Does my social media profile and behaviour accurately reflect who I am in real life? I’d say ‘no’. In real life, I’m not who I appear to be on social media.
One look at my few hundred friends/followers on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and my blog tells me that I’m a fairly sociable person. That I make friends fairly easily; and that I keep in touch with my friends and followers fairly regularly. Yet, in real life, I’m a somewhat private person. I keep a low profile and am uncomfortable in large groups. I find it difficult to mingle in parties and tend to avoid them. So much so that friends have stopped inviting me to their parties and get-togethers altogether.
If I were to count the number of friends I’m in touch with every month in the real world, it’ll probably add up to 20 – on the outside, 30 persons. On the social media channels I use almost every day, that figure is 5 times as much – or more. And, although I have many friends and followers on social media, I can’t think of a single friend who is keeping a tab on me in real life on a daily basis (maybe except office colleagues).
When I dig a little deeper and analyse my participation on social media, I find that I’m fairly ‘active’, posting on Facebook and tweeting every day. I even manage to blog thrice a week. Linkedin and Pinterest are relegated to once a week, maybe less. In real life, conversations with friends (barring a few) start with “Hey, let’s catch up. It’s been ages since we spoke to each other.” Meaning, my real-world contacts with friends aren’t anywhere near the activity levels that my social media involvement suggests.
However, it’s true that I love talking and usually have long conversations with friends over lunch/dinner or coffee when we meet – or over phone. Moreover, according to friends and colleagues, I have strong views. I’m considered to be opinionated, argumentative, and even judgemental. Yet, I find that I have nothing much to say on any of the social media channels I use.
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Image courtesy http://www.sheknows.com
Most of my Facebook/blog posts and tweets are uploads of photos (photography being a hobby I enjoy spending time alone) with short descriptions, or links to stories/articles/music videos I’ve found online. What I mean to say is, unlike my real-life (offline) self, I hardly ever express a strong or negative personal point of view on social media, preferring to stay amiable and on neutral ground, clicking ‘likes’ every now and then like most people do on social media.
My photo uploads get a few likes and comments, and are generally well-appreciated by a handful of friends and followers as a means of communication. My writing – i.e. poems, thoughts and short fiction – usually goes unnoticed on the internet. Contrary to this, in the real world, I’m more comfortable with words as a means of communication and hardly ever use photos or pictures or diagrams to illustrate a point or make a statement (unless it’s a presentation for my clients at work).
So, here’s the question: how much of my life is fabricated on social media and how much of it is real? And the next: if nothing has been fabricated, which profile is the real me?
The interesting and perhaps perplexing part of this story is, I believe, my profile and behaviour on social media are both ‘real’ and ‘true’ in the sense that I am actually connected to a few hundred people through social media. And, we all actually follow each other on our Facebook news feeds or Twitter streams, and read each other’s blogs, and like each other’s updates and blog posts, and retweet each other’s tweets, and share each other’s posts, links and albums…
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
