facebook fakeries & instagram instigations

I love social networks. I love that there's a control centre for me to customise and receive feeds and notifications for things I'm interested in. It's perfect for lazy people. It's also handy for stalking or whatever. Oh, she's had another kid? Different daddy? Definitely different daddy. You go girl, take feminism by the horns!

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There's been a growing trend of people renouncing their affiliation to social networks like it's some sort of shameful communist club. I don't know if they're the Hipsters or the Bloods or the Crips, but they exist. Knickers have been twisted so hard they're starting to fray. This buzz might have something to do with the nonexistent privacy social sites promise, but these days it's really hard not to have your personal deets distributed across the webiverse. We've all clicked I Agree without even glancing at the 10 page conditions. Both sides are to blame and it'll be a forever argument over spilled eggs and broken milk. The end ain't near - everyone is too immersed and addicted to the drama surrounding the problem. 

But I see a different problem. 

Sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have provided a sickeningly moist environment for metaphorical fungi to thrive. Fake identities - not the John Doe type - are feeding off of each other and multiplying tenfold: I'm referring to people who paint inaccurate pictures of themselves. This isn't about style or moral inequality or suppressed souls or any other label sourced from a L'Oreal polish. This is about attention seekers going above and beyond to lure a crowd of compulsive liars and naive reverers. A plethora of Photoshopped images and fake statuses derived from well-known memes populate Facebook news feeds, and it becomes annoying having to unfollow people. The same people you know  well enough outside of the internet to be able to differentiate the genuine from the phony. The argument that "it's just one aspect of my personality" doesn't compute with me. Well, it does. In a way. But I'm more convinced that this is just a means of mutating their 15 minutes of fame into years of moderately appreciative strangers. The internet is continually luring us into false beliefs that we can achieve success and worldwide recognition of our "skillz" simply by existing. It's no surprise there are so many aspiring Kim Ks and Kanyes fluttering around behind various masks.

What triggered my thoughts on this social network identity crisis was the increased use of well-known memes as personal experience "confessions". A basic cut-and-paste job probably reminiscent of earlier school assignments. Eventually something akin to a following (I use the term loosely) is built which leads to more meme-statuses, and the circle of lies continues. Until, of course, Facebook accounts are deleted and then shortly un-deleted: 

"I'M BAAAACK. MISS ME?" 
"You were gone lol?"

That seems to disrupt the flow, and posts tend to get a decline in activity - at least for a while. Instagram isn't that different. The focus is more on following and unfollowing, so that you're being followed by more people than you're following. It doesn't guarantee a dramatic increase in followers, and I'm not sure how many people that tactic works on, but I imagine there to be a few irritated insters. 

The 2-step process is as follows: 

1. Instigate some sort of relationship: You double tap a few of their pictures (ideally older ones so there is evidence of you browsing through their pictorial achievements), maybe slide in a couple of choice generic comments, then proceed to follow them in a "natural" fashion. 
2. Unfollow them if they don't return the gesture: ...within a reasonable time frame. But if they follow you, you must wait a while before unfollowing (you don't need them catching on to your cunning plan). Because let's face it, you don't actually like the gist of their not-so-photogenic lunacy. You just need dem lykz and followerz #amiright #questionmark

Give it a go if you don't believe me. I can guarantee you at least one follower. 

The overruling themes that are seen across these two mediums speak of social deprivation and lazy ambition. As much as I love the internet and come to its defense when it suffers attack, it tends to foster something like a solitudinarian cult. The more time one spends within its chambers, the more acceptable it's anti-social practices become. Social networks were created with a clear and obvious goal, however this goal seems to have inverted, and now plenty of netizens are suffering from deteriorating social involvement in real life. This is my justification for the unhealthy behaviours surrounding social media. Or maybe they're all just trolling and loling while we're dragging behind them like empty cans of soup. Who knows. 

One thing is for sure, though. The majority of us won't be renouncing social media. It's way too convenient, and still provides us with the opportunity to dabble in our more narcissistic inclinations.