“Nothing on social media is real” – this idea has been repeated to us throughout our lives. The reality of this statement became jarringly clear to me recently. During my TikTok doomscroll before bed, I came across a video of a woman documenting her “phone cleanse.” The irony caught my attention immediately: she was conducting a social media cleanse while posting on social media. It was both funny and frightening. That video highlights how the illusion of perfection is valued above true personal growth.
We have experienced a paradigm shift in social media in which influencers have moved away from highly saturated content, which was clearly not an accurate depiction of their lives, to what is seemingly raw and realistic. More people are posting candid photos that capture them in the most seamless poses, pushing forth the idea that they were captured in their most natural state. But these images are a facade; influencers attempt to appear authentic and natural when, in reality, they calculate these posts to appear as interesting and unique as possible. There is a current trend circulating where a TikToker gets paid “to rate people’s Instagrams.” His criticism ranges from telling people how to structure their story posts to how to curate the perfect “Instagram dump.” The concept of an Instagram dump is meant to be a low-effort, unedited post that gives a window into one’s real life. Intentionally compiling these pictures in order to make you seem as cool as possible and paying a stranger to help you make your profile better defeats the supposed purpose of the Instagram dump. These posts are merely an act that showcases people’s lives in the most picturesque way possible.
The need to constantly perform is not isolated to our generation. People have always cared about what those around them thought. We as humans create this facade as a means of protection. As Erving Goffman points out in his book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,” first published in 1956,“We have then, a basic social coin with awe on one side and shame on the other.” Goffman continues, “The audience senses secret mysteries and powers behind the performance, and the performer senses that his chief secrets are petty ones. As countless folktales and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the mystery is that there really is no mystery; the real problem is to prevent the audience from learning this too.”
The societal pressure to create this false depth and mystery touched on by Goffman has not only persisted but has become amplified with the introduction of social media. The small group of people – neighbors, store clerks, and co-workers – we used to perform for has expanded to millions of users on the internet. Every TikTok video, Instagram post, and X post is a means of performing for an audience.
We should not necessarily reprimand social media influencers for the fake life they promote on the internet. After all, they have the right to do whatever they want with their platform. Instead, there needs to be a level of critical thinking that allows us, as consumers, to differentiate between performance and reality. Without making this distinction, we will spiral into self-criticism and the feeling that we are deficient in a quality that others possess.
