That Tiny Bubble

Read Time: 10 minutes

Weird

Look outside! I scream this to myself after I (accidentally) spend too long looking at social media. I don’t mean that people need to turn and look out the window. Well, maybe I do… 🙂 I mean please just look beyond the screen. I have to ground my brain back to IRL and go from there. Even though I just used it, I think it’s weird that social media or gamers or whoever, had to create the phrase “in real life”. It’s even weirder that they found so many ways to use it they had to shorten it for easy texting. 

After I look too long at social media, I’m anxious. I’m never anxious. To not be anxious, I think about something I really want. There’s a lot to choose from IRL, but not too much. And, I don’t end up with what is conveniently in front of me. I want to move. I want to react. I want to feel. I don’t want to copy. I don’t want to FOMO. I want to be who I already am and then look beyond to see the world I actually live in. I want this for everyone.

It’s also weird that we have to force ourselves to look beyond our screens. We have to look up from and around them to see the world. This is backward. We should bring the world in. We shouldn’t make one from inside the screen that we then take out to other people. The one in the screen is filtered and distorted.

Just Alike

People have made complete lives in the online world. That’s their choice. But, when I see social media with all its collective bubbles, there’s a new kind of anxious. I’m not personally anxious, but I feel a strange kind of compassionate anxiousness for the people in the posts and videos. Their bubbles seem so small. Or, maybe the bubbles aren’t that small, but they look just like the other ones no matter what they are promoting, discussing, or participating in.

There is a lot of creativity out there. A lot of original content. But, in this post, I’m gonna get pretty dark about the rest. Rabbit holes and extremes. All the places that social media takes us that we weren’t really aware we wanted to go. How did peeks into our lives become glimpses of numb and fake existences? They had the opportunity to be so vulnerable and real. Add in the inability to distinguish authentic from scripted, and it’s a dangerously Don’t Worry, Darling world.

So much of the same. So much like everyone else. And we buy the stuff. And we will post more of it. And we keep it all going. Going toward the pockets of the consumer puppet masters. If they can get all of us to like the same kind of thing, then all the money gets concentrated with them. We’re all left wondering where our financial and emotional identities went. The ones that took all of our money are laughing at us. They can so easily keep us in our bubbles.

I don’t have an issue with following a crowd. Crowds gather because there is probably something important happening. Maybe even something fun and exciting. I get that. I’m a follower, too. People naturally follow “new and different”. What is happening now, though, seems like just following different versions of the same thing. Maybe it’s simply my algorithm… but why does mine look so much like yours? 

What is the algorithm really doing if not learning how to concentrate everything into patterns that are financially successful? Not successful for me, but successful for the ones that make the faceless advertisers the most money. I’m pretty sure they are the same ones getting paid to make the algorithms. At what point does creativity get “algorithmed” out? It feels like we’re getting “clickbaited” into whatever makes them money and out of the uniqueness of our lives.

What I don’t want to get sucked into is following trends that have nothing behind them. A place where the point of the content is has gotten lost. Following just because. Just to say I did that. Becoming afraid that if I do something else, I might get criticised. If my algorithm is actually about me, people might see what I really like and then not like me. Yuck… I want to see something else. I don’t want to do what social media says I’m supposed to do.

Trending

It’s funny. For years my Mom has said that I should make up creative ways of following the trends. I never really leaned into this. The trends look weird and distorted to me. Once they’re trending, they’ve lost the creativity of the original idea. Just like overused words and over played songs, trends drain what was wondrous about the original. If I want to put a song on repeat, it’s to experience it for what it does for me. It’s not to experience it because everyone else liked it.

I have a basic issue with “Influencers”. Not the actual people. I have a problem with the myth of influencing. The myth is the misdirected idea that influencers actually have the ability to permanently change our lives. The myth is that they have it figured out and we don’t. When the myth is shattered, it’s brutal to see them fall. It’s even more brutal to watch them rise knowing that down is the only direction they can go after that.

How are social media Influencers promoting anything different from the social constructs we have been crammed into in the past? I don’t see much difference. Social media was supposed to inform and educate and help us learn from each other. It was meant to open up the world. 

Social media had, and I believe still has, a freedom that can help society grow. But it seems to be shrinking our worlds even faster than the social constructs and trends that came before it. It happens at nano speed. It pulls us in and envelops us before we know what happened. That should scare all of us.

Girl Trapped

I especially feel for women in this culture. The traditional ways that women have existed in American society are “bubbling” us even more than before because of the speed of the exposure that comes with social media. These new bubbles have new names. Trad wives, glow ups, daily diaries, get ready with me, and my [fill in the blank] journey are all labels that social media has adopted. 

