I have some friends online that will get 300-500 likes on a status or a picture. I've always wondered what that must feel like. Is there a certain amount of likes that can cure insecurity? I've always wondered underneath the filters and long quote if that person is truly satisfied.
I got a taste of Internet fame back in 2014. I was seventeen at the time and thought I had the whole world figured out. I wrote a post on the benefits of singleness on Valentines Day in 2014. http://bryceskistad.blogspot.com/2014/02/single.html I was pleased with the overall response and that I could offer a sense of encouragement to other hopeless romantics.
A couple weeks later I saw a post from a pastor that I followed on Twitter at the time. This pastor was looking for articles to publish on his new website. The website was centered on faith, culture, and purpose. I read the requirements and decided I would submit my most recent post on singleness.
A month later I was in the bathroom taking care of business. I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and I saw an article about singleness. Like any single person would do, I opened the article hoping to find the secret formula to cure singleness. I started reading the article and thought to myself, "Someone stole my article. This is everything I wrote a month ago." As I got to the bottom of the article I saw: this post was submitted by Bryce Skistad.
After I found out my post was published I did that awkward happy dance white people do when they are really excited. As the days passed by the post got over 1,700 likes, was shared by over 140 people on Facebook and had almost 200 retweets on Twitter. The pastor published it on all his social media networks and on the magazine's social media networks. I thought I was on top of the world. I thought I made it in this whole writing thing. I thought to myself, "What other seventeen year old is being published in a magazine." My pride inflated like my stomach when I have too many loaded potato grillers from Taco Bell.
All of the likes and shares ended up being a disaster. People were commenting on the posts saying they really enjoyed it and it was just what they needed. I became content in the worst way. For someone who loves the approval of other people, this was a nightmare. Approval is a lover who will always break your heart. It's like going after that person who was way out of your league in high school. You loved the idea of it, but the reality of it was always disappointing.
Guess what? That website doesn't even exist anymore. You can't view the article anywhere besides on my blog. More than likely everyone that liked it or shared it has forgotten about it. Being cool online is so temporary. People are always coming out with new content. The news today becomes an afterthought tomorrow.
The amount of time I have invested into maintaining a cool online image is ridiculous. There have been numerous things that I have wanted to post online, but didn't simply because I didn't think they would get a lot of likes. I didn't follow more than 100 people on Twitter for the longest time because popular people don't follow a lot of people. Social media for me a majority of the times has only been about the likes. You're on a huge downward spiral the moment you start sacrificing who you are to impress the people around you. I'd compare my likes and followers to my closet friends. It makes me sick because I've spent a lot of time trying to fit into a world that doesn't even exist.
Social media makes us either incredibly overconfident or astonishingly insecure. Don't build your identity around it. It's a weak foundation that won't last.
I can't make a lot of promises, but I promise that there will always be someone that is cooler than you online. People have better cameras, filters, and google search skills than you do. Put more effort into being cooler in person than being cool online. At the end of the day, there is no amount of internet attention that brings full contentment.
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