love
How Our Obsession To Be Liked Leads To The Erosion Of Our Uniqueness
Hi, my name is Sophia, and like all of you, I like to feel liked and I want to be wanted. Today, I also want to question pop culture and the significance which a ‘grammed donut pool inflatable selfie has on the general public. Let’s go.
It’s 1:36pm on #throwbackthursday and I have decided I’m not going to post a throwback photo this week, because I have something far better in store. I am lying outside working on my #summertan next to my #inflatabledonut wearing my #floppyhat, which all combined becomes the perfect recipe for a popular photo (obviously). So I take my boredom to Instagram; taking a few selfies of me surrounded by these over commercialised items and start editing up a storm. I won’t post my finalised photo yet though, I’ll wait until prime time to maximise ‘like’ opportunities- so that I can feel as important and popular as possible.
A few hours and one upload later, I find myself checking my phone consistently every few minutes. How many people have liked my photo? Am I worthy of the heart eye emoji? Are they wishing they had an invite? I’m not sure how my likes to minute ratio is going either… It’s been five minutes since the last like. All up, I squander a good portion of my evening either watching my ‘self worth scale’ rise with likes, or I’m wondering what people are thinking of me. Really, I should be spending my evening doing what I love to do; building upon and expanding my passions.
By the time my photo has neared the end of the daily feed (which featured several other donut pool inflatables mind you), I have experienced a self esteem roller-coaster purely based on whether or not people spend 0.2 seconds of their time to press a love heart on a phone. It’s shallow and quite stupid, to say the least.
Social media, specifically Instagram has cultivated a community which desires to be ‘liked’. In doing this, people are encouraged to follow #trends – leading towards to the erosion of our uniqueness; something which life has taken, well, our whole entire life to build up for us. The notion (which the majority of us endorse and follow unconsciously) that our popularity and self worth are determined by a number is wrong (and something we really need to CTRL- ALT- DELETE). We humans are far too intricate and complex beings to be defined by such an elementary scale.
So I guess after seeing the donut pool inflatable selfie in my feed on average four times each day, my thoughts are leading to one main question… Why have we let likes, and pop culture become more important than our real loves and passions?
It’s time to break the trend and stop following the ‘rules’ of the ‘gram; it’s time to celebrate and embrace our own loves and live for ourselves; not others.
So next time you find yourself chowing down a mouth-watering burger, don’t let the lack of #green and #chia stop you from sharing your enjoyment! Being yourself and embracing what YOU love is the best thing you could ever do to this world.
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Written by Sophia Sorensen
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