My social media presence has always talked a big game. I can admit that.
From its humble beginnings on MySpace, to the cross-platform franchise expansion into Facebook, Instagram & Twitter, I created my own virtual 'avatar' - of being a total package.
Cool, funny, smart and reasonably attractive.
Coincidentally, that may or may not have been the Tinder bio that landed me an engagement. And I should be married right now except for the establishment politicians playing bullshit games because of the upcoming election. So f*K them, I’m wearing my rings anyway.
But, I digress.
Why am I talking about this? Because I’ve recently moved, am temporarily unemployed and
And it was time for me to start writing again. I missed writing. Or maybe I just missed writing about me. Regardless, here I am.
Growing up, I really wanted to be popular. It just wasn’t in the cards for me. I want to say it was because I wasn’t pretty enough, or that I was too nerdy, but now I’m thinking that a higher power was trying to protect me from myself. Maybe it was God; or maybe it was just my parents keeping me grounded. Could be it was a little of both.
Still, it didn’t stop me from trying and sometimes hard lessons need to be learned. Several times until I learn them. Will keep everyone posted on how that goes.
You know how we say some people look better online? It’s me. Some people is me. Because the reality of who I am in person is not the image I seemed to project online. Which is why I didn’t see any kind of ‘popularity’ until social media.
MySpace was the first social media platform I joined.
It was MySpace that first showed me I could do things out loud. It grabbed me right by the low self-esteem on the tail end of a break-up and offered me a platform to reinvent myself and announce my ‘glow-up.’ Before the internet, the only way to do that would have been to write Sally Jessie Raphael and hope to be invited on her show to be featured on the “Look At Me Now” episode. (That’s taking it back.)
Or hope that a mutual friend of a mutual friend who is friends with your best friend notices your upgrade and gets the word out. Which is how social media works, only it’s pretty much instant and has a wider reach.
See, we all want to be seen and heard, because we are very important people with very important and relevant things to share. I’m not going to pretend I built multiple social media accounts and started a blog because “muh family and friends” though. Like everyone else, I wanted to be seen and heard as a very important person and share my very importance and relevance … to be validated by friends, frenemies, strangers … and exes.
And that’s how it started - superficial, and fueled by a proclivity towards my own narcissism -
which IMO is what drives people to social platforms.
I became a self-managed, cross-platform sh*t-show. My brand was built on half-naked “modeling” pictures mixed with some of my work as a writer and photographer. It worked, though. For the first time in my life, I was kind of popular ... people knew who I was … but in hindsight, they only knew who I projected myself to be ... which was really nothing to brag about. I'll get to that.
What no one tells you, though, is just how hard it is to maintain the image of your own self-importance and self-relevance to other people. It became a second job to find ways to level-up. Not that anyone was asking me to. But the trade-off was worth it: instant gratification and a 'Cady Heron' level of self-esteem. In fact, my head was so far up my own ass, I didn’t see that the kind of attention I was attracting wasn’t … well … flattering.
Before I continue, I’m not dumb. On the contrary, I’m very smart. So smart, in fact, that I know when I’m doing something stupid. I recognize that in myself. It just takes me a minute to figure it out sometimes. And I promise that, eventually, most of a lesson was learned here.
My “great awakening” to the absurdity of what I created for myself should have happened the night I was introduced on stage at a local pub as “the most masturbated to girl on MySpace.” Right before killing a George Michael song - that would become my trademark gig. It didn't. In retrospect, I’m embarrassed to admit that I was actually flattered.
Yep, I did that all by myself. I didn’t upload all those revealing pictures of myself thinking anyone
Admittedly, being referenced to as someone to masturbate to that one time, wasn't being called pretty. But considering where I was, and for all intents and purposes - close enough.
There is probably some irony in exploiting the most destructive part of yourself (narcissism) to promote yourself ... to yourself. Because I probably knew I wasn’t really doing anyone but myself any favors with any of the content I posted. Except maybe the pervs.
As I sit here roasting myself for creating an online avatar I thought I was only pretending to be, I know that the only exaggeration was the hype. That’s how marketing works and I was so good at it that I even fooled myself … into fooling myself … I've come to refer to it as the 'Cady Heron' effect.
But, like all things that weren’t meant to be, eventually it came to an end. Sort of.
What was it that brought me down? My ego? My haters? My age? My parents?
Me.
I wish I could say it was because I had some deep, philosophical epiphany about ‘faking’ myself too seriously. My "oh, my" moment was less profound.
As hard as it is to believe, I just lost interest in my own narcissism. Seeing everyone else doing the same thing I was doing, showed me that I was doing the same thing that everyone else was doing - for the same reasons. Which is laughable - the idea of wanting to seem unique to everyone else … like everyone else. But I did learn two things:
1. I am, in fact, selectively stupid.
2. Social media is designed to get everyone into one database model. There's a conspiracy
fact in there, but I'm sure y'all can figure it out.
Social media is a conditioning engine - whether intentional or not. It creates influencers and followers, out of influencers and followers, trying to influence followers by offering opportunity and suggestion for us to become influencers and attract followers. You are both, regardless of your level of membership.
Funny enough: My first observation about social media came after a MySpace top eight shuffle. I didn’t understand that my ex replacing my spot on his top eight with his ex was basically a two weeks’ notice of intent to vacate the relationship. I predicted back then the ‘paradoxical’ impact social media would have on interpersonal relationships. But I didn’t consider the way in which that would happen would be through us - people.
Like … It wasn’t MySpace that told me to be a self-absorbed attention wh -- seeker. It was just the opportunity it presented, and I escalated it from there.
I’m not saying that everyone on social media is looking for attention, recognition,
What I will say is: the convenience, connection, range and opportunities offered through social apps and smartphones engender addiction. I saw it in me, as I saw it in everyone else, and I still see it. It's the nature of the beast. I know few people who have never had a social media presence and even fewer who've deleted their online presence and didn't either reactivate or show back up on another social media platform like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Tinder or AdultFriendFinder.
After all of that … I did not deactivate any of my accounts. I thought about it, but “muh family and friends.”
On that note, if you read this and you feel attacked, it’s not about you - unless you make it about you. However, thank you for reading this post that I most definitely didn’t write for the sole purpose of being validated as important and relevant by sharing its importance and relevance.
After-thought: before you roast someone for their social media "narcissism," stop and think about one thing: whatever they are getting out of social media might be the only thing that is keeping them above water in their personal lives. So live by the 2nd Most Golden Rule: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all.
This has been a special presentation of The Contradiction of My Own Obsessive-Compulsive Social Media Narcissism
