In todays world, social media is something that very few people can get through a day without. It has become common entity to be connected to others online through Facebook, Twitter, etc. and to share your day to day activities, emotions or any updates in general. Social media has given us a goal to have a sense of purpose or a feeling of being a mini celebrity even. Social media networking has also created a huge platform for fakes and phonies. What I mean by that is that social media networks allows us to portray our lives as something other than what it really might look like in the real world as opposed to the “virtual world”
We tend to try and make our lives look refined on our social accounts in hopes to get positive attention form our “friends” online which in turn makes us feel good about ourselves. Some people even go as far as creating complete fake accounts with an identity that is not their own. They go day to day pouring hours into these 2nd lives they have created for themselves online and have somehow found a way to separate the two lives they lead. The MTV show “Catfish” is a perfect portrayal of this. The show documents relationships that have been formed via social media networks and the people involved in the relationships meeting for the first time. One of the two are never who they say they are and admit to creating a fake person or stealing someone else’s identity just to meet people online however they don’t consider the person they’re fooling.
In a nutshell, social media, as addicting as it is, has allowed us to be whoever we want to be or at least it has given us a platform to portray our lives in the way that we would want others to view it from the outside looking in.