I agree with you that I wish social media was full of more posts like this, but foodgrams and humble brags as you put it are also one of the reasons I avoid social media these days. Seeing a feed of the best moments of other peoples lives leaves me feeling depressed. "Comparison is the thief of joy." I'm happy for my friends, but seeing it all collected in one place makes my own life feel inadequate. I'm much happier when I avoid social media.
It's strange... I thought we were wired as a species to live vicariously, to feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer. You're not the only one that doesn't get that out of Facebook... Why? Is it the quantity? The format? What turns it into a place of covetousness and bitterness?
It's definitely the format and the quantity for me. Seeing an old friend in person and having them tell me about their life and accomplishments, even showing me pictures, does not make me feel the same way. I think it's also the fact that I turn to social media when I'm feeling lonely, so seeing a feed of people at their best moments, on vacation with friends, getting married, having children, etc... makes me feel even more lonely and isolated. Also, social media is full of people that I have lost touch with, who never check in with me or reach out to see how I'm doing. I've found that I feel much more connected by reaching out to old friends one on one and catching up with them via texting or phone calls. Likes and comments just don't cut it.
I think also that the format is different, the link between people is not the same on social media posts. There is a difference between seeing something interesting, thinking of a friend who might be interested and sending it to him with a personal message like "check this out, it made me think of you, you might like it" and just putting something on display for people to see it, and add like to it to give you some small pride and some endorphin reinforcement of the posting behaviour.
It seems to me that the direction of the thinking goes the other way: in one, you think of a friend and contact him, in the other, you think of yourself, show yourself to the world and people send you likes.
When I thought of this, it seemed to me that social media is often some sort of "narcissistic exposure of oneself" and encourages this type of behaviour from me and I didn't like it. This plus the fact that I didn't like Facebook's behaviour with it's user's data made me delete my account, and I didn't miss it since. If I think of friends, I have other means of contacting them that have a more personal feel.
This is very true. And it reminds me that, at first, I did like Facebook, and I thought it was fun and cool. It's only when you realize how little meaning there is to the interactions that they start to feel shallow and depressing.
I feel the same way, and to me it's all about the authenticity. The context of social media takes away from the authenticity of the post. Someone may genuinely just want to share some dish that they just created, but in the context of social media, you can never be sure if they're posting it because of that, or posting it for the easy likes or easy engagement. Social media has commodified human interaction.
I forget where I read it, but it's similar to the idea that if someone you love makes a meal for you, at the end of it, you don't ask "how much do I owe you?" and break out your wallet. It's distasteful. Likewise, you don't do someone for a loved one or friend and afterwards say, "well that will be $X".
Posting on social media has a reward of sharing and liking, and as a result, to me, it turns human interaction into an exchange. (And I will admit that there is an element to that already, in terms of owing people favors etc., but the "bookkeeping" that we do is generally in our heads and is hard to quantify, which makes it a bit fuzzier and less commodified.)
For me, it's the dishonesty of facebook and instagram. The whole culture seems to be based around lying about misrepresenting how good your life is.
I love seeing a post about something that made a friend happy, but so much of the content on facebook is so obviously not an honest post about something that made somebody happy, but rather something they felt should have made them happy, or something that somebody else would be jealous of, or worst of all a brand trying to co-opt the "something that made me happy" style of posting, that it's ruined the few honest moments of joy.
Facebook isn't doing anything new. This sort of phenomenon is something of a universal human experience. For example, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a phrase that's been in the English language for at least a century. All social media does is crank its input gain as high as it will go.
It's the bias. You _only_ see the best moments out of the lives of others. When watching TV or movies, we used to become depressed about comparing ourselves to celebrities and their silly TV lives, until some of the sheen of Hollywood has been torn down to reveal how utterly awful achieving and keeping a 6-pack of abs can be. Or how 6 broke idiots could never actually afford a huge flat in NYC. Now I think people see it for what it is, and it doesn't depress them anymore.
But seeing people who are your peers, who have mostly followed the same paths as you being far happier and living much full and rich lives (by appearance), and _only_ seeing that, I think, becomes a subtle reminder of your own failings.
We just need to see some of that sheen taken down. If, somehow, we saw _all_ of the shit people go through in their lives, and not just the good, maybe social media would be way different.
