“Mummy, can you look something up for me?” asks my seven-year-old daughter. So I open Google, and there is my browsing history staring back at me: “How to make salted caramels”; “Making your suicide look like an accident”; “Easy appetizers for New Year’s Eve”. Wow, I think to myself, there’s a contrast for you. Couched between baking and party planning, are my less acceptable, less public moments, and I realize the people around me know what I want them to know, and nothing more.
While this personal example may be extreme, I don’t think I am alone in my desire to steer away from the darker aspects of my life, and to paint a praiseworthy picture of myself and my circumstance. I will admit that I want others to buy in to my external messaging, and to leave my company thinking that I have an enviable life. Certainly there are moments in almost every day when I’m reminded to be grateful and happy… but there is also a good deal of struggle and hopelessness mixed in with those salted caramels… hopelessness that is very real.
This is the busy, swirling backdrop as I scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, viewing idyllic photos, reading status updates designed to grab attention, and spur admiration. My favourite are the spouses who shout out about their unceasing devotion, and other fabulous, hard-won successes. I picture them (with judgement), posting while sitting next to each other on the sofa, and I mentally bash them for their narcissistic need to publicize – and probably glamourize what might once have been reserved for private exchange.
I am not immune to the ‘aww’ factor present in the photos of rosy-cheeked children smiling through falling snowflakes. In fact, sometimes I can almost smell the post-play cocoa, and momentarily I envy that life—where everyone is laughing, and everyone is content. And then I wonder again, with cynicism, what that same family looked like thirty seconds after the photo was taken. Maybe what I am seeing is a true representation, and maybe it is not. I am pretty sure the reality must fall somewhere in between.
This leads me to consider how we each build our personal brand—our public face, our story. In much the same way a company or organization crafts its external messaging to gain buy-in from its stakeholders, we as individuals create a brand, or image for ourselves—the self we want others to know.
I would like everyone to think that I am a great mother with well-behaved, exceptionally creative and intelligent children who adore me, and my Facebook photos reflect this desire. I would like everyone to speak of my professional life with admiration, and of my marriage with poetic endorsement. While some bits of this list are true, others are the stuff of pure fantasy; the brand I hope others will buy. You will note that my frequent moments of anxiety and hopelessness did not make the list. No, I would rather be recognized for the things I feel proud of, and a status update with a carefully chosen photo allows just enough space to sell what I know my friends will buy.
While the notion of an ‘online image’ is a well-explored phenomenon in 2013, this brand-building activity is not exclusive to social networking sites. It may be the easiest, quickest way to promote our brand, but we do it in person as well. It is extremely pervasive for example, with couples, particularly in the early stages of a relationship. We all know that couple that grabs us and forces us to look at them, hoping their white hot passion will evoke feelings of admiration and even jealousy in the hearts of onlookers. I mean, surely no others have loved before them. They invented it. Shouldn’t we all want what they have? How can we get what they have? Or does what they have only exist when there is an audience to buy it?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe that being in love is a beautiful thing, and it should be celebrated, but if it is real you shouldn’t need to prove it to anyone. And if your relationship is strengthened at the expense of those around you, maybe your relationship is not as enviable as you would have others believe. Perhaps this is in fact what brand is all about: “I am great, especially compared to you; my life is perfect—sorry about yours; I am strong but sadly, you are weak.” And then if we actually believe our own hype, maybe it will magically morph into reality. Self-help gurus do say that thoughts become things.
All I know is that there’s far more to each of us than what we would willingly share with others. To quote Jane Austen, “Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.” I believe this holds true for every form of human engagement, but what has been a revelation for me is realizing that there’s no shame in acknowledging the less than ideal parts of our lives, and ourselves, whatever they might be. In fact if we own what’s “wrong” with our lives, I think others will be more likely to believe, and be joyful for our successes. After all, none of our lives is exactly what we hoped for, regardless of what we put out into the world.
Read another perspective on the effect of social media in NOT-SO-SOCIAL NETWORKING: The consequences of hiding behind a computer screen>>
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by Anon
image: ekurutepe (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
