The advent of social media and its constant presence in our lives has changed the way we interact with people and the way we project ourselves to others. The fact is that we can and do present a version of ourselves that we want others to see. We project an ideal of ourselves that may not be strictly accurate. We tend to omit a few things; exaggerate a few others, don’t we?
The personal diary is now a public blog; our personal photos are Instagram, our life story is on Facebook, our CV is on LinkedIn and likes and dislikes on Reddit, Pinterest and so on. The social media ecosystem, or rather ‘ego’ system lets us present a sanitised, self-approved version of ourselves to others.
We wish our spouse happy anniversary and declare our undying love for them on Facebook (though that spouse may not even be on Facebook). Never mind that we are currently not on speaking terms after a huge fight.
They are lovely, devoted, bright, high achieving, sunny-natured little angels as seen on social media. But what about the fact that maybe one kid hates the science stream they were forced to take and the other just said they hate their parents’ guts?
Maybe the holiday wasn’t really as good as we say. Maybe the hotel was a bit rundown and maybe the local food made you sick. Maybe it wasn’t really Mauritius, but Alibaug
We’d like to tell everyone that we enjoy our job and that it is meaningful and fulfilling. But we’d rather not let them know how much we hate the boss and how we feel that the upstart being promoted was the worst kind of injustice.
Some of us may like to party hard, but may like to pretend otherwise. Others may want to project an image of being hugely popular with a hectic social life while the reality may be different. Either way, there may be some amount of tweaking of the ‘truth’ that we present before the world.
We know we should eat healthy, exercise regularly and try to keep as fit as possible. However, the supposedly perfect body is only for those genetically gifted, highly disciplined folk. While we may not go as far as photo-shopping fake abs into a picture, posting a pic at the gym as though it were a second home is not beyond us.
We’d like to eat healthy. We know we should. Those turnips look lovely and healthy, but those fries taste so much better. We know what we’d like to be seen eating. So we eat one thing and say we like another. Maybe we embellish here, exaggerate there – social media is designed to let us do this. Maybe this is OK – so long as we don’t end up fooling ourselves?
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