I’ve even used a trendy name (That Journey to Adulting. Sigh…). Women are furiously creating content which conforms to a trend driven by sponsorships. These content creators are pulling on women who can’t seem to get enough. It’s frightening.

These very popular new but not new categories all have common roots. They all require the submission of women into beauty norms and amazing amounts of consumer consumption pressure. They don’t encourage thinking about where we are in our lives or real self-reflection. 

The self-reflection they promote is artificial. It’s tied to a wellness product or a feeling of being left out. It’s not stemming from an authentic place. These parasocial relationships take up time and energy women used to give to real relationships. We get better being with each other. Real human contact. 

People who talk to me through a screen and tell me that they know who I am can only be trying to get something from me. Not to mention how arrogant the assumption is. The only people who know me are the people that I allow to know me. These people are not actually talking to me. 

Only the people I open my life up to can know the specialness I bring as a human and especially as a woman. I have the potential to live a special life as a woman. A life that I appreciate as unique and amazing. 

My appreciation of how special I am is the most important part. It allows me to feel special to everyone I love. Women are told that they need affirmation of their womanhood to understand that they are amazing. I don’t buy this. I am the keeper of my specialties. I don’t need to buy any.

My Vision

I have a vision board. It’s usually only in my head, and it’s nothing like the social media kind. Mine is dynamic. It’s never fixed until I “achieve” it. It doesn’t ruminate around in my brain. The social media trend of vision boards encourages dreaming and making and doing what everyone shows us over and over they are doing. It happens in glimpses of what their version of perfection looks like. 

Isn’t it ironic that vision boards are a trend? How can my vision for myself be a trend? Even how I create the board should be my original idea. Otherwise, the vision isn’t mine from the beginning.

My vision board is blurry and moves around a lot. This kind of means it’s not a board at all, right? I try this and that, I create and tear down, I move on and move through. And, shouldn’t a vision board be kind of private? Why would we compare them? 

The undefined part of my life’s vision board is actually what makes it so real. It tells me that I can’t and won’t reach the end of my journey before I move into the next one. The best kind of journey is one that never loses its center. It belongs to me. It doesn’t change with trends. 

My vision changes through curiosity and wondering. I’m discovering and building through my unique vision. I tried adopted versions. It’s a great way to learn what doesn’t work. I finally stopped trying to live in someone else’s story board.

Validation Loop

I’m starting to sound like I have all the answers just like the Influencers. I absolutely have none of the answers for anyone’s life. I shouldn’t, and neither should the Influencers. They won’t save us. I listen for what’s real and forget the rest. If I use social media influencing at all, it’s for good original ideas that leave room for me and my amazing ideas. No one on a screen can know that their idea is “100% right” for me. No one. 

Crediting someone for how I changed my life and not giving any credit to myself doesn’t sound like I did anything. I know I changed because I wanted to. We’ve stopped giving ourselves credit for thinking on our own. Social media provides a never ending platform for seeking validation by giving validation. We now get the same satisfaction from complimenting other people for our success as we used to get from accepting compliments. It’s an infinite validation loop.

I’ll start and end with myself. People I trust to influence me only want to help me improve my life. They want me to be better. They won’t expect a profit. Any trend that involves an all-knowing guru that tells me I should disrespect any person or group of people because they have shown it’s deserved, I’m out. That’s just bullshit. I can figure it out for myself.

All I need to make my life amazing is what I already have. This is an overused cliché, but watching these Influencers try to be all that and then some for the rest of us provides the evidence that the cliché is true. My life doesn’t work without gratitude for the life that’s already here.

I won’t discredit myself by giving all the credit to the trend. I believe that trying all the trends which encourage reaching and searching and hoping for happiness or contentment or success keeps me from living in the happy, content, successful life I have. It’s the life I have that I need to build from. “Life-changing” products or advice can only be the enhancement to a life already changing for the better. They can’t be the foundation. 

Above and Beyond

I used to believe that my life didn’t hold anything beyond the bubbles. I found a way to look again. Beyond the bubbles is where I saw a life not limited by what other people say will “make” my life into something. Think about that. My life wasn’t already something? Of course it was and is. From my foundation, I reach and dream for more of what makes up the person I already am. I’m unlocking the real vision for my life.

What’s the most amazing thing about looking outside of the bubbles? I can see myself as I truly am in the world. I’m learning to feel and know the person inside because I’ve made space to move in the unlocked places. They’re everywhere!  I’m moving to look beyond. This is my real vision board. The vision of me that’s beautifully unfiltered.

Seeing Beyond the Bubbles…