Do you tweet like I do ? : Making sense of the social media circus

Sometimes, I feel like taking a BIIIIIIIIG LOOOOOOONG break from social media… That ever present need to constantly tell the world what is happening in our little lives, tugs at our fingertips without fail whenever something worth sharing is happening. Sometimes I want to stop. Sometimes. And then, I remember that I do social media mostly to promote and aliment content for Prête-Moi Paris, and I can’t let my little blog nor my fans down. (Not that they would have a bad withdrawal episode if I did). There is so much more content out there to entertain and appease them, and I am not the only one they pay attention to. But most of all, I post and tweet and instagram and all, for myself. It’s my creative way of sharing what I love with the world, for my own delight and creative motives.

But, there is something more than this need to create, that motivates me… it is the connections we make, it’s the dialogue we share, it’s the conversations we spark.

So then why do I feel this desire to continually grow my amount of followers, readers, comments and fans??? Why do the numbers seem to validate my work? Do they validate my work? An author who publishes a novel hopes to have people read it, n’est-ce past? The more people that read it, the more people that author has reached with her/his art.

But social media brings in so much more than just fans, and followers. It allows allows ample space for the critics, the pejorative comments, the pundits, the nay-sayers… And although so far I really haven’t experienced much of that through my years of blogging and social media outlets, there are plenty of people, some I know, who do unfortunately have that unpleasant experience. This is the flip side of the conversation, the lack of true dialogue.

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@PreteMoiParis …exactly. We do our best. And sometimes, even our best isn’t good enough for somebody, and that’s ok.

— Dita Von Teese (@DitaVonTeese) July 6, 2010

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Everyone wants to be heard. Everyone wants their opinion to be validated. Authors of novels and twitter pundits alike, both are seeking an audience. Even your former high school pals that are almost forgotten are still trying to attract validation via facebook posts and count that validation in the number of « likes » or comments. And social media is making it more and more possible to attract more and more attention, be it good or bad attention. We have entered into an era of generation ME. It’s a quagmire of « look at me! » people and entities. It’s enough to drive you away sometimes…

This idea kind of reminds me of growing up in a house with 8 kids, (yes my parents had 8 children together), and all of us were vying for attention. We each had our « thing » that acquired for us our own special attention. Whether it was the ability to be goofy, make the others laugh, be super smart in school, excel at a sport or an art, we all sought a way to stand out among the « crowd ». I like to think that growing up in that household prepared me for this new phenomenon and helps me better deal with it. Or maybe this new phenomenon helps me better deal with the fact that two parents just don’t have enough attention between them for 8 little humans.

Yet here I am in the fray of social media, grasping for attention and validation…like the rest.

But… but… there remains a silver lining to all these confusing connections : there are a handful of amazing souls that have come to me via social media, and whom I hope to treasure as special parts of my life worth holding onto. Social media, for all the din, can certainly produce some incredible people. Some of these people found me online, some, I found, others we mutually found each other through the same social media circles; but no matter the way we came to meet, I wouldn’t give up any of that self-centered crazy social circus if it met I never would have met these beautiful humans. They are worth all the « me-ness » on the internet. They know who they are…

Here’s to finding amazing people in virtual places you never expected.

And thank you for letting my whine and rant a little

♥
*Bisous from Paris*