You All Have a Little "Me" in You

Ever wonder what it would be like to create a whole new persona online that you could essentially do with whatever you’d like? Well, guess what.. You already do. According to Daily Mail.com , “over 75% of people admit to making their lives more exciting on social media”. Is this because we absolutely enjoy the thrill of knowing we have just lied to the ENTIRE world about who we are and what exactly we do? Or … is this because, although we hate to admit it, we value other people's opinions of us. 

 You Catfish!

To some, the word ‘catfish’ is the name for an aquatic animal with weird little whiskers, but for much of the internet it means someone who is attempting to draw other people in with a completely fake social profile. There was an entire show over trying to find the real people behind these fake profiles called (wait for it) Catfish. Who would’ve guessed right? This show has EIGHT seasons of two men doing research and finding the faces behind the screen. That’s a lot of faking if you ask me. If we are following the data from above, would that make over 75% of people even a little bit of a Catfish? No, not exactly but it includes the same concept. This is not the only show that has been created following the idea of a fake profile. There is a show on Netflix called “Circles” where a group of people create a profile. They can choose to make a completely fake profile or, they can make one as true to character as possible. The goal of this game is to be the most popular profile by the end of the week and the most popular profile wins. Games and shows are created around the idea that faking part of our social profiles makes us more likeable. 

If we truly take a look around, the amount of effort we put into this desire to be liked and retweeted and shared and commented on, is hilarious. One morning while I was at work, my coworker and I were having a serious debate about which picture she should post on her Instagram when she suddenly blurted out “Wait! I don’t even know why I'm posting right now. It's too early, no one will see it anyway. I’ll post it at like 10 or 11 instead..” I was more than confused when she mentioned this and I had just enough curiosity to ask why. Her reply was elaborate and way too long to  put on here but to summarize, according to this oh-so-popular high school girl, people don’t scroll far enough to see the early morning posts so you have to do it at the average time that your peers wake up. The amount of effort she had already put into debating the PERFECT picture to post was a lot for me to deal with but now, timing? Does she really think about every single aspect of posting a picture in order to maximize the amount of feedback she will receive on one post anyway?

The Science Behind the Fish

I've always thought the amount of time and effort that we put into creating a semi interesting profile that we want everyone to notice was narcissistic as heck but after the past week, I have a slightly different outlook on this topic. A man by the name of George Herbert Mead is the mastermind who figures it’s just who we are! He believes there are two concepts that we exist with, the “I” and the “me”. The “I” is how we see ourselves and the “me” is how we think others see us. The me is also called the social self because we respond according to our social norms in a given situation.  Has it become the social norm to change who we are on social media to be liked? In the show Catfish, the concepts of the I and the me can get a bit confusing. I think the reason that people create fake accounts like that is because they value the me part of themselves more than they do the I. As for my coworker, I don't think the situation is as severe but it still requires the same concept. The hunger to be liked or be approved of by others on social media is a driving force behind the majority of the things being posted. We create an entirely new identity, one that we think reflects how others view us and accept that as a social norm. We all know we take a lot of time thinking about how to post a certain picture, what angle, what lighting, what filter. For what? The reassurance that we are doing life right in the eyes of our peers. 

The society that we live in now is heavily influenced by the me but imagine how much more the me was used 100 years ago. 200? Even though a lot of what we do today is driven by the me, the I is used more than ever in my opinion. We have difference resources now to display how much we value others opinions but we also accept self expression just as much. Fishy as it seems, the me in everyone is socially constructed and will be valued by every individual differently but will always impact how we live our daily lives.