Social media has allowed for us to document and share aspects of our real lives. By simply clicking on a few buttons, you can share photographed moments, song recommendations, and comments under the posts of other social media users. You would think that our social media profiles and the way in which we choose to utilize social media would reflect genuinely on who we are as our own individuals, but how genuine are we actually being on social media? Is the way in which we spread content and interact through social media reflect our truth, or rather does it reflect norms that have been unofficially implemented by social media and internet culture?
Think back to your latest post on social media. Whichever app (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) you posted on most recently, think back on what your latest post was. Feel free to open up your app if it’s been a while. What did you post? Perhaps it was a photo and/or video from a birthday, vacation, or a night at the movies? Whatever you posted, consider why you chose to post that specific image and/or video? What helped you determine that that content was the post worth sharing?
For most of you, it may just simply be that you posted just because you wanted to share the moment. After all, that's what the “post” button is there for. For you to share. However, for social media influencers and prominent users, their answer may be more complicated.
Influencers and the making of “spreadable” content
Everyday people who have now found themselves to be popular and prominent social media users have to consider factors such as:
Maintaining a particular type of image for themselves
Pandering towards the interests of audience members
Posting constantly and/or in a timely manner
Their answers are a lot more complex compared to a simple response of “I post what I feel like posting.” But this is the cost of creating relevant meaning on social media that is both appealing and that can be shared amongst others. After all, the views and the shares are what keeps influencers popular.
Consider the thoughts of American media scholar, Henry Jenkins. Jenkins ponders what determines whether social media content gets spread and becomes favored in his book Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. Jenkins uses the term “spreadability” to refer to the technical resources that can help to circulate particular content over others, the economic resources that either help support or restrict circulation, the aspects of media that contribute towards the motives behind why people share content, and the social networks that help connect people through the exchange of meaningful material. That’s admittedly quite a mouthful but think of “spreadability” as simply the factors of digital society that help to define what material is shared, and why people choose to share and spread specific types of digital material.
In terms of influencers and popular social media presences, they strive to maintain a sense of relevance amongst audience members by creating material that they intend to be shared. The more that it is liked and shared, the more they and their material solidifies itself as being popular.
But how can they predict what is meaningful and/or popular in the digital world? In truth, they can’t. They have to observe and take note of what is gaining attention online day-by-day. After all, people that actively participate on social media help to determine the level of meaning associated with different types of content every day.
Let’s look at some familiar faces that some of you may remember from childhood. Remember the popular doll line known as Bratz? These dolls were definitely one of the hottest toys since their initial release in the year 2001. The popular children's dolls were discontinued a number of times until they inevitably left the selves of typical retailers. In fact, most of the dolls that you can find in stores today are considered to be collectables. So, you wouldn’t think that these dolls would gain any significant attention on social media in the year 2022, would you? Well… think again.
Although the Bratz dolls are inanimate objects, the team that runs the Bratz social media accounts are very much real and very much popular. With their Instagram account sitting at 845 thousand followers, their TikTok account sitting at 665.7 thousand followers, and their Twitter account sitting at 106.9 thousand followers at the time of writing this post. For toys made in the early 2000’s they still seem to be quite popular. This is because Bratz creates and shares content that appeals to their audiences while also still harnessing the nostalgia of the dolls that much of their audience can recall from childhood. They basically saw their audience grow up and become the adults they are today. With that said, they now pander their content towards the adults they know their fans are today.
Some of their most recent posts on their Twitter include specially made dolls and doll animations that are modeled after popular shows and movie characters related to HBO’s original series Euphoria, Halloween, and Jennifer’s Body. Due to copyright laws, I can't show you the images of these dolls. Here is the link to their twitter if you'd like to scroll through to see the posts: https://mobile.twitter.com/Bratz. Here are the number of likes and shares/retweets each of these previously listed posts received:
Euphoria: 15.6K likes, 1,778 shares/retweets
Halloween: 81.5K likes, 12.7K shares/retweets
Jennifer’s Body: 169.7K likes, 53.7K shares/retweets
Although Bratz may have left the shelves for the most part, their presence on social media is still very evident and their content is very “spreadable”. This is in part because they note what is considered to be popular amongst audience members and by using the nostalgia of their dolls to their advantage.
