elegyinthree:

What compels people to post things on social media? When someone sees an article, what exactly is the motivation to click on the “share” button, write a neat little summary of your thoughts, tag friends who you think might like it, and press “post”?



It’s not much of a surprise that this is a mystery to me. Really, most things that people do are a mystery - and to live is to find our way out of that seemingly bottomless hole. Or is it the other way down - the more we know, the farther down the rabbit hole we get?



There’s a few sides that have led to my curiosity about this topic. On the widest level, you have the societal narratives about social media: waste of time, millennials, self-indulgence, social network, globalization, narcissism, hashtags, filters. You know, stuff about social media that you hear out there. On a personal level, I’ve seen multiple people talk about their own perceptions of social media. One of movements towards “consciousness” regarding it is the idea that it’s a person’s “highlight reel”: where they show off the best parts of their lives, and generally not the mundane, dreary, or downright sad. I find this perspective interesting, but it still doesn’t feel like quite a complete picture.



Before social media was created, people got along just fine. It’s not a need; people will live if Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram disappear overnight. And of course, it’s not difficult to understand the bigger picture of the *why*. Ask anyone and they’ll have their own motivations. Personally, I’ve been an advocate of keeping my Facebook account just for the sake of opportunity. If I want to connect with any one of my friends (who are on Facebook), it just takes a few clicks and a few seconds of typing to convey a message. It’s also a way of being personal without having to be *too* personal. You can “snoop” in on everyone else’s lives without actually putting in the in-person time. Efficient: that’s something we love in the 21st century, right?



I’m perplexed by why I do things, and why I don’t. If you’re my Facebook friend, you probably, well, haven’t noticed me on the site much. I really rarely post anything at all, and if I do, it’s something somewhat detached. Pictures of food, checking in at a location, maybe an article I found interesting. But for a site that’s so focused on yourself, I feel like the caveat is that you have to try at being myself at the will of thousands of other people.



That’s where the idea of the “composed self” comes in: the pictures that you post; the articles that represent your intellect; the comments that depict your opinions - whether you like it or not, it’s how everyone else sees you. Who cares about the intent of all of these things? We’ve all been there where we meet someone new, “Facebook stalk” them, and make some kind of qualitative judgment, whether conscious or subconscious.

And yet if I don’t have any content on social media, where does that put me? Everything that I’ve done with friends is just a memory - which is a fine thing, which is how people have lived for ages - but in the end, *should* I make an effort to put my print on my narrative? After all, while past generations didn’t have a Facebook, they still had their own ways of depicting themselves. Anne Frank’s struggle lived through her diary; Beethoven’s personal strife resonates in his symphonies; the Brownings’ love endures from their love letters. And while none of the above were *social media*, they were social in the sense that expression was captured beyond our heads.

You know that old paradox about if a tree falls alone in a distant forest and there’s no one to hear it? Expression that is created alone might not be inherently social. But it’s a transformation of the personal, which has the *potential* to become something felt in peoples’ hearts. After all, if just one person heard that tree falling, they themselves know it happened, and that is infinitely greater than the previous void.

So perhaps social media is one of the greatest narratives of society captured yet. Each post, tweet, and picture is a part of a story from people - people who are meant to be social - and capturing that *potential* to share ourselves. Sure, it might be an artifiically crafted self, but when there’s no way to truly tap into one’s brain (as of yet), the closest we can get is what people choose to show. And from there, there’s the chance of engagement, communication, and the development of true social bonds.