Personally, I find it incredibly shallow to post about food you're eating or places you're visiting. That's just money, and you might as well just take a picture of the money you're spending. I prefer to see things people make in my feed (art, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, etc.). It impresses and inspires me to see people out there making the world better with their minds and bodies, not just consuming.
It's one thing to feel joy when others do. But when everything's joy, then it's just normalcy. But when you know it isn't really the case that everything's joy, then the appearance of it comes off as fake. Because it is fake. Then you feel jaded. But we also can't help but have a part of us that thinks "no, this is normal."
There's also the asynchronous nature. If you're out with friends and hear about their engagement after the fact (among other catching up), that's one thing. But when you're sitting on the couch lonely and see photos from moments after the engagement (and nothing else), it's just that much more of a gap.
Then throw in everyone's highlights with their outrage and some random shared clickbait (fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:You won't believe what this evil politician did!), and it's just toxic.
Maybe the distance and the volume? I belong to some whatsapp and Telegram groups with people I know and I meet with at least every few months. We share stuff, even foodgrams. It's ok to hear from them. I can't just cope with all the stuff posted by some people I know but I didn't meet with for years. There are too many of them. I need time to live my life so I gave up Facebook, downsized my network and do things with people I meet.
> feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer.
Most people will probably acknowledge that it's more complicated than that. I think it might have to do with how easily comparable the other person's life is to our own.
I can't explain it well, but here's an example:
I saw a video of a child surprising their step-dad with paperwork for the official name change (kid accepting the Dad's last name). The Dad cried out of joy.
The video made me feel good.
On the other hand, seeing someone that I graduated highschool with getting promoted and being more successful than me makes me jealous.
Why? Because he has something and I don't, but would be within the realm of possibility to achieve. This behavior can also be observed in monkeys, so I don't question it too much.
Because people only share happy moments on Facebook. When you're catching up with someone, you're probably in a "normal" state of mind. They'll share a happy moment and the mood will spike up, then drop to baseline. Then you'll share a sad moment and the mood will spike down, return to baseline, etc. Facebook is always happy, never normal, never sad (unless it's in some way a humblebrag. "Ugh had to put in 20 hours of overtime at my killer job"). Imagine living in the crest of a manic depressive's life, forever. That's Facebook.
that's a very simplistic idea of humanity. yes, people can feel joy when others are blessed, but they can feel anything else they can feel also. surely you're familiar with envy at least.
How do you suppose Tiktok fits into all this? On the one hand, it's still a glamorous best-of reel, but it's also a lot more silliness, with sketch comedy and various remix formats (lipsync, duet, etc) being a big thing, not to mention significant subcommunities posting earnestly about topics like self esteem, mental health, etc (and with the needed community-management tools to enable the resulting discussion to not just become a Twitter-style free for all).
I'm not a super active user, but as an observer, I do wonder if much of it is pushing those same buttons but in a perhaps more subtle way— like a lot of "wellness" creators who cultivate an apparently authentic persona from which to deliver a never ending stream of motivational you're-worth-it type content meant to encourage and uplift, but that ultimately rings a bit hollow.
I think community plays a huge part. I'm not a tiktok user but I get the impression that a lot of the early tiktok users were heavily creative users. It's like a flywheel.
As these sites/services gain more popularity communities tend to splinter and it's up to the service to keep things going in whatever direction they want to via things like the fyp algorithm.
i also avoid social media, but for the opposite reason. i'm not bothered seeing everyone else's greatest hits, but curating my life and thoughts to present to an audience was wearing me down, and when i finally realized that's what i was doing, i got off it.
presumably there are some personality types that social media works well for, as opposed to personality types that work well for social media, of which there are clearly a lot.
Maybe it's not the healthiest thing, but I kind of enjoy having that as a secondary motivation, especially for projects I'm on the edge for— things like bread baking, kombucha making, small electronics repair, etc. If I know I can take a few pictures and tell a fun story around it, then it can be the motivation to get something started or power it through.
I guess the one boundary is that I don't generally mine my interactions with my kids for internet kudos— I don't want my camera in their faces when we're at the park or reading a book, making them feel like I'm only there spending time with them to score internet kudos later.
