Online Popularity

I woke up this morning and checked my Twitter. 

I was scrolling through when I saw a guy tweet: 

"Just bought a homeless man [insert name of burger place here]...Good deed for the day: check."

His tweet made me so unsettled. I was happy for him, for doing a good deed and all, but then I thought, how selfless is a good deed if the first thing you do is post about it?

We live in a world dominated by social media and basing our popularity or peer acceptance on how many followers we have on Twitter or Instagram, how many likes we get on pictures, how many retweets or how many favorites we obtain. We compare ourselves to others by the amount of followers we have on Twitter. We criticize others for not having the amount of followers we have, and sometimes for having more followers than we do. 

Granted, I'm extremely guilty of this. 

(Note: Everything you're about to read I am very guilty of.)

The amount of times I've compared myself to another person because of the number of followers they have, the number of retweets they get, or the amount of likes they have on Instagram pictures, is unfathomable. I've even been an active participator of many "follow trains" to get my follower count up. 

I wake up, and check my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for any new notifications. I constantly post about my success, my failures, my insecurities, and when I finally sat down and thought about it, do I post these things to get my online popularity up? To get people to feel happy for me? To feel sad for me? How much of the stuff I post actually has substance, or a positive message to brighten someone's day as opposed to bash on my own life in order to make friends?

Then, I got to thinking about a conversation I had with some friends over the weekend. We came to the conclusion that many people who seem so cool, outgoing, and likable online, are actually awkward, quiet, and to themselves in person. We also discussed how when people are together, they all flock to Twitter and post every line of the conversation they're supposedly having in person (I'm extremely guilty of this, as well.)

Many people nowadays spend the time that they're hanging out with friends, on their phones as opposed to having meaningful conversations or taking time to explore some place new with each other. Friendships seem so fake when you have to proclaim to the online world how much fun you're having together, and what you do with your friends at every moment. Many people at concerts, or at outings spend the entire time on their phone, taking pictures, videos, and live-tweeting about the experience, as opposed to actually experiencing and taking it all in.

We flaunt a lot of the things we do or say, subconsciously hoping it will lead to many people liking what we do, or what we say, or having people want to be our friends because of it. We flaunt a lot of the things we do or say, simply in order to get our online popularity up.

One of the major things I have to personally work on is becoming a better person in real life, as opposed to online. I need to learn how to put my phone down, and experience life for myself. I need to have conversations with substance, and make friends like that, instead of making little comments or agreeing with something someone posts and expecting us to automatically be best friends. I need to stop assessing my self-worth based on the amount of people that follow me or like my posts. I need to stop giving in to the unrealistic ideals of online popularity, and do things for myself, as opposed to for my followers.

-TBCG