Sharing is caring and its implications

A reflection on authenticity, meaning and added value through a personal tale

Dear reader,

I’ve been meaning to publish something for a long, long time. Unfortunately I’m a perfectionist, you see. I have a lot of drafts, all abandoned before they’d even been given a chance. Their subjects vary from web development, trends, to a wide array of things I feel strongly about. I never published them because I set the bar too high, as high as professional publications with exhaustive article guidelines like A List Apart or Smashing Magazine, or perhaps because I was too humble, or even anxious.

I loved the web of independent, or loosely linked wordpress.org and blogspot personal blogs, and when it started to fade in favor of content aggregators and social platforms, I stubbornly refused to adapt my expectations to that new reality. The medium is the message, I thought, so much it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I blamed the world for having changed too fast, and sat there doing nothing (or little), growing resentful, lamenting that I would never reach what I set out to reach. I contrasted the commercial, hype-driven, distracted online environment with the authenticity of real life. Until recently, a life development forced me to reconsider. For the better.

When my girlfriend started getting more and more involved with online communities in the summer of 2018 and pursuing real friendship online, tensions ensued. Our nine-year romance was based on private moments we cherished, few were the events we celebrated out loud on social media. Yet there she was now, tweeting and publicly displaying affection to strangers who shared an interest in entertainment with her. Initially she’d crossed a line I wasn’t comfortable with a few times but she was very considerate after I told her. I knew she put in a lot of effort, yet her activity kept bothering me. And I also felt it was wrong of me to feel bothered, but I couldn’t help it. Difficult months followed in which we desperately struggled to align our visions, and it seemed we were at a deadlock.

Gradually I started to realize not what she did was the problem, but the lens through which I looked at it. I felt I hadn’t been perfectly honest with her and as a result, with myself. I found out it’s easy to say that you would’ve swallowed your pride if it had been you, but when it’s your turn it’s surprisingly hard to let go, let alone recognize the need to let go of it.
The mere mental image of a delicate swipe of my girlfriend’s finger on the smartphone had become a fixation, and it was ruining our relationship. So I asked myself: “is it worth it not to let go?”, and when after thoughtful consideration that came back as a no, I swallowed my pride (and I really want to thank my wonderful girlfriend for bearing with me through this process) and set out to change that which is the hardest to change: my own perception.

The details of this process belong to the past and are no longer worth lingering on. In a nutshell I had chosen to focus so obsessively on authenticity and true added value, that I completely lost a sense of balance. Balance between enjoying a journey and reaching its destination. Balance between self-reflection and dialogue, offline and online. Balance between following convictions, and adapting them to reality when needed.

How narrow my definition of educational/ tangible added value was: time won thanks to a handy app, professional knowledge sharing, global news. But as I stumbled through my three-month pre-midlife identity crisis, I felt pathetic because I realized I had gotten all serious and no fun in pursuit of distant goals. Through this narrow understanding, I also restricted myself to writing about professional topics as a subject matter expert, the problem being: I never considered myself one and ended up writing… nothing.

When social media sharing bars started popping up everywhere in the 2010's, there was a particular variant that caught my eye, which stated this apparent truism that “sharing is caring” in such a frivolous way that I thought it was both perverse and brilliant.

Perverse, because after all these share widgets are the work of companies trying to appeal to you emotionally for their profit.

Brilliant, because if you ask: “Sharing is caring”, about whom? — the answer can be any of the parties involved with this act of online sharing: about the companies who built the platforms you’re sharing on (providers, attention/financial value), about others, the people you’re sharing it with (recipients, info/emotional value), or about yourself (sender, social status/ emotional value).

Despite the two-sidedness I chose to give more weight to the commercial aspect. And I dismissed sharing online as inauthentic because it was tied to a motive of profit for one of the three parties involved, and somewhat tied to a perceived inflated sense of self for the one sharing. What does feel authentic to me is retro style, like Polaroid pictures. A concert feels authentic, a bit less so if the singer playbacks. A trip hop party I attended years ago in a shabby grange with trippy visuals and experimental music still feels authentic. It feels pure . Probably it’s wide-spread frustration with a perceived lack of authenticity that gave birth to #nofilter on Instagram.

But the bottom-line for me is that, — as Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington would sing — , in the end it doesn’t even matter, at least not on a personal scale. In 1967 already, French literary critic Roland Barthes proclaimed The Death of the Author, recognizing the importance of meaning constructed by the reader next to meaning through the author’s intention. And that piece of constructed meaning is authentic and unique for each reader. Because even authenticity (in the sense of being genuine) is a mental construct, a matter of perception, it is also a personal choice to view or not to view something as such.

Just because you can [share something online and add to the noise], doesn’t mean you should. That’s about the perfect dissuasion tactic. But it most certainly also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t [share something meaningful]. So I listed some reasons why I should share this article:

• Some readers could be entertained or intrigued. Enjoying the journey of life is important.
• A reader, even just one, could provide an insightful comment. Knowledge is important.
• A reader, even just one, could be able to relate, and feel better in the knowledge that he or she is not alone. Emotional connection is important.
• The added value of many things becomes clear only after a prolonged period after they’ve been shared. Therefore they need to be shared before that is clear.
• I implied adding value to someone else’s life, but the mere act of putting it out there might add value to your life.

I look back at all my other drafts and scribbles, and I feel regret for not having further developed my thoughts, and enriched or reiterated them with insights gained from exposing them to others when I could. In the process of writing this article, for example, I was better able to organize my thoughts, polish my written English, feel a sense of fulfillment, and— and last but not least — , I had fun! And I am curious about what I will learn by publishing it.

So today I’m letting go of perfectionism, and eventually something big will grow. This article is by no means final, it is but a published draft, but it is a good enough introduction, and I will update it when I feel it needs to be. It is an exercise, a patchwork of personal insights, emotions, experiences, and references. Speaking of which…

As I started writing this piece, Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten song lyrics popped up in my head. It’s a song I never really paid attention to, but this time I was struck by how well it fits as an ending to this article. Depending on my mood and circumstances, I read this either as cheesy as hell, or genuinely relatable.

Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins

The rest is still unwritten.

Thanks for reading!
What’s your take?