it’s hard not to have one nowadays. my grandma has snapchat and even my cousin’s dog has an instagram account.
everyone talks about how too much social media is bad for your mental health, which it is, and how dangerous, no-good people are lurking in the shadows of cyberspace, which they are.
but i’m not here to preach about that.
i just want to talk about MY online presence and MY experiences. (because it’s all about me on this corner of the Web!!!)
if my dad were to read this, i can already hear his sweet voice crowing “THEN JUST DELETE IT!!!” yes, thank you Captain Obvious, but times are different from when you walked uphill both ways to school in seven foot snow drifts.
to get to the jist of it: lately, i have been experiencing a lot of discomfort towards my online presence altogether. which is a reason that i haven’t been posting blogs as frequently as i have in the past.
personally, i hate instagram. it’s part of my little social media routine of course, you know i scroll a bit, double tap on a perfectly curated photo of one of my favorite influencers, watch a few friends’ stories. you know how it goes. and occasionally, i’ll post here and there. but not until i’ve poured over my post and nitpicked everything, ultimately deciding against sharing it with the world. and then i come back the next day and gear up to post my silly little instagram post and the cycle repeats. and i get anxiety about how people will react to my silly little instagram post, even though i will never really know, (which is such a stupid thing i can’t even believe i’m talking about it). and the likes flood in and the cute comments from my friends trickle in and the dopamine receptors in my noggin start to go brazy! then, after i stop getting notifications from my post, instagram becomes the same thing. full of ads and photoshopped photos and false information.
the reason i keep instagram is simple: it’s where everyone is. it’s how i keep in touch with so many people which of course is both good and bad. like you know those people i played volleyball with for one season and we got along, but we never actually hang out. or the people from school that i know via a friend of a friend, yeah i get to see their little fourth of july pics. sometimes that gets old and i don’t care anymore. so i go onto my little burner account and post whatever i want and i don’t think twice really. i only have like 50 followers which keeps it low stress. i only follow people on there that i actually care about so i don’t see all the other rubbish on my feed. i love it. my burner account keeps the ‘gram fun and flirty for me.
my favorite social media is twitter. by FAR. some will argue that twitter is one of the most toxic apps, but i disagree. i understand how it could be toxic if you have a huge account, people love to cause arguments in threads over the dumbest things. the smallest nuances can be misinterpreted and before you know it, you’re viral and being trolled in thousands of threads. it’s a scary thing, and it’s always in the back of my mind. but for me, it’s a way i can engage in the whole social media world without all the drama from instagram. twitter isn’t driven by visuals, it’s driven by text. clearly as a *writer* it caters to me in a way. the downside to twitter is that it’s almost like an insight to my thoughts and my life and into others’ thoughts and lives. in a way, it’s less privacy. i love twitter because i think it allows me to show my personality but it also gives an inside look into my thoughts + feelings. for example, people tend to “like” or “retweet” things that resonate with them especially in the current moment. so if you go through my likes and see a whole bunch of sad quotes or something, you’re gonna know that i’m in a sad mood. or if you see a bunch of tweets about boys, you’ll know i’m involved with someone. and i don’t like that! i don’t like people knowing my business like that if they don’t have access to me anymore. i know it’s not an uncommon thing, but i’ve had exes confess that they and their friends would like analyze my tweets to see if i was referencing them. or they’d read my blogs if we weren’t on speaking terms. obviously people are going to do that, but it’s weird for me to think about. to me, it’s like well why do you still get to know what i’m up to if you aren’t in my life??? well babe, that’s the point of an online presence!! “then switch your account to private, DUH!!!” yeah, i know okay but i just don’t want to do that for some reason. i’ll just stay in this uncomfortable space.
