Hai. I know I'm writing at an unreasonable hour again, but yesterday I fell asleep at about 11, so I guess that makes it even.
The thing is, I kinda woke myself up at 4am this morning--that's about an hour ago--and, you see, I would go back to sleep, but I guess I just HAD to check on my LINE, browse on Facebook a little bit, and maybe a bit of ask.fm.
And as--I think--a lot of everybody else out there, I kinda felt insecure looking at all these beautiful people with their beautiful lives, and that made me felt ugly and unwanted. I mean what's up with all these cool kids getting all these attention? Nobody ever asked me why I broke up with my ex. (Maybe that's because I never had one, but that's not the point.) You whip up Instagram and you find all these beautiful pictures of beautiful people having fun, having cute girlfriends, being hip and trendy, all sociable and whatevs, you get the idea. Then you look at yourself and thought, 'how ugly.'
I know it seems kind of pathetic, but a lot of research has been done on this, and the fact is, that social media do have that kind of effect on a lot of people, and that's because there's a shifting in the usage and motivation behind using social media. If you want to know more about it, there are a lot of scholarly articles about it like this: http://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-1105.20.3.106 and this: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2008.0228. Heavy stuff, huh? yeah. Unfortunately you'll have to pay to read the full version of it, so here's one that's a little bit lighter (and free!): http://thesocialu101.com/the-relationship-between-social-media-and-self-worth/. Try it.
For all you lazy fucks out there who just want the lols and aren't even bothered to type "TL; DR" in the comments, I'll break it down for you:
A lot of people, which probably includes you too, tend to feel inadequate with their lives and even sleeps less comfortably after browsing their social media. The reason is that because we have this tendency to compare our lives with that of our friends' that we see just a glimpse of, in the self-marketing world we know as Facebook, Instagram, Ask.fm, LINE's Timeline, and Path. (Twitter's kind of out of style now.) The problem is, all we see in our friends' (are they even your real friends?) posts is just a small sliver of their lives, which for the most part, is heavily embellished and mostly rooted in fantasy. They're just a highlight of their otherwise completely basic lives! Just like ours here in the real world. But it felt like their lives is so perfect, oh wow, they are so 'MORE' than me. More beautiful, more talented, more popular, richer, happier, and whatever. When in reality, it might not be as much as you thought.
In fact, we also do that too. We can say that we're only sharing our happiness with our friends, but it's not that, and you know it. We're only sharing them because we want the likes. Face it! Own it. It's the truth. Be honest, would you share your selfies if you have no way of knowing what the audiences would think about it? Think of it like Facebook, but without the like button or the comment section. You can say you only want to express yourself to the world, but even now I think you're also thinking that it's kind of pointless. We share those photos because we want to feel good about ourselves. Those likes, loves, stickers and comments, they do a lot to your mood, no? Don't say it doesn't, because I know I feel kind of like the forever alone guy whenever I posted something that I felt witty about but nobody likes it or commented on it.
You see, that's the shifting of the usage and motivation of using social media that I mentioned about earlier. At first, it may seem harmless, as you're just sharing a part of your life with others. But overtime, social media has become a battlefield of self-marketing. Aren't everyone google-able in the internet right now? So everyone struggles to fill their profiles with stuff that make them seem interesting and cool. Everyone's "price" is determined by how much loves they have on their pictures. You see two cute girls in Instagram, girl A and girl B. Girl A is cute, but only have about 40-60 followers, and a few likes on their selfies. (It's not impossible, I actually know someone like this.) Girl B is also cute, and you can see that she has thousands of followers and hundreds of likes. Which do you think have more social value? (on the internet, that is?) Some of you hipsters may say, I think both of them are still cute, and they are not products you sell in glass cases at the mall, they're both a person, they have feelings! Both of them weighs as much a social value as you do! Not true, because I have no social value on Instagram. I have no talents (yes, that's me fishing for compliments) and I refuse to post pictures of myself because I'm terrified of the lack of likes I'll get. And to you, hipsters, I say F*CK YOU, you hypocrites, you're missing my point. What I mean is, sometimes, if not all the time, we measure ourselves with these "prices" on our electronic profiles. And it's easier to feel inferior and/or inadequate when you see all these girls on cool cafes getting 67 likes and guys being muscular and generally handsome hanging out in the mountains getting 98 likes, while you are just there, laying on your bed in your room generally being bored without any photographic skills or social activity. Sounds familiar, right? No? F*ck you.
