Social Media and the Journey to Find the Self
We all know, first hand, that isolation for months at a time can be debilitating if it isn’t voluntary.
A narrative seems to have emerged and it goes something like: humans are “social creatures” so we need each other. And sure, we need each other to build and create, but why do we so badly need each other’s company? Personally, I considered myself an introverted-extrovert long before the pandemic. In fact, I was working remotely a year prior to lockdowns for that very reason. I’m pretty comfortable around all sorts of people but I generally found interactions with them exhausting, so I would omit as many from my day as was allowable.
However, after several events within the past two years that completely changed my life, I’ve been attempting to integrate more exchanges with other humans into each day (as opportunities to address my inner demons, if nothing else). It wasn’t the case at first. At first, I ran back to all those friends I’d known from my past and tried to get them to help make sense of what was happening to me. They all turned out to be just as confused because they were seeing a completely different side of me. The unhinged, directionless side of me. I saw, reflected in those people, judgement of me for not conforming to their lifestyles.
Of course, those were my thoughts that had been perpetuated by me and based on what life was supposed to look like from the lens of my peers. They’d all post their engagement photos, followed by baby bumps, and some graduation pictures in between. They recorded clips that moved forward and back showing them jangling keys for a new home, or their shot glasses for their rare night out. I just couldn’t see myself doing any of that anymore, so from their perspective, I felt like I was crazy. So crazy is what I was.
But one day I got this idea to curate my social media algorithm with things that interest me, as opposed to just the deleting apps that were causing my existential crisis (as is the traditional wisdom). My idea was most likely born out of necessity because the Clubhouse app did not have a messenger function in the beginning, so a lot of us were following each other’s socials. I really enjoyed those conversations because they were inventive and forward thinking but current. I began following people that were doing incredible things and hashtags that interested me. While enlightened people will tell you that social media is a bad thing, I believe they are the ones that allowed their feed to get filled with garbage. It is certainly true that you get more of what you focus on.
After being on Clubhouse, I became Indiana Jones (mostly because of my hat) but also because that sort of adventure is what had always sparked my interest before I was ever in my relationship. I was focused on spiritual healing after years of hyper-focusing on lies about myself. I don’t even attribute the abuse to my ex anymore because the fact that he’d frequently insult me and squeeze my neck is not nearly as upsetting as the fact that I’d allowed it to continue for so long. I did it because I believed what I saw in him to be true about me. Feedback was essential in understanding myself. In fact, when people withheld it from me, I was aggressive because I needed to know in order to course-correct. On Clubhouse and Discord, I knew nobody in real life but I was able to interact with them and become something completely new.
Now that I’ve stepped outside of my own world, I can see this same phenomenon is true for the collective. We want to know that what we are doing is likable. I’m obviously still guilty of that myself, and I’m not sure it goes away. The need to be accepted has always had a function. We want to feel secure and protected and there is strength in numbers. If more people are doing what we believe to be good, then we are vindicated. So our egos relish in posts that fit our narrative and feel attacked by those that don’t.
With the internet, we are performing for an entire collective and not a small community (as was the case for the history of our species). With a group so big, its much more difficult to come to a consensus about what is morally right. This led us to break out into smaller groups that serve as echo chambers in most cases. One way to mitigate this would be to take the journey of self-discovery inward, which I think has merit, but isn’t a complete answer. The truth of the matter is, we are here to interact with this physical realm. All the uncomfortable parts of existence allow us to learn more about ourselves. We learn how capable we are of handling situations that we have no control over.
Social media is a proxy for interactions in real life and allows us to experiment with different ways of being without having to commit to fringe lifestyles ourselves. All tools can be weaponized if we aren’t using them in a responsible and deliberate way. We must always remember that what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves and what we aspire to be, or they can be a reflection of a shadow we haven’t faced.
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
