They care about you… when you notice them
I thought that people cared. I hoped that people cared. Turns out they care — just about themselves. Oh yeah, and the attention you give them. OK, maybe they do care about you… when it strokes their ego.
Social media is a funny thing. It gives the cocky a place to brag about their lives and it gives the insecure a chance to boost their self esteem. Either way, it’s about the user — or social me-me-media, as I call it.
I have never narrated my day by posting every hour on the hour. I do post pictures from work events. After all, I get to hang out with celebrities on red carpets, so why not? But it is work and it helps promote the content I get paid to produce. It’s a business tool for me.
What makes me different is that I don’t put the woe-is-me stuff to try get sympathy from an internet full of strangers. I don’t post a picture and obsessively check to see how many people “liked” or commented on it.
I’ll be quite honest with you: Yes, I have a following thanks to my newspaper columns and radio shows and books but I truly — seriously, truly — don’t believe that anybody cares enough about me to want to know what I am doing every second of the day. I’m not sure if anyone on social me-me-media has ever proclaimed that before, so I’ll write it again: I don’t think people care to know what I am doing every second of the day so I just won’t tell them.
One rainy day I spent a lot of time on Facebook. I didn’t go on a crazy posting blitz. I watched the people who posted every single thought. I came to the conclusion that I felt sorry for the people who constantly sought attention and needed reassurance that people hadn’t forgot about them.
I also noticed a lot of single people posting half-naked mirror selfies and some had hundreds of “likes” and comments within an hour. I also saw people whose “relationship status” was married and they still showed a lot of skin online. Hey, who am I to judge someone’s exhibition-istic relationship?
Yes, I will fly to Toronto for a weekend to have a dinner with friends. And I will buy some crazy expensive things. And I will do all of it without making a peep on social media. After all, isn’t a personal life supposed to be personal?
