In the craziness that is social media, it can be incredibly easy to feel like you have to be ‘on’ all the time. Likes follows and comments can easily begin to define our self-worth; something that happened to me.
My first social media experience was with Twitter in 2010. It was the middle of middle school and I wanted to make some cool internet friends like the kind my mom used to warn me about. In fact, that’s exactly what I did. Making friends on the Internet was easy in 2010, everyone was still navigating the depths of social media. The only “social media famous” people were Tumblr girls and Kim Kardashian. Twitter was a place for trolls and celebrities, Instagram was for the elite, and the rest of us were just hanging out.
However, something changed after 2010. Random tweets about your day were no longer the cool thing to do. Posting selfies without makeup or pictures of your feet in the air on Instagram were no longer acceptable and “content” wasn’t just something that celebrities promised to deliver. Suddenly, it mattered what filters you used and how your eyeliner looked in your avatar. It was frustrating to meet the demands of social media fame (not that I’ve ever come close) and the pressure to be perfect in front of a camera drove me to turn away from social media altogether.
As the rise of the term, Instafamous continued, my self-esteem slowly declined. A picture of me hanging out on the couch could get a few likes but one of me in a bikini could get a lot more. The problem? I wasn’t always in a bikini. Immediately I began to notice what was popular on Instagram and Twitter and what wasn’t– and I fell into the second category. At first, it was okay, I didn’t mind being popular on social media because I had friends in real life! Later though it became difficult to keep that logic as my own friends became popular on social media. Whereas I was the first to get an account, I was the last to figure out how to use it.
After struggling with the pressure to be popular on social media as well as in my everyday life (I can’t stress how important it is that people realize that social media doesn’t represent everyday life), I was introduced to “finstas” or fake Instagrams. The purpose of these accounts is to post anything you wouldn’t on your main account on your fake one. Friends who usually never posted makeup-free selfies were uploading triple chin pictures to their cleverly named Instagrams. It was liberating to see people being freed from the expectations that social media put on them while still being on social media. The best part, however, was that no one was vying for likes and follows. Fake social media accounts allow people to be picky about who they follow and who follows them, instead of following the “free-for-all” ideology that usually comes with having a social media account. When I made mine, I followed friends and only friends– no one else gets the privilege of seeing my Free The Nipple t-shirts or body positive photos.
My finsta gave me a self-confidence that I haven’t had for a while.
Only following friends showed me that no matter how many chins I sport in a selfie, the people that matter will always like me (literally and figuratively). My main account gave me an anxiety toward social media, making me feel like I had to always maintain a celebrity status with a celebrity-type feed; without the celebrity lifestyle. Our finstas show who we are in more ways than one, from our crazy usage of memes to our sick-day selfies– we’re slowly going back to how social media started; chill. Of course, this isn’t mean to put down anyone who puts in the work to make their main accounts look like Kim Kardashian’s trip to the grocery store! Kudos to everyone who enjoys that boost of confidence when you hit 1,000 likes on a post. It’s just that, not everybody has the ability to do that and some people just might not want to (and they shouldn’t feel any pressure to do so).
If you’re feeling the pressures of social media, create a fake Twitter or a fake Instagram and follow your friends! Enjoy each other’s imperfections on one account and celebrate their Beyoncé days on the other. There’s nothing wrong with being real, or in this case– fake!
