the Social media paradox
Most of us love it, most of us hate it, most of us at the same time. Most who know me, and most who don’t, have noticed very easily I’m not into the social media game. I have slow internet, adding images is annoying on almost every site, very few will ever see it and fewer will interact - it’s more efficient to just text! Not to mention, for me, and I believe for everybody even if they don’t know it, it generally will make you a worse, angrier, and sadder person that’s afraid of the world.
But business owners know it’s one of those things you can’t just forget about these days. ‘Word of mouth’, if it still works at all, doesn’t work that well anymore. Not when in person hangouts or clubs are rare, less people want to waste much needed cash on a day out, and anything without a social media page is seen as not worth the time or simply forgotten about altogether.
It’s a difficult landscape for personal things, too. Hyper-edited photos and picture perfect moments make you feel like your life isn’t enough as it is, like your body or face or hair is gross or wrong, like you’re just missing that spark. For artists, this has effects too. So many of us struggle with the algorithm of websites not caring to push art, instigating self imposed and torturous deadlines, or serving us paintings made practically overnight and getting tons of engagement by super talented people. Or, these days, not made by people at all. Don’t even get me started on that. The long and short of it is, it’s discouraging to see something you work hard on get peanuts compared to other art, knowing you won’t measure up, or knowing you have to play the game just right if you want to get past even the tutorial. Wondering so much whether it’s worth even trying that you just don’t.
But why do we have to measure up?
It’s our own standards. Nobody is going to make us live that way. Shame us, maybe, but we have the last say 90% of the time. So why do we do this to ourselves? I don’t have some secret answer, I’m seriously asking a question. I doubt it will help me be ‘better at social media’, but maybe it will remind me once in a while to try and not worry about the outcome.
