The Mindfuck of Social Media and Pop Culture
As I write this, the national headlines are filled with the story of a young, pregnant woman and her two daughters who were allegedly killed by the husband/father. As usually happens, interviews with family and friends revealed few signs that this family was in trouble. By all accounts, they appeared to be “perfect” on social media. Let this be your warning. Fairy tales are lies, and perfection on social media is a fairy tale. Social media and popular culture are brainwashing us into believing that fairy tales are real, and everyone has one except for us.
Social media has forever changed our world. In some ways, the changes have been positive. We can share our lives with family and friends and reconnect with old buddies. We are able to create support for our issues and concerns. I am amazed at the life-altering stories that folks share around illness, bullying, and life lessons. I think that social media offers a wonderful way for people who feel marginalized in our society to connect to supportive others. It is also a great way to spread the word about humanitarian causes. To be sure, social media is a tremendous tool.
In other ways, the changes have been less desirable. Feeling like the world is a stage can fuel a temptation to show off a non-existent fairy tale life. It can lead to overly intense comparisons with others’ relationships, jobs, social life, and looks. On social media, other people’s lives appear to be full of fun, love, and harmony, which makes our mundane, problem-filled lives appear to be abnormal.
Popular culture on television, YouTube, magazines, and internet reinforce messages of beauty, thinness, and success in relationships, parenting, finance, and work. The messages are so pervasive, it can seem like you are the only one who isn’t in this Stepford club of perfection. They might feed the self-talk of “not good enough,” “I don’t belong.” “I’m a failure.” The more you are exposed to these media, the worse you may feel.
I am here to remind you that what you are taking in and digesting is deceit. It is time to look at how social media and popular culture comparisons may be driving some of your negative self-talk.
Mind Twisting Social Comparisons
The human brain is wired to be social for reasons of survival. If we surround ourselves with others who know things we don’t know and can do things we can’t, then we are more likely to survive in this crazy world. Even introverts, who get their energy from being alone, need social interaction. If you completely isolate a person, she will become depressed no matter who she is. That is how socially wired our brains are.
Social comparison theorists suggest that we judge ourselves against others to see how we are doing. I think it works well in situations where we look at others and say, “OMG, I have it bad, but such and such has it so much worse. I need to be grateful that things aren’t worse.” It can also be useful when there is someone we admire for value-driven behavior (e.g., honesty or good deeds), and we strive to follow that role model. For example, my friends Claudia and Darin raise money for social causes on their birthdays. I would like to do that on my birthday.
Social comparison isn’t so helpful when we are compare ourselves with others and think how we aren’t skinny enough, smart enough, rich enough, or attractive enough. When we see images online, in magazines, or on television that make everyone seem happy being a size zero, popular, social, and well-off, we begin to doubt ourselves. We begin to think, “Why is my life not as wonderful?” I worry that we spend too much time comparing ourselves with others’ cultivated images to the detriment of our own well-being. When I say cultivated, I mean managed, manicured, faked, photo-shopped.
There have been and always will be social comparisons, but at least in real life, you get to see the bad and the good rather than the manipulated and over-managed images that lead to the pursuit of superficial beauty. That isn’t healthy or realistic, but they are everywhere these days.
The social media and pop idols we follow have the same struggles as us. They have misbehaving and underachieving kids, excessive cellulite, cheating spouses, jobs they secretly hate, and massive debt that no one knows about. Unfortunately, we see only one side — the side that makes them appear perfect. They look beautiful, popular, happy, thin, and financially successful. Their children appear to be perfect extensions of themselves, destined for a future of greatness.
Although it is natural to compare oneself, it is not a fair comparison if it is with something unreal. These fairy tale comparisons fuel twisted, negative self-talk like, “I will never measure up. I should have more. No one will ever like me the way I am.”
Poutier lips won’t make you happier. The muscles of the latest action hero won’t fix your relationship problems. Having a posse of fake friends around you at all times won’t fill the sense of emptiness.
The Second Arrow
It is enough that we have baggage from genetics, baggage from childhood, and baggage from relationships. These are the first arrows that hit us. We may be creating more baggage by believing the created stories we see others portray on social media. If you enjoy living in fantasy, read fiction because you can put the book down anytime and come back to the real world. The second arrows are how we choose to passively and uncritically spend time following social media, convincing ourselves that it is real, and engaging in a pity party because we tell ourselves that our lives don’t measure up.
Get into the Shitshow of Your Life or Leave It Behind
You see, when we fall completely into the fakery on social media and make this our reality, our lives become more about living “as if” instead of living within the world. If we can remove ourselves more from the fiction and into the real, we can recognize the cloud over our lives. I am famous for saying that we need to embrace the shitshow around us. That starts with seeing the shitshow and admitting the shitshow.
Think about what I am saying. Don’t you regularly think, “OMG. WTF!” in response to your own life? If this isn’t what you are seeing on social media, you know it’s somewhat manicured or censored because life itself is a shitshow.
