Your Confidence Number
I watched the ‘Nosedive’ episode of Black Mirror to connect the dots with Bailey’s Dark Side of Social Media lecture. First off, Black Mirror depresses me. I don’t like the show. It leaves me anxious and frustrated that this could be the world we live in. I go through enough in my day and see enough negativity in this world we’re currently living in that all I want to do at the end of my day is watch shows that are happy or that provide an escape from reality. I don’t like watching things that predict this dystopian world of social currency. We’re already living in it in a subtle way as it is. I can’t imagine human interaction losing all of its authenticity.
The episode somewhat reflects what is happening right now: our confidence levels are determined by our social rankings. The protagonist, Lacie, needs to achieve a certain ‘star’ rating to fit in with certain people, lease certain homes, and work certain careers. Everything in this episode is carefully calculated and the characters are all mobile phone-dependent. It’s like a real-life system of Uber - if the interaction was meaningful, you get 4–5 star ranking submitted by both the driver and the passenger.
In a way, that is how we are living our lives right now — our interactions on the Internet are collected and used to target certain things towards us, we can monitor people’s activity and see when they are online or have read our messages. We achieve a level of prestige and credibility when we have a certain amount of followers, likes, and comments on our posts. It gets addictive to a point where we don’t even realize that we picked up our phone and found ourselves scrolling through Instagram or Facebook.
*Trigger Warning* I’d like to say social media addiction is not as intense as a substance abuse addiction, but with the way our society is moving in terms of prioritizing the numbers and social currency, it is also beginning to take over lives the way drugs and alcohol do. Just as substance abuse can take one’s life, so can social media. Anxiety and Depression can derive from comparing your own life to the highlight reel others showcase, which can result in a fatality.
If someone has an alcohol addiction problem, monitoring it or even more so cutting off the source entirely will help you heal (in this case). Find other things in your life to focus on: your career, a hobby, a good book, etc. Anything in excess is not good for you but I also understand that cutting off social media all together is not necessary. Like Bailey mentioned in class, “Abstinence is not an option, but you can ‘practice safe social”. Practice self-control.
Just as we are in our own lives, it takes discipline and self-control to achieve the things we want. If you’re not happy with your social media habits, change them. It’s up to you. Stay focused. Want to be a doctor? Go through 8+ years of school. Want to be an Olympic athlete? Train for 8+ hours each day. Want to be an artist? Practice 8+ hours a day on vocal training, songwriting, and artist brand development. All of these things have a common pattern. If you want to avoid becoming obsessed with social media, it takes your own determination and discipline to quit the habit. Medical students, athletes, and musicians can’t spend 8+ hours a day on social media if they want to be great at their craft.
In the Nosedive episode, Lacie’s brother said, “I miss the normal you before this obsession when we had conversations, remember? This whole ranking thing… comparing yourself to people who pretend to be happy”. Where’s the authenticity?
Speaking of conversations and human interactions, the digital era has slowly conditioned us into passivity and reliance on technology to give us what we want immediately. You know the excuse that dating apps help people meet others because people are “too busy” in their own lives to do it the traditional way? Well, in my opinion, that is a sorry excuse because way back before these apps existed, people still had busy lives and still managed to go up to people and introduce themselves. We now can put up this front of ‘pretending to be happy’ all the time on social media as an attempt to show people how great we must be.
I feel this era of dating apps and social media in general has made us lose confidence in our ability to speak to others. We now have this pre-assumed judgment that the person will reject us. We see how they present themselves online, we judge their appearance, and may come to conclusions that they are “too intimidating” or “out of our leagues”. What does that say about your confidence? I say TRY because even if you get rejected, you’ll have the same result as if you hadn’t even tried in the first place.
Your excuse is that it may hurt your confidence? Well, don’t let external factors determine your self worth. Get over your ego and believe in yourself more. I highlighted this in my post ‘Social Metrics: It Doesn’t Matter. You’re Worth It’ and I still stay true to those values. Pick yourself up, dust off your shoulder, and try again. Remember, everyone is different. Don’t judge the next person based on the last person.
Q: So, what are actions we can take in our present day to prevent the premise depicted in Black Mirror’s Nosedive episode from coming true?
A: Practice self-control, stay disciplined, and know that your self-worth comes from the inside — be confident about who you are! You don’t need numbers to tell you you’re great.
