Okay, so having created this page a while back, I haven’t actually posted anything on it yet… Partly because although I have plenty of things I *could* post about, none of them felt interesting enough to be worthy of my “first post” (!). And to be honest, I haven’t really been giving it much time or thought. I’ve been inundated with Coursework, and have spent free time either musing over other people’s blogs/vlogs or updating my Tumblr, Pinterest, etc., which I’ve found myself getting more into recently.
So.
Because of this, last night I was
having a little conversation with myself about what separates all these sorts
of sites (Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, BlogSpot etc.) from the one that has drawn
in 1,310,000,000 active followers worldwide…: Facebook. I mean, what makes Facebook
so great? What’s it got that all the others don’t?? And then I was thinking about
how I personally view it, compared to how I think about other sites. And this
is what I realised: on FB, we create a profile that everyone we know can see. I
mean, think about the number of people you have in your “Friends” list, who you
don’t even really know? I regularly do what I call a “friend cull”, where I go
through my list and delete people if I feel they have absolutely no relevance
in my life anymore (unless of course I’m feeling nosy about where they might
end up). But that still leaves all those people who I met in freshers’ week at
uni, who have stayed, simply because “what if I ever need them on here for
something uni-related in the future?”. It was the same at school – I would have
people who I didn’t even really like listed as my “friends”, for the sole
reason that I shared a class with them.
So, as I was saying, all these people
can see what we post, and we are very much aware of this. So we don’t
necessarily post what we actually want to, if we think we’ll be judged for it. For
example, when was the last time you *actually* told Facebook the truth, when it
asked you what was on your mind? And for those that do, girls who post relatable
love quotes for example, their contemporary’s bitch about them! I’ve seen it
happen! Ever heard someone say this about one of their contemporaries? :
“So-and-so ALWAYS posts pictures with quotes about how sad she’s feeling; she’s such an attention seeker”.
And so what do we do instead? We post
statuses because we think they’ll receive a load of likes. Or pictures of
ourselves in party dresses, drinks in hand, to show what a great night out we
had. (Which begs the question, were you really enjoying yourself if you were so
busy taking pictures all night?). And the amount of times I’ve said, “That’s
such a nice photo of you! You should make it your profile picture!” and the
response has been “I know, but I’ve got 52 likes on my current one, and I don’t
want to give that up” only goes to prove my point further. It’s just a test of
popularity. We’re not truly representing ourselves, we’re portraying the person
we want other people to *think* we are.
Okay, so with my rant about Facebook
over, I think it’s fairly obvious what I’m going to say with relation to
blogging sites. The thing is, when you post something on say Tumblr or
Pinterest, you aren’t doing it because it’s the “cool” thing to do, you do it
because you find it interesting, or it’s personal to you – a song lyric or
quote you live by for example. I mean, if someone favourites a tweet of mine,
it normally comes as a surprise. Half the time I’m just having a rant or ramble
about something, I’m not actually expecting any sort of response from anyone!
That, and the fact that I think “well if people don’t want to hear about any of
this, they can just unfollow me”. I made a point of not telling anyone when I
got Twitter or Tumblr (or any other similar sites), because I didn’t want
anyone I actually knew to find out about them in case they judged me for what I
posted. I’d much rather have no followers and have an open platform to post
what I like, than to have a large following, but have to restrict what I say. Because
otherwise, honestly what’s the point? And I’m taking that approach now to
blogging, starting with this. I don’t care if no one reads this. I don’t care
if no one comments on it. I don’t care if no one wants to follow me. I am
writing and posting for ME and no one else. Enough said.
And on that note, I think I shall
just leave this as it is, because I’m now 8 minutes late for a film night with
my friends... Haha, Happy living!! :D
Syndiestar xo
Ironically, about half an hour after I
finished writing this, I got a text from my mum having a rant at me about the
message I was supposedly giving off with a picture I’d just posted on Facebook…
See what I mean?
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