Social media troubles me less than it used to - it seems to me a matter of personal integrity being stressed in the too-visible world, where everything you say is visible to everyone you know (or at least everyone you have included or who subscribes to your feed) and that certain things are acceptable to share with some audiences but not with others. It still concerns me, but less than before - and my present thoughts are that it shouldn't concern me at all.
I've never been one of those people who puts on different faces when he interacts with different crowds, and have generally subscribed to the notion that people can take me as I am, or bugger off. I don't need "friends" who demand that I mitigate my personality in their presence, and I'm really not particularly fond of the kind of person that tailors themselves in order to trick people into perceiving them as something they're not - most people can tell that they are fakes, and no-one likes or trusts them very much.
I still subscribe to the notion that some things are acceptable in some groups but not others. There are jokes you'd tell a friend that you wouldn't tell an elderly relative, and some things that you can share with close friends but not with more distant acquaintances that don't know you well enough to understand the context. That's not disingenuousness, but discretion.
But having said that, I realized that I haven't really filtered myself that much. Years ago I set up groups and lists of people so that I could better direct my posts. There was a group of "friends and family" with whom I could share more intimate details, and a group called "humorless" from whom I'd withhold any amusing story or any joke that didn't begin with "knock-knock" because I knew they wouldn't get it. Once I created those lists, I very seldom used them and have not kept them up to date.
I still have that moment's pause before tapping the "post" key when I consider whether what I have provided is of sufficient interest to and appropriate for everyone I know - family, close friends, coworkers, and the like. And I do have the sense that this prevents me (for my own good) from being too forthcoming. But again, discretion and disingenuousness are two different things and I can live with the former.
Neither do I feel the need to share every event or thought with everyone: most people just don't care to know me that well. My sense is that a lot of the more intimate details of my life and some of the more amusing (but questionable) stories are still reserved for face-to-face encounters - and it also suits my sense of justice, as anyone who doesn't care to invest face-time with me doesn't deserve that level of intimacy in a friendship anyway.
I wonder if that's just me ... looking though the posts I see from other people, it really is a mixed bag. Some people share a lot of information, others share very little. And to be specific, it's sharing information about themselves, not content that they found in other places that reveals nothing personal except that they happened to find it amusing.
And it's probably not fair to lump everyone who is reticent about themselves into the category of impostors and fakes, but there are a few whom I feel fairly certain that they are trying to present a public image that doesn't match the one that people meet in real life - or at least, some people meet in real life, as people who are false in one channel are likely false in others as well.
I've probably a lot more thinking to do on the topic, but it's shifted a bit over the past few years, and will likely shift a bit futher.
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