Social Media and Me
I don’t have many social media accounts. In the perspective of the people around me, sometimes it seems like I have less than I actually do. After all, I rarely give out my social media information. I’m not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other “common” platform. My online and offline lives are very much separate.
This is definitely by design. When I first started out on social media, it wasn’t with my parents’ approval. My computer was for school work only, and once I was done with that, I was supposed to find something else to do.
“We’ll check your history. Don’t think we won’t.”
Unfortunately for them, I knew about incognito tabs and they didn’t. Also unfortunately for them, we lived in the middle of nowhere. It was too much of a hassle to meet up with my friends on the other side of the district, so I was starved enough for social interaction in the summers that I had no qualms going against their wishes.
Still, I didn’t want to join any site where they’d find me. At the time, that just meant Facebook. Which… okay. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what my friends were doing without me, anyway. So I found a couple forums, joined, and decided which ones I liked the most.
Invariably, they were the ones with active roleplaying communities, because Young Me had no friends who enjoyed creative writing and was absolutely enchanted by the idea of interacting with other writers. Even when my parents stopped caring so much, I continued to restrict personal information; it was just what I was used to and comfortable with at that point.
Social media is still a tool I use for connecting with people who share my interests, people who I would never meet if I never joined those sites. For me, this means connecting with writers, readers, and people who enjoy the same books, movies, and TV shows as me. It’s not that I don’t have any people like that in my offline life — it’s simply that social media offers me spaces where my interests are at the forefront of the conversation whenever I want to indulge in them. I know who to go to if I’m stressed over an incomplete chapter, frustrated with a book I just read, or if I want to gush about the layered storytelling in this film or that show. Talking about those things is the norm in those spaces, and it’s beautiful.
Social media will continue to play a large part of my life in the future. I have good friends who I can go to for the above purposes and personal discussions alike. I’m a prominent member in a Discord server for aspiring authors. My Goodreads reviews have attracted the attention of a semi-professional reviewer database, which allows me to receive free review copies from publishers. I recently reestablished my presence on the blogosphere with a Wordpress blog with articles and essays about books, TV/film, and the evolution and impact of fan culture. If I want a position in publicity or marketing for a publishing house, the nature of my online presence gives me a big boost. My primary reason is still sharing my love of writing and stories, but it’s a very nice incentive to keep going, an odd (but satisfying) merge of two parts of myself that I’ve treated as separate for most of my life.
And it’s an incentive I think most people my age have acknowledged. In certain fields, an online presence that aligns with that field gives you a distinct advantage in job searches. That advantage will likely only grow in the future, as more and more individuals who grew up with the internet take on leadership positions.
Ultimately, social media is where I go to express my love and interest to people who share that love and interest, whether in a personal or professional sense. It’s allowed me to build a portable support system of people with similar lives and problems.
I might not use the same platforms as everyone else, but my social media presence is still very much an expression of self and a desire for like-minded human connection.
