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Social Media Fakers — Oh, They Seem So Perfect Online

A picture-perfect lifestyle—or desperately seeking validation?

Jerry Silfwer
by Jerry Silfwer

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

Reading time: 6 min.

Are social media fakers becom­ing a severe issue?

In the wake of tech­lash, people are frus­trated about social media fakers.

Many com­plain that ordin­ary people in their feeds are simply try­ing too hard. Many com­plain that influ­en­cers are too des­per­ate for likes, clicks, and shares.

And amongst the com­plain­ers, I sense uncon­scious envy lurk­ing in the shad­ows. We all crave atten­tion and recog­ni­tion, but most get none.

What’s going on?

Quicklinks 

Get Famous Online — Or Die Trying

Admit it. You fol­low someone on social media with a pic­ture-per­fect life­style but sus­pect they’re just fak­ing it.

It used to be life­style influ­en­cers put­ting on a dazzling show for their fol­low­ers, but now it’s your neigh­bour, co-work­er, and old classmate.

“If you exper­i­ence neg­at­ive emo­tions, just unfol­low them,” I say.

But it’s often not that simple. We live in an atten­tion eco­nomy of likes where it isn’t easy to sep­ar­ate your online net­work from the phys­ic­al world. The lines are blurred.

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

Read also: Online Wannabeism: Why We Mimic Social Media Influencers

Social Group Dynamics

Unfollowing someone, block­ing someone, or even for­get­ting to like a friend’s Instagram pic­ture may cause social dis­com­fort. We get pulled into this world of social media fakers. 

How did we end up here? And will we ever get out of it?

Typical Social Group Sizes

How many social con­nec­tions you you com­fort­ably sus­tain? According to the social brain hypo­thes­is, lim­its exist. 1Zhou WX, Sornette D, Hill RA, Dunbar RI. Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Feb 22;272(1561):439 – 44.

“The ‘social brain hypo­thes­is’ for the evol­u­tion of large brains in prim­ates has led to evid­ence for the coe­volu­tion of neo­cor­tic­al size and social group sizes, sug­gest­ing that there is a cog­nit­ive con­straint on group size that depends, in some way, on the volume of neur­al mater­i­al avail­able for pro­cessing and syn­thes­iz­ing inform­a­tion on social rela­tion­ships.”
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 2Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Scientific evid­ence sug­gests that people tend to organ­ise them­selves not in an even dis­tri­bu­tion of group sizes but in dis­crete hier­arch­ic­al social groups of more par­tic­u­lar sizes:

Alas, there seems to be a dis­crete stat­ist­ic­al order in the com­plex chaos of human relationships:

  • Support clique (3 – 5 people)
  • Sympathy group (12 – 20 people)
  • Band (30 – 50 people)
  • Clan (150 people)
  • Megaband (500 people)
  • Tribe (1,000 – 2,000 people)

“Such dis­crete scale invari­ance could be related to that iden­ti­fied in sig­na­tures of herd­ing beha­viour in fin­an­cial mar­kets and might reflect a hier­arch­ic­al pro­cessing of social near­ness by human brains.“
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 3Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), … Continue read­ing

Read also: Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis)

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The First “Reality Stars”

In 1997, the Swedish pub­lic ser­vice broad­caster SVT launched Expedition Robinson; a real­ity tele­vi­sion show spun off the British format Survivor.

A group of chosen not-yet-celebs par­ti­cip­ated in a con­test set on a Malaysian island. One after the oth­er, people got voted off the show. 

The Swedish main­stream audi­ence devoured the show, partly because of the palm trees and the beaches but mainly because “ordin­ary people” were run­ning around half-naked with low blood sugar. 

In the dark of a long Swedish winter, the show was exot­ic.
And it became a media phe­nomen­on.

A fierce love-and-hate rela­tion­ship with these new real­ity stars emerged. The audi­ence genu­inely loved some char­ac­ters just as much as they hated oth­ers. And that pas­sion­ate engage­ment caused severe issues for those real­ity stars who failed to become loved. 4The situ­ation worsened as the first per­son to be voted off the island, Sinisa Savija, com­mit­ted sui­cide, for­cing SVT and the pro­duc­tion com­pany to re-cut the rest of the pro­grams to lessen the … Continue read­ing

Many early “real­ity stars” found the pub­lic hate so unbear­able they lashed out against the pro­duc­tion company:

“I’m a human being with many sides,” they cried. “Why por­tray me as a monster?”

The First Class of Professional Social Media Fakers

Fast for­ward from 1997 to 2016.

