Imagine you start gaining followers on Instagram. You’re posting
candid, beautiful images. You’ve got a toned, aesthetically pleasing body and
model porportians. Your follower count explodes as the months go on. You keep
posting, your follower count keeps climbing. You’ve hit half a million
followers. You’ve made it. Now what?
What might be deemed as a ‘white girl meltdown’, there is an
interesting point O’Neil has made. How much do we let social media control our
life? Does it affect our mental well being? Our physical social presence?
Is FOMO a fear we genuinely have?
There’s no denying how effective FOMO is at selling a
product. The Kardashian’s have made it a market in it’s own right with their
lifestyle, with only Kendall Jenner managing to get out and do something more
than ‘being a Kardashian/Jenner’. Yet there is no escaping without being a
Jenner and without social media, she wouldn’t have made such a meteoric rise
into the fashion world without her last name. After all, Jenner is a Jenner
first and a model second, no matter how people may protest. Her name brings
publicity to brands.
O’Neil has hit back at this centuries FOMO fears, squad
goals and appearance pressures. She said she’s given up the fame for her ’12
year old self’. This claim she cried out in this video is something I found
interesting. This young woman has grown up on social media, glued to her laptop
and mobile. She doesn’t know anything else to her life and that terrifies her.
Thinking about it terrifies me. She’s broke, scared and off the grid. She only
acts now on her website
www.letsbegamechangers.com
Perhaps this is a bad move by O’Neil. Since quitting
Instagram, she’s shot from below 600,000 to 871,000 prior to deleting her
account. Ironic right? That’s in three days. I think she should go back and no
longer post candid, sponsored images and spread her message if that’s what
she’s trying to change. One has to play the game to win it, no?
But I feel O’Neil would think of herself as a hypocrite.
She’s wishes to stand still for something and stay true to her values. She
still wants to BE something,
it now no longer depends on numbers.
However social media
is a great thing. To speak frankly, it boosts brands and is the new best
marketing technique we have. It’s a new outlet one can earn money from, one you
can create a career out of like
weworewhat and
TheBlondeSalad.
Once again, the Kardashian/Jenners have earned millions from this. But perhaps
there is an ethical issue. We should think about how we see socially media,
specifically Instagram sponsored posts and adverts. Maybe they should be stated
explicitly, specifically thr countless teatox photos or teeth whitening kits.
Do you genuinely use them? I’m ashamed to admit I know first hand that a
certain pink boxed, tiny teatox-detox doesn’t work. A time of my life I
desperately wished to lose weight as fast as possible, because in those weeks
all I could think about and obsess over, was my appearance. It’s a ridiculous a
notion to expect a herbal tea to help you lose 5 pounds in a week. If it does,
it’s because it has laxatives in it and frankly, I doubt anyone would willingly
sign up for it if they knew the truth of their tea.
The ‘fakeness’ of the digital world is something O’Neil
repeatedly comes back to in her video (now no longer on youtube, however she has started to use Vimeo on her site). She wanted to be liked, accepted and
admired. These qualities have increasingly been wished for as we’ve sped
through our technological age. No longer are we wishing to be part of the
Queen’s Royal Court, but fashion shows and red carpet premieres. We ‘want it
all’, be it the idea of being the
‘perfect’ multitasking mother or a celebrity with wealth and fans across
the world. One Direction are taking a break from the rat race as they’ve become
overworked,
Cara Delevingne spoke out at the Women In The World Summit 2015over suffering from depression when she ‘had it all’.
Those who have it all don’t want it anymore, while the rest of us are
hell bent on having something that isn’t all it seems.
Who’s to blame? What
do we do? How do we protect not just ourselves, but also our future
generations? Do we just need to get a grip of ourselves? Does O’Neil? There are
so many questions I (and you may) have over this issue. It’s a fact we have
accepted that social media affects our life while simultaneously crying out it
isn’t ‘real life’. But I was surpsied how much O’Neil had managed to fake, how
well she could create effortless candid images yet lack living what she was
playing out. She acted this fake living so well, she herself didn’t know she
wasn’t actually living and that there was more to life than creating a popular
social media presence. Isn’t that crazy? O’Neil brought herself up on social
media and lost her ‘true self’. When we age, we drop away our childhood
passions, but is that now because we’re spending so much time glued to our
phones and laptops?
O’Neil has started a debate I myself cannot give you a
straight answer to. Once again, this is a complicated grey area with no
straight solution. Each individuals experience with social media is different
and it may be what we make it. But perhaps we should talk more about our own insecurities
and get off our mobiles a little bit more. Perhaps we should learn how to
recognise the signs of FOMO and fake Instagram posts. Perhaps ads and sponsers
should be clearly shown to know exactly what we’re buying into. Perhaps there
should be an Ethical Marketing Issue on Instagram and rules upheld so no one is
swindled out of money much like the apparent Felice Fawn situation. And
perhaps, we should come to understand that ‘having it all’ doesn’t mean having
a life.
Lou x
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Twitter; @LouiseRamsay_
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Labels: girl power, life, predicaments