like twitter, my blog is obviously a highway into my mind at any given time. i love this platform i’ve built for myself even if it needs a lot of overhaul. but it also gives me a lot of anxiety sometimes. the act of writing is so vulnerable because there’s a chance someone could see it and read it which is the whole point of my blog. it’s just so weird to me that when you read something that someone wrote, even if it’s not a particularly sappy subject, it’s still vulnerable because you’re literally consuming thoughts that someone had. does that make sense??? instead of showing you pictures of myself, i’m showing you the most vulnerable part of myself!!! and it gets uncomfortable at times. even writing this, i feel uncomfortable because i think well what if none of this makes sense and people will think i’m just dumb and explaining the obvious.
i’ve noticed a shift in how i regard this platform since i started it in high school. it started as just an outlet for me to mess around and get a feel for posting whatever the hell i wanted to write about. that’s all it was, i wrote about things that mattered to me at the time like my senior jeans that i painted. back then, the only people that read those blogs were my close family and maybe a few people from my close-knit community who knew me. nothing escaped the bubble.
now that i’m in college, i don’t have a grip on who reads this stuff. depauw is a whole new community. i mean, i don’t have a huge following or anything, not even close. honestly, i’m kinda in the dark on how many people i’m actually reaching. but it’s enough that people i’ve never met before tell me they read the blogs. and I LOVE IT, it makes me so so happy to know that people tap my link and read my thoughts or care what i have to say. especially when people that i have a lot of respect for say that they’re “fans” of the blog, it makes my day!
actually, it spans beyond just my peers reading this stuff. as with other social media, employers look into this stuff. personally, i don’t believe that someone’s social media should be a basis of employment or anything unless that it is a part of the job description. for example, i worked as a social media assistant for the depauw marketing team this past year and of course, my boss looked into my social media and my blog. that makes sense. but now, i have a little concern for the future. when i started the blog, i never intended for it to be part of my portfolio for job applications. it was just a way for me to dip my toes into the water and to have fun with writing again because i was bored and uninspired writing essay after essay in school. now, i have to be cognizant that my future employer will probably be looking into this. (i mean when i get a job in my intended field, which right now as an english major is publishing/editing). don’t get me wrong, i love my blog but i’m aware that it’s not exactly “professional.” and it isn’t supposed to be professional! it’s supposed to be a creative outlet where i don’t have to worry about formality! it’s supposed to be fun. but once i think about all this stuff, it isn’t much fun anymore.
having this platform is kinda like a double edged sword. i have the opportunity to voice my opinions/thoughts/feelings and express myself freely. i get to write what i want (for the most part) with the possibility of it resonating with someone else and building a little community. on the other hand, i open myself to criticism and judgment. i can’t control who consumes my writing. imagine a stranger reading about one of the most vulnerable parts of your life and having that information. what about the people who actually know you? sometimes, i muse about how someone has this information about me during a conversation with them. i have actually had moments where people ask me how i’m really doing because they read my blog about how i was going through a little bump in the road and i couldn’t play it off because they already read it! uncomfy!
what is most concerning to me is that my vulnerabilities will be used against me in some way. it’s like giving someone the ammunition to shoot you down.
there are things that i want to write about SO BADLY because i think that it would resonate with a LOT of people and you know, i think i have some good wisdom to share. but i haven’t quite figured out how to do that. i’ve gotten very weird about writing about other people because in certain situations, i don’t want that person to know i’m referring to them or even i don’t want other people to know who i’m talking about if that makes sense. for example, i’ve wanted to write about navigating the dating world in this day and age but the thought of people reading it and knowing who i’m referring to makes me uncomfy. i know what you’re thinking. “Ummm didn’t you write a detailed post about your breakup last year?” and the answer to that is a simple yes. i want to die laughing when i think about it because i don’t know why someone didn’t stop me from putting that online for hundreds of people to know the tea. you live and you learn, but this is what i’m talking about. there’s no way to get around that and it’s weird because on one hand, it’s my experience to share. but it’s also a shared experience and how do you get consent to publicly discuss it if you don’t even talk to the person anymore?
anyways, i know that i probably provided myself a lot of solutions to my issues outlined in this blog. but i often times refuse to take my own advice.
XO
Mack
The Mackadamia Nut 