Social Media in the Age of Post Truth
As someone who is actively on social media, there is a lot I’ve noticed in regards to self-worth and value on social media platforms. For as long as I can remember, it’s always been an unspoken race for the most likes on your tweet, FaceBook post or Instagram photo, because having more likes meant people like you more. This concept is SO FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG considering that social media is supposed to be a way of connecting to people, not a contest as to who can get the most followers or retweets. Because we’ve started this cycle of trying to gain popularity on social media sites, some of the credibility of these sites and the genuineness is starting to disappear.
Taking measures to prevent stuff like this, Twitter suspended a few of the largest accounts known for tweeting “funny and relatable” due to being “tweetdeckers” meaning they team up to purposefully make things go viral and they take paying customers with the promise of making their tweets famous. Most of these accounts also steal tweets without giving credit to the original tweeter. Below is a great article if you’re looking to read up a bit more on the whole endeavour.
Instagram has also been taking steps to make sure that truth is still relevant on social media as it has recently developed its “paid partnership” feature to distinguish when an influencer is being paid by a brand to advertise their products on instagram — so instagram users can be more educated on what photos are advertisements and which ones aren’t.
https://later.com/blog/paid-partnership-feature/
So why is taking these next steps so important? The dishonest social media reality has become the new norm which can have major effects on the people who aren’t #Woke enough to see through it all. Value is now determined by quantity instead of quality and posts are created with the intention of receiving likes instead of posting quality and genuine content that means something to the poster. I myself am definitely a prime example of this — I love those nice aesthetic posts of someone’s desk neatly arranged and the whites are balanced perfectly but when I recreate it, 1) it looks awful and 2) it’s not my style — which is probably why it looks awful because it’s not genuinely me.
I remember watching this video on facebook maybe a year ago, and it depicts the struggle of value in Instagram posts.It’s called “Are You Living an Insta Lie?” and it goes through a chain of different people who are taking pictures and telling little white lies to make it seem like they have a more interesting life — not to say that they don’t have an interesting life, they’re just faking the moments instead of appreciating the real ones. If you have a minute, I recommend watching the video, it has a powerful message and its good at getting that message across.
By valuing social media metrics over quality is creating post-truth social media platforms and our own images of self-worth and value, which we tie to the performance of our social media profiles. Will Instagram and Twitter’s efforts make a difference or are we too deep into post-truth? I have no idea but I hope someone out there does.
