"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." - Michel de Montaigne
We live in a world in which we as human beings gravitate towards social media. We love being in the know - knowing what's going on in others' lives as well as sharing what is happening in ours. What we love so much about social media, is that we have the ability and the power to present our ideal selves. Our profile says and shows whatever we want it to about who we are. Our profile is our "picture-perfect" persona. By having the Internet and a computer screen as a filter, we are able to communicate to others only what we want them to see. We can leave out all the baggage that we are carrying in our lives and only show the good parts. Someone posts a picture of them on a hiking trail in the mountains to express, "Look how athletic and outdoorsy I am!" What they left out from their convenient Instagram post is that their tent collapsed in the middle of the night, the thunderstorm doused their campfire, and they got a massive outbreak of poison ivy. Another Facebooker posts a picture of their egg-white omelet they made for themselves for breakfast, attempting to send a message of, "I'm so healthy, and also, I cook!" They left out that they had to throw away three burned omelets before finally making one that was posting-worthy. We take millions of selfies before finally posting the one that is most slimming. Pictures and posts on our personal online profiles communicate to our society and the world around us who we are. But it isn't the truest version.
Even I am guilty of this. This summer I went on a dance study abroad to Italy. It was an all girl program. Over the course of the 6-weeks that the same 25 girls were together, new friendships were created, but as you can imagine, a lot of drama was created as well. When I got home from my trip, I posted a video on my Facebook that my friend had made of our summer. It showed all of us girls dancing around the streets, laughing, eating gelato, etc. It gave off the appearance that I had the most wonderful, perfect, romantic summer in Europe with my 25 best friends. And I'm sure everyone who watched that video believed that. And in many ways, it was an amazing summer. But what the video didn't show, nor would I have wanted the entire Facebook world to know, was the drama that occurred and the cliques that formed among the girls that absolutely drove me crazy and hurt many feelings.
This idea of social media and photography has influenced who we are as a people today. It has influenced how we communicate ourselves to each other. We communicate only half-truths. We want to only show our best selves. While this can be a confidence booster as we focus on the best and most exciting parts of our lives, it puts a lens over who we are as a person, and we are never seen truly in focus.
Interesting stuff. I like the quote you gave at the beginning of the post because it's so true about humans in general. We see these things on Facebook and Twitter (and even in person) and we believe that the other's "best" is the reality--even when the only evidence we have is their appearance. Yet we also think the same thing about people when they have weird appearances or when their ideas have weird appearances (again, with the explorers who wanted to sail around the world and stuff).
ReplyDeleteDo you ever wonder if the ancient explorers did this? We read these stories of adventure and peril and travels and we instantly awe at their abilities. But we don't often read about their boring days at sea. The days where they found nothing or about the days that just plain sucked. Perhaps they tailored their stories to ensure those who funded their travels would continue to provide the means to explore. Whatever the reason, I can't help but believe that explorers of old sought to focus on the successes in their voyages and cut out the negatives. Imagine what their Facebook's would look like if they had one? Nothing but travel photos I'm sure haha.
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