“Being real” on social media
So now that we have addressed that influencers and large social media accounts have to consider many factors when posting, then comes the question of how many of their posts are genuine? In other words, consider if some of the popular social media users you are familiar with are just “being real” while also simultaneously accommodating towards the parameters in which help make their posts “spreadable”.
According to Brooke Erin Duffy and Elizabeth Wissinger in their paper titled Mythologies of Creative Work in the Social Media Age: Fun, Free, and “Just Being Me”, not every account on social media reflects a raw image of a person. Like I mentioned earlier, influencers consider a lot to maintain their high social media status and presence. And when they prove themselves to be favored on social media, others may like to take advantage of their popularity. Duffy and Wissinger point out how social media users today may be posting with the goal of getting compensated in some way. It is common nowadays for brands and companies to wish to use an influencers’ account and/or presence to boost the attention their name will get. In turn, when that influencer takes the time and effort to post certain material or post in general, they can get financial compensation just for simply posting.
Let’s keep the nostalgia going for us Millennials and Gen Z-ers. Let's consider popular singer and actress, Selena Gomez.
GoBankingRates reported in August of 2021 that Gomez makes an estimated $886,000 per post. Making it to where she can earn $10.6 million in a year based on the rates of her posts alone.
Perhaps this affects the way you view certain influencers and celebrities. Maybe the fact that they are getting paid to post rather than them just posting to be genuine makes you view them in a different, less flattering way. And by all means, that's valid. But what Duffy and Wissinger point out is that in this age of social media, it is inevitable to find instances such as these occurring. Social media has offered means of paying for content, and people will utilize those offers.
Give-give agreement on social media
So now we have addressed that people can gain from posting online. And with social media presences analyzing, creating, and posting content every day for their audience members, one can wonder if they expect something in return for their efforts? After all, all it takes is a few seconds to like a post, comment, subscribe, share, etc. And this encourages and allows social media creators to continue to make content for viewers.
In The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, French sociologist Marcel Mauss describes the way in which exchanges have been maintained and what purposes they served within multiple societies throughout history. Mauss suggests that we as people have a “tradesman morality” that causes us to feel this need to give something in return when it is that something is given to us. In his own words, “Give as much as you take, all shall be very well.”
So, in terms of applying Mauss’ thought process to social media, there should be a general rhythm of giving occurring online amongst content creators and viewers. However, the rhythm isn’t always present. Some just go on social media to consume rather than interact. We can possibly find ourselves just taking and not giving. Or perhaps you do interact, but there are certain reasons that cause you to feel the need to interact. Maybe it’s because you know the content creator personally? Or that you genuinely like the material a content creator makes and would like to see more of it? Or maybe you just feel guilty if you don’t interact at all, so you force yourself to do so.
Since I can’t really talk about others and their reasons for interacting with the content of others’, let's look at me for this example.
Yup. That's me with a pumpkin on my head. I posted the above photo in October of 2021. My friends and I had done a pumpkin head photo shoot that ended with us capturing quite a few photos. All three of us posted our own versions of the pumpkin head photo shoot on our Instagram accounts, and we all tagged each other in the posts. I liked my friends' posts because 1) They took the time to tag me, and 2) they’re my friends and I like seeing that they too are sharing the moments that we had together. So, in terms of why I like and interact with other content, I can say that knowing people personally is a factor for me. I like my friends’ posts, and they like my posts. So, although we probably never thought of it this way, we kind of had a mutual exchange through social media. A like for a like, a comment for a comment.
Conclusion
Social media offers us a lot of material and allows us the means of interacting in a number of ways online. But how genuine are these interactions? Do our posts and interactions reflect on us truthfully? Are we using social media as a means of doing whatever we want, or do we feel the pressure to post certain material and interact in specific ways in order to align with the unofficial rules of social media? Maybe for you it's’ one thing over the other, or perhaps a mix of both. No matter how you may view your presence on social media, we can’t deny that social media has offered a variety of opportunities and rules that we may perhaps find ourselves pandering towards. It is simply how we have adapted towards social media culture. In turn this can affect the types of content we choose to share, the reasons why we share, and how we choose to interact with others online.
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