What is it with the social media platforms, why it’s so difficult to be social as yourself? When you create a new profile with a fake name and fake identity, you suddenly become so willing to share your feelings and ideas?

Yes, I admit I’ve done that few times. Don’t forget that I’ve been here longer than internet 😀 I joined Facebook against my husband’s will, created a YouTube channel to share those few videos I had filmed and was actively chatting in various chat rooms. Then life started kicking my backside, and I had no time for virtual world.

When I think of those ten years I feel like I was locked in the basement, and I just overheard some stomps when people lived and shared their lives. All the other people had their vacations and homes and beautiful children, all those pretty things when I was just trying to get out. In a way I knew what was going on, but I had no part in it. When I finally got out, the world looked so different!

There were so many social media platforms, and loneliness had become a such a huge problem. There were so many applications to use for communication, and so few people actually cared about your notes. There were new type of celebrities, whose main merit was to be known by millions, not for saving (or for destroying) the planet but about being discussed about. Of course I wanted to know more!

The best way you can learn what’s going on is to be fake. Haven’t you ever watched any Bond movie?! If your answer is no, go and watch few of them and come back later. If you answered yes, you know what I’m talking about. To find new people you need to become someone else. You don’t want to chat with your 85 year old great aunt about modern world (no fence, she would most likely have some interesting points of views but it would be better to meet her in person, instead of in social media) or your neighbor’s ex-wife either (whose ideas you heard two years ago so well, right before she became ex). The idea is to get into the shoes of a virtual person so that you would see the world through their eyes.

And there we get into something what I learned. You can leave your childhood neighborhood but it never leaves you. You can learn another language, but you will never totally forget your mother tongue. You can’t feel the situation you have never experienced or seen close enough yourself. How can you recall memories that you never had? Every time I started a new profile I ended up being me. No, I’ve never played a role to take advantage of others, and even those who tried to fool me, they showed their true colors in the innocent notes. My goal was just to get out of my old circle, to find new people to chat with and to learn from.

Because that is the curse of the modern social media: people who are not willing to communicate with you in a fair way, they are able to spy on you and your life. And on the other hand, people feel forced to use filters and modify their image to look better, more successful, more vibrant, to look better and stronger, and it is killing them inside. Don’t we all want to be just ourselves, not to fill the mold created by society or our family? I have a feeling that it has also a lot to do with the purpose of our social media use: Do you post on social media to be popular and liked? Or do you post because you feel like your friend would benefit from it? Or are you perhaps posting because everybody else is doing it too?

And no, I would be nobody’s choice for the most popular or the most likely successful of the class. Far away from that 😀 I have always been an observer, someone who is watching the action out away from the center, so that I can get the bigger picture. I have never been politically active, not coming from a wealthy or rich family and never really wanted to be a leader. Still, sometimes I have found myself in a position, where people rely on me. Where they think that I might know what to do or how to solve the problem.

First times that happened I was in a kind of a shock. I had never seen myself as a savior or capable of leading others, and it felt overwhelming. But later on, I started to analyze why it had happened, and I learnt a lot about human nature. A person who seems to be confident and calm gives out signals that others read as leader’s features. And If that person who has gained their attention wants to lead them into peril, they can do it easily. Which brings us back to social media.

In this era of social media we have seen many new leaders to rise and to fall. The better you can gain attention, the more popular you become. Not many people are checking the facts, and even professional journalists fall into this pit. You can print out your own diploma and claim to be master of this and that, you can buy your likes and followers and become famous, you can even publish fake news to emphasize your knowledge. All of that is virtual. And still, even with all these fake profiles, news and posts, there are still people who are real. Who are doing what they are doing for other reasons, and social media fame is just a by-product. And that is the thing I love in this virtual era: anybody can become somebody just because of what they are and what they do.

But still, if I want to start some new online thing, I’m not going to do it on my old profiles. It’s the heaviest burden I know: putting yourself under inspection when trying a new thing, and the first people to see it are the ones who _think_ they know you so well. I’m happy for those who know they will get support from their closest circle, but unfortunately that is not happening in my case. If you see a profile that resembles my personal one, it’s possible that it’s a fake. Or then it is me cracking the algorithm 😀
Just because I can.

With Love

Joana

PS. I added few clip arts into my Etsy shop and I will add more when I have edited them. They are so much prettier creations of AI than that house up there.