If we can become mindful and aware of the messages we are receiving, we are better able to accept that real life is messy — a shitshow, — and it hurts less. Once we admit this, we are empowered to make a choice in the matter about what to accept and what to leave behind, but we cannot continue to chase the fantasy that doesn’t exist.
One of the most challenging areas to apply this is around family. On social media, families all seem loving and harmonious, but that, too, is not as it seems. I have heard the craziest stories imaginable — like a mom who told others her daughter was a stripper just to get attention.
In the shitshow of life, you can break off ties with what is toxic. You can accept things you don’t like and role with it because you choose it. Or, you can continue to deny that dysfunction exists and hope for a different outcome. If you do the latter, you are destined to replay the same negative patterns over and over. At least with mindful acceptance, you can get ready, and there is the potential for humor. If you emotionally move on, motherfucker, the detachment will allow you to laugh at the situation as much as your real friends laugh when you share your stories.
It’s time to move on from social media and pop culture comparisons. In some cases, I think folks should literally MOMF from it altogether. It isn’t easy to do. I’ve seen people have physical withdrawal symptoms just thinking about disconnecting from social media. If you are going to continue as an active participant in life, you need to MOMF from taking it too seriously.
When social media is a distraction from living life as it happens, it is a problem. It can be time-consuming and anxiety elevating. I guess it all depends on who is in your network. This is another reason to choose your friends wisely.
Find a Balance
The problem is that social media and popular culture messages are everywhere. If we want to engage in the positive benefits of being connected, we have to find a balance with the downsides. It is easy to fall into hours of being online seeing where others go to lunch, whom they are with, and what they are doing by checking Facebook or Instagram. Or you can be notified with tweets. The more time we spend doing this, the more isolated we may feel.
How can you be on social media and not lose sight of real life? How can you keep a sure sense of your own moral, ethical, and social compass? These are not easily answered questions. I think the answers go back to being aware of your own motivations and what you are exposing yourself to. I believe you can take completely reasonable people and overexpose them to social media, and it can create an isle of idiots. Social media is a great tool for connection, but it is not great as a measuring stick for human value. Unfortunately, people look to social media to determine how much they are liked and valued. They also look to what others have and wonder if they need more in order to keep up. They look at other people — who appear as if they are endlessly happy — and feel lesser than.
When we aren’t mindful of how much time we are spending in an alternate, fairy tale reality, we are at risk of believing it is real. All we see is what others portray, and how many people do you know who openly share when things go bad, like drinking too much at a work party? How often do people share photos that seem to violate the eyes? Right. You don’t see it because people don’t enjoy public humiliation.
Let’s not fool ourselves. Those size zero models are hungry. Do we want to live a real life where we feel able to eat cake, or do we want to stand on the sidelines taking selfies appearing to be happier than we are?
In the end, I am not advocating for people to isolate themselves and go technology free. What I am saying is that we need to have more awareness of the time we are choosing to spend being exposed to social media and pop culture, more awareness of the cultivated images that are fairy tales, and more awareness of any negative self-talk that arises because of what we are taking in. We need to be active consumers of information and balance exposure with things that make us feel good, part of a community of belonging, and normal or average.
Instead of thinking how we don’t measure up to the fairy tales, we just be aware of the gap between what we have and what we wish, which is what I call mindful acceptance. This starts with an awareness and acceptance of what is going on and how it is affecting us and making a conscious decision about how to move on.
Fly Your Freak Flag High
The bottom line is that saying “fuck that” to social comparisons is accepting that we are all different. The idea that you can and should be just like someone else is denying the things that make you special. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes and colors. People have a crazy variety of talents and skills, including common sense. You need to first accept who you are and be good with that. This doesn’t mean that you call it all good. It means that you first accept that you are your own version. You are who you are. We can all find ways to improve, but let’s first be real.
Recognize that what you see on social media is vanilla flavored plastic. You need to have a good sense of who you are and who you want to be before you go around comparing yourself willy-nilly. Social comparison is good if you have that internal direction and perhaps want to check yourself against others whom you admire. Social comparisons are especially not good for appearances, which are often deceiving or all-out fake.
While there are good uses of social media — information-sharing, connectivity — there is also the danger of buying into an alternative reality. MOMF’ing from the social-media-perpetuated false image will allow you to be more accepting of yourself and your life. Live your life in the present versus looking at a screen and living your life through the eyes of what others think.
Make A Plan
Develop a mindful plan where you own your time on social media, and ways you can challenge yourself to keep it real. Make a list of salty positive affirmations that you can use to remind yourself that you are okay being different or your own person (e.g., I choose to see that I am completely bitchin’ in this world.”). Make a list of salty counterstatements (e.g., That shit ain’t real! Fairy tales are great for an escape, but lips and asses don’t really look like that.”) Jot down some ways you’d be willing to let your true freak flag fly and feel good about it because you own it. When you catch yourself feeling inadequate, check how much time you are spending on line. Perhaps you need a break. Catch that negative self-talk and bitchslap it. Spend time with a face-to-face friend.
