Blah, blah, blah
This week’s question: “How have social media metrics affected your sense of self? How have they influenced your understanding of value?”
I don’t care. I know for some people social media is an extended part of their identity, and likes and follows are needed to feel validated. But I just… it’s whatever. And it’s not that I’m anti-social media or something. It’s just… I don’t put myself out there… So I don’t really care about the metrics? So I can’t really gauge how it had affected my sense of self, because I don’t find my sense of self via social media. It’s like, how can you measure something if that was never the purpose to begin with.
I started using social media when I was in high school… so about 8 years ago. Back then it wasn’t really about the metrics. Twitter and Instagram were just interesting to use, because instead of mass texting all your friends, you can just post something and it would be there. So I mean, it was never really about the numbers per se… but more about the actual people behind the handles. I mean, when I first started using Twitter in 2009, I had about 8 followers for 4 months, because I only cared about those 8 people following me. It was better, the tweets were more genuine, there was less of a filter, I kept it on private. It was a better means to communicate because you could update everyone in one tweet. So by the time I decided to just use Twitter for what it is, I had about 100 followers, mostly my peers. But I just didn’t care. The same goes for Instagram. I don’t care if x amount of people liked it. What really mattered was who liked it. Who keeps tabs on me? That was probably the more important question, rather than the number itself. So I guess that’s where the understanding of value comes into play.
For some it might be the number itself — how many followers? How many likes? For others, like me, the emphasis would be on, who followed? Who liked the post? Who actually gives a shit? Just like birthday greets — who deserves a ‘hbd’ on their birthday? By that logic I mean, do they acknowledge your existence, so in turn, you acknowledge theirs? Do you care enough about that person to remember their birthday?
So, TL;DR — Value, for me, has always been about quality over quantity. It was never really about how many, rather it was about who.