Anyway, I know of this. This social-media-affects-your-self-esteem thing, I know of it, and I know that what I saw may not always be what it looks like. I know it, I do. But I'm just tired of all these bullshit. This self-marketing business, I'm not fit for it. Firstly because my cellphone with the better camera is now inoperable, and secondly because I like to enjoy the moment and live it while it lasts. So in the highlights of my life, I usually forgot to take pictures or post it to social media, because I'm too caught up in the moment to went through all the trouble. Enjoying good food? Gone before I remember to take a picture of it. Awesome time with friends? So awesome we don't even take out our phones to record it. Also, if we can see each other all the time, there's no need to take a selfie on every hang outs. I've found that when I was having a really great discussion with my friends or a really great time playing with them, both of the parties don't check out our phones. At all. No seriously, usually I open up LINE at night and forgot that I didn't check in at PIM when I went earlier. Okay, maybe it's because me and my friends are just not the type to share every fun thing we do online. But is it wrong? No. In fact, I think this is one of my qualities that I'm proud of. But, does it decrease my social value online because it never seem like I do anything fun? Probably. Online, I'm just a boring old plain face in the crowd without dramas to be watched and talked about. (I will never succumb to the notion that I am not attractive!) In real life, I'm just as real as you. I have highlights in my life (I just don't share it), I have boring days as everybody else does, and I have a loving family, and real friends who actually care about me. When you think about it, it's all that really matters: you got love from the real people around you whom you can go to without ever being worried about whether they'll like your selfies, or your tastes in music, or your belly fat, or your original musings. Sometimes it's easy to forget about them, and search for validation instead from people you don't actually know.
So that's it? Social media is bullshit so I delete all my accounts and sell my smartphone for a black and white Nokia instead? Oh, I wish!! I wish it could be like that, I really do! But I see that as a form of escapism, and that's not healthy. Escaping the system won't make the system go away. Just because I don't participate in the self-marketing business, doesn't mean that the business will stop. It just means that I'm shutting myself out from the world, and letting them go about without me. Can I do that? I wish I have the mental strength to, but I don't want to be a social outcast. I can't go there again, not anymore. Right now I'm like a fish who wants to get out of the pond. I can't live there, but I'll also die if I leave. It's so dilemmatic.
On the other hand, I could also NOT think too hard about it, which would be everyone's suggestion, but could also be a form of escapism. Oh, aren't we all an escapist? Well, c'est la vie. Sometimes you just need to look at the good things in life in order to forget about all the shit going on.
The thing is, I kinda woke myself up at 4am this morning--that's about an hour ago--and, you see, I would go back to sleep, but I guess I just HAD to check on my LINE, browse on Facebook a little bit, and maybe a bit of ask.fm.
And as--I think--a lot of everybody else out there, I kinda felt insecure looking at all these beautiful people with their beautiful lives, and that made me felt ugly and unwanted. I mean what's up with all these cool kids getting all these attention? Nobody ever asked me why I broke up with my ex. (Maybe that's because I never had one, but that's not the point.) You whip up Instagram and you find all these beautiful pictures of beautiful people having fun, having cute girlfriends, being hip and trendy, all sociable and whatevs, you get the idea. Then you look at yourself and thought, 'how ugly.'
I know it seems kind of pathetic, but a lot of research has been done on this, and the fact is, that social media do have that kind of effect on a lot of people, and that's because there's a shifting in the usage and motivation behind using social media. If you want to know more about it, there are a lot of scholarly articles about it like this: http://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/abs/10.1027/1864-1105.20.3.106 and this: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2008.0228. Heavy stuff, huh? yeah. Unfortunately you'll have to pay to read the full version of it, so here's one that's a little bit lighter (and free!): http://thesocialu101.com/the-relationship-between-social-media-and-self-worth/. Try it.
For all you lazy fucks out there who just want the lols and aren't even bothered to type "TL; DR" in the comments, I'll break it down for you:
A lot of people, which probably includes you too, tend to feel inadequate with their lives and even sleeps less comfortably after browsing their social media. The reason is that because we have this tendency to compare our lives with that of our friends' that we see just a glimpse of, in the self-marketing world we know as Facebook, Instagram, Ask.fm, LINE's Timeline, and Path. (Twitter's kind of out of style now.) The problem is, all we see in our friends' (are they even your real friends?) posts is just a small sliver of their lives, which for the most part, is heavily embellished and mostly rooted in fantasy. They're just a highlight of their otherwise completely basic lives! Just like ours here in the real world. But it felt like their lives is so perfect, oh wow, they are so 'MORE' than me. More beautiful, more talented, more popular, richer, happier, and whatever. When in reality, it might not be as much as you thought.
In fact, we also do that too. We can say that we're only sharing our happiness with our friends, but it's not that, and you know it. We're only sharing them because we want the likes. Face it! Own it. It's the truth. Be honest, would you share your selfies if you have no way of knowing what the audiences would think about it? Think of it like Facebook, but without the like button or the comment section. You can say you only want to express yourself to the world, but even now I think you're also thinking that it's kind of pointless. We share those photos because we want to feel good about ourselves. Those likes, loves, stickers and comments, they do a lot to your mood, no? Don't say it doesn't, because I know I feel kind of like the forever alone guy whenever I posted something that I felt witty about but nobody likes it or commented on it.
