Social media for me has always been a way of keeping up to date with those around me but also letting people in on what I’ve been up to. Not going to lie, I have gotten tired of it in recent years especially with the whole come up of insta-models, followers and getting noticed etc. but I somehow always kept it.
When I was at Uni, I decided to delete my profile after realising I didn’t like who I was following, who was following me and not feeling like I could really post what I wanted given that everyone that was following me were people I was seeing every day or I felt would judge me. It got to a certain point where I realised that if I was fearing these people judging me, people who had no clue who I was, why the hell did I have them on my social media in the first place? I wanted to start anew, start fresh…
Through Instagram or any social media platform, we are able to ‘keep in contact’ with people we’ve worked with, volunteered with, old Uni peeps, peeps we met at some party (the list goes on…) but when do we have a seasonal clean out of our online friends? Quick answer: we don’t. There’s this sense of feeling connected with people by seeing them post, making ourselves feel as if we’re still linked to them in one way or another – We’re not. We post, they post, we comment, they like, comment, message ‘we have to meet up soon…’ ‘it’s been soo long…’ and why is that? There’s obviously a reason why we haven’t spoken for so long…?
Yes, I get it. We lose touch with those around us especially after some big life event e.g. Uni, new job or work gets in the way, we live far away from everyone or it’s just awkward to pop up in someone’s life and tell them you miss them but still. We all know if we want to see people, we make the effort to so if we’re not doing that in real life – why are we still putting in effort online? When do we realise that these surface-level conversations are quite draining and pointless?
Don’t get me wrong social media does have its benefits but are we using it as an excuse to not really catch up with people? Do we lie to ourselves in thinking that because you follow them and they follow you back that we’re really interested in what the other is doing? I feel the loneliness of being a graduate but also just, in general, comes from seeing these people that you did chat to once upon a time getting on with their lives and you’re just…following. Even the word following gives this sense of you’re not really friends but watching from afar. I feel in this day and age we have to be really honest with ourselves in thinking
‘Does my online profile really represent me and what’s going on in my life?’
What’s the point in having all of these online ‘friends’ when no one in real life is checking in on you or knows you as a person?
Even posting feels fake nowadays and it’s not even about the number of likes anymore. It is for the simple fact that because you’re not constantly talking to these people, so even the reception you have online fades. I realised this when I felt an instant fear in wanting to unfollow certain people. Knowing that unfollowing them would eventually lead them to unfollow me creates this tit for tat game of having to follow people you chat with day and day out, this sense of indirectly offending someone by unfollowing them or even people that you follow and they don’t follow you back (what even is that?).
It just sounds so dumb to me that these are the things we do worry and spend time thinking about. However, in all honesty, I say we but I mean me. I got that feeling the other day of wanting to start again. That I would get rid of that feeling of guilt by just deleting (disappearing) and reinventing myself (again). On the flip side, how many times am I going to start over? Delete and ‘reinvent’ myself? I even decided to go ahead and ‘temporarily disable’ my Instagram when knowing deep down inside that no one would even notice…Is everything an attention-seeking act or are we just bored of who we’re surrounding ourselves with, even online?
The Anxious Portuguesa 