Social Meadia: Perfection by Design

Putting on a smile in times of pain; we are all guilty of it.

Mead tells us that as social beings we learn to cultivate and understand our identities in relationship to others. Social media gives us the power to curate our any identity in just a few snaps, taps and clicks. Before you know it, you begin to act in a certain way online to fulfill a facade identity. What happens when your reality doesn’t align with who people expect you to be?

Media Accounting

In Lee Humphrey’s book The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life, she explores the idea of social media accounting as a historically ritualistic process through socio-technical systems. In the 19^th century, the diary was a daily, family documentation of mundane and eventful activities. This documentation of birthdays, holidays, anniversaries or moments of transition are annual practices of media accounting. The act of documenting builds media traces of our past life’s experiences. Media traces provide us with a physical form of remembrance.  

Sound familiar?  

In many ways, posting on social media is much like writing in a diary. Interestingly, diaries weren’t always considered to be a private act of daily reflection. In wasn’t until the 20^th century, when American culture shifted to an individualist nature, that diaries were locked up and held hostage behind teenager’s doors.

They had often been read out loud as an act of facilitating domestic conversation and connection. Families addressed any physical or emotional concerns with transparency.

Can you imagine all your secrets being revealed at the dinner table?

Media accounting was originally public and transitioned into a private practice. With the innovation of socio-technology, media accounting has transitioned back into the public view. However, rather than being a healthy form of connection, there is a lack of conversation on addressing real issues and personal struggles. With the absence of addressing these issues, people further suppress their struggles by designing the 'perfect life' through their media traces and performing unaligned identities.

Performing Perfectionism

Business Insider met with Psychotherapist Allison Abrams, she explains that it is in our innate nature to compare ourselves to each other but social media amplifies our tendency to do so. A vast majority of people choose to display the most perfect and aesthetically pleasing moments of their life. To many viewers, this is interpreted as a constant reiteration of how their life isn’t living up to these perfect standards.

The performance of positivity and perfection is reinforced for a monetary value in the form of money or in the form of likes. Influencers are often contracted with companies to promote and/or review products. They put on this face to appropriately represent other identities to make money but end up neglecting their own. Anna’s Analysis of Fake Positivity explains it nicely:  

Often, these influencers are dealing with their own emotional problems that they may feel like they can’t talk about because it would affect their reputation and how people view their advice. Or they may feel like people wouldn’t be as attracted to their content if they weren’t always upbeat and bubbly.

As mentioned before, we tend to understand our own identity in relation to others. It is much easier put on a smile in fear of rejection or scrutiny. It is much easier to blend in to fulfill the shoes of what others expect of you, especially when your income and quality of living depends on it.

Digital Panopticon

This phenomenon that we must post the best representation of ourselves is so deeply ideologized into a conformative cycle of perfectionism. We can understand this in relation to Foucault’s Panopticon. The Panopticon is an architectural structure designed to reinforce self-discipline and social order through the imagined, constant surveillance of authority. In other words, he proves that people tend to conform to the expected behavior when they think they are being watched by others. This is an accurate explanation for why we conform to the perfection performed by others.

We see this problem most prevalent in Instagram and YouTube influences. Their ‘come-up timeline’ always starts with them bringing something unique to the table that is relatable or at least interesting. Whether that be their personality, authenticity or niche, it jumps starts their following and fame.

Surprise… being unique is good and this is what viewers want.

When they finally make it, many start to blend into the scene. This comes in fear of losing the social status they have spent so much time curating online. And all of a sudden, they ‘aren’t relatable’ or ‘authentic’ anymore.

Life Update

This is incredibly painful to feel unaligned with an identity you’re meant to keep playing. YouTuber and Influencer Daisy Marquez is only one example of the unspoken reality within the industry. On Twitter, on November 4, 2019, she posted:

Comments of support flooded her feed, but nothing was addressed further than this snippet of her personal struggles. Daisy posted this eleven days before she posted her "life update.." video. That’s a long time to be sitting with these dark emotions and that’s only a fraction of the time frame. In this video she confesses how depressed she has been behind closed doors.

It was so bad to the point that her hair was falling out…literally, she shows a bald spot.

Daisy admits that she’s been struggling with depression and anxiety for months and nobody has known because she keeps a smile on her face and goes through the motions of keeping up with her social media identity. To separate herself from her ‘LA’ identity she announces that she has made the decision to move back to Texas “to find her roots”.

While venting to the camera she discovers that the reason she feels like a “failure” is because she has “succeeded in everything [she] has wanted in life but [she hasn’t] succeeded at being happy”.

This is the sad truth of today’s social media culture.

In the eyes of the digital panopticon, influencers feel the need to live up to an unrealistic standard of a ‘perfect life’. When the truth is, everyone has hard times. Life isn’t always margaritas on the beach, photoshoots and People’s Choice Awards. Perfectionism is only a constructed design. As a society transitioning from the private to public means of media accounting, we haven’t adapted to displaying authentic representations of our lives.

The problem with performing perfectionism is that it only fulfills a surface level identity. Yeah you're smiling in that picture but how were you feeling behind the lens? That’s what matters.