You see, that's the shifting of the usage and motivation of using social media that I mentioned about earlier. At first, it may seem harmless, as you're just sharing a part of your life with others. But overtime, social media has become a battlefield of self-marketing. Aren't everyone google-able in the internet right now? So everyone struggles to fill their profiles with stuff that make them seem interesting and cool. Everyone's "price" is determined by how much loves they have on their pictures. You see two cute girls in Instagram, girl A and girl B. Girl A is cute, but only have about 40-60 followers, and a few likes on their selfies. (It's not impossible, I actually know someone like this.) Girl B is also cute, and you can see that she has thousands of followers and hundreds of likes. Which do you think have more social value? (on the internet, that is?) Some of you hipsters may say, I think both of them are still cute, and they are not products you sell in glass cases at the mall, they're both a person, they have feelings! Both of them weighs as much a social value as you do! Not true, because I have no social value on Instagram. I have no talents (yes, that's me fishing for compliments) and I refuse to post pictures of myself because I'm terrified of the lack of likes I'll get. And to you, hipsters, I say F*CK YOU, you hypocrites, you're missing my point. What I mean is, sometimes, if not all the time, we measure ourselves with these "prices" on our electronic profiles. And it's easier to feel inferior and/or inadequate when you see all these girls on cool cafes getting 67 likes and guys being muscular and generally handsome hanging out in the mountains getting 98 likes, while you are just there, laying on your bed in your room generally being bored without any photographic skills or social activity. Sounds familiar, right? No? F*ck you.
Anyway, I know of this. This social-media-affects-your-self-esteem thing, I know of it, and I know that what I saw may not always be what it looks like. I know it, I do. But I'm just tired of all these bullshit. This self-marketing business, I'm not fit for it. Firstly because my cellphone with the better camera is now inoperable, and secondly because I like to enjoy the moment and live it while it lasts. So in the highlights of my life, I usually forgot to take pictures or post it to social media, because I'm too caught up in the moment to went through all the trouble. Enjoying good food? Gone before I remember to take a picture of it. Awesome time with friends? So awesome we don't even take out our phones to record it. Also, if we can see each other all the time, there's no need to take a selfie on every hang outs. I've found that when I was having a really great discussion with my friends or a really great time playing with them, both of the parties don't check out our phones. At all. No seriously, usually I open up LINE at night and forgot that I didn't check in at PIM when I went earlier. Okay, maybe it's because me and my friends are just not the type to share every fun thing we do online. But is it wrong? No. In fact, I think this is one of my qualities that I'm proud of. But, does it decrease my social value online because it never seem like I do anything fun? Probably. Online, I'm just a boring old plain face in the crowd without dramas to be watched and talked about. (I will never succumb to the notion that I am not attractive!) In real life, I'm just as real as you. I have highlights in my life (I just don't share it), I have boring days as everybody else does, and I have a loving family, and real friends who actually care about me. When you think about it, it's all that really matters: you got love from the real people around you whom you can go to without ever being worried about whether they'll like your selfies, or your tastes in music, or your belly fat, or your original musings. Sometimes it's easy to forget about them, and search for validation instead from people you don't actually know.
So that's it? Social media is bullshit so I delete all my accounts and sell my smartphone for a black and white Nokia instead? Oh, I wish!! I wish it could be like that, I really do! But I see that as a form of escapism, and that's not healthy. Escaping the system won't make the system go away. Just because I don't participate in the self-marketing business, doesn't mean that the business will stop. It just means that I'm shutting myself out from the world, and letting them go about without me. Can I do that? I wish I have the mental strength to, but I don't want to be a social outcast. I can't go there again, not anymore. Right now I'm like a fish who wants to get out of the pond. I can't live there, but I'll also die if I leave. It's so dilemmatic.
On the other hand, I could also NOT think too hard about it, which would be everyone's suggestion, but could also be a form of escapism. Oh, aren't we all an escapist? Well, c'est la vie. Sometimes you just need to look at the good things in life in order to forget about all the shit going on.
hala persetan dengan yg ngelike, dilike, bertanya dan menjawab ttg hal2 tadi, mereka palsu atau lbh tepat goblok. emang orang cenderung nyari perhatian lingkungan, tapi klo konteksnya ky gitu sih gw malah liatnya jijik. gw lbh milih ngelike tulisan yg menyala-nyala kaya gini ketimbang org yg lu maksud diatas. lagian kgausah sampe mikirin amat ky gituan elaaaah
ReplyDeleteLolololol betuul! Biasalah Mal w kan emang kerjaannya mikirin hal-hal ga penting wkwkwk. Anyway thanks for the feedback, appreciated.
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