online. As we constantly compare ourselves to perfect images we see online, we are feeling pressured into being that perfect image too. This is many steps further than the airbrushed magazines that made young girls follow dangerous diet fads, this is affecting everyone. Because we never switch off from the internet, we are constantly exposed to these images which, I believe, we do not understand the full impact of on our mental health because we are the first generation to experience social media throughout our whole lifetime. Perhaps, in the future, research can be carried out on the effect of social media on our behaviour and mental health so we can fully understand the digital exhibitionism that dominates our society.
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