Today, real­ity stars under­stand how the game is sup­posed to be played. They want to be edited as dra­mat­ic characters. 

Internationally, the Kardashian fam­ily must be con­sidered the reign­ing mas­ters of massive social media spin. Authenticity is less crit­ic­al than mak­ing the per­form­ance feel authen­t­ic. It’s the online equi­val­ent of “sus­pen­sion of disbelief.”

In Sweden, we still turn to real­ity tele­vi­sion shows like Paradise Hotel. Because they put on a show, par­ti­cipants quickly acquire sub­stan­tial social media fol­low­ings and tons of tabloid attention. 

The new breed of real­ity stars under­stands that they must deliv­er drama and that the format doesn’t exist to serve their multi-faceted need for human expres­sion. The unspoken agree­ment is straight­for­ward: treat the audi­ence to a show, and they’ll grant you stardom.

In short: It’s social media show busi­ness.

Today, the main­stream audi­ence under­stands the real­ity of real­ity tele­vi­sion. But we’re not there yet when it comes to social media.

New Media Adoption Takes Decades

How long did it take for the main­stream audi­ence to fully accept real­ity tele­vi­sion’s media logic?

By my count, the pro­cess in Sweden took 19 years (1997 – 2016). That’s nearly two dec­ades to grow accus­tomed to a spe­cif­ic media phe­nomen­on (that nev­er was a secret).

The pro­cess fol­lows the prin­ciples as out­lined in the law of dif­fu­sion of innov­a­tion:

Diffusion of Innovation - Social Media Fakers
The law of dif­fu­sion of innovation.

Compared to real­ity tele­vi­sion, social media is far more com­plex. And it has changed the fab­ric of human inter­con­nec­tion in a way that real­ity tele­vi­sion nev­er did.

How long will it take the main­stream audi­ence to come to terms with the inher­ent media logic of social media?

Will two dec­ades suf­fice? Or will digit­al media keep pro­gress­ing and nev­er allow us to catch up?

“In Real Life” and Reality

In the early days of the Hippie Web (2005 – 2015), IRL — In Real Life— became a pop­u­lar expres­sion. It accen­tu­ated the dis­tinc­tion between online real­it­ies and the phys­ic­al world.

But as early as 2006 – 2007, many began to ques­tion the IRL expres­sion. “Our online lives are as real as our phys­ic­al real­ity, so we should talk about AFK — Away From Keyboard — instead.”

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

Social media is many things, but unequi­voc­ally real isn’t one of them. It only feels real.

Now, there’s noth­ing wrong with only show­cas­ing one par­tic­u­lar side of some­thing. It’s not wrong to enter­tain an audi­ence. It’s not wrong to tell incred­ible stor­ies and to cre­ate cul­tur­al expres­sions through art.

But we’re all still learn­ing how to deal with social media.
We still have tons of social media issues to manage.

We’re not all social media nat­ur­als yet.

It took two dec­ades for the main­stream audi­ence to learn that real­ity tele­vi­sion isn’t real. And it will prob­ably take the main­stream audi­ence at least two dec­ades to learn that social media isn’t real — prob­ably longer.

Social Media Fakers and Online Wannabeism

If you want to show off the parts of your life that are beau­ti­ful and pic­ture-per­fect, then by all means — go ahead. If you want to put on a show for your fol­low­ers, it’s your prerogative. 

But we would all be wise to remem­ber that social media isn’t real:

Social media fake­ness can cause stress and men­tal health prob­lems for both the con­tent cre­at­or and the follower.

Read also: “I’m Quitting Social Media”

There have been many con­ver­sa­tions lately about the “fake­ness” of social media. One example is how Essena O’Neill, a young Australian Instagram influ­en­cer, pub­licly ran­ted about her (and every­body else’s) fake­ness on social media. “I quit,” she said and deleted her Instagram and YouTube accounts — only to use the extra atten­tion to launch her next online enterprise.

Read also: Essena O’Neill and the Show Business of Social media

If noth­ing else, we should remem­ber that social media has exis­ted for two dec­ades. We might be at the tail end of the adop­tion curve. While not every­one has been caught up, more people are com­ing to terms with today’s media logic.

Beware of Social Media Desperation

Younger gen­er­a­tions are already call­ing out “boomers,” “simps,” and “weird flex.” “Cringe” might be on sale, but they’re not buying.

Today, we must expect a sig­ni­fic­ant por­tion of the audi­ence to be ask­ing cyn­ic­al ques­tions like:

  • “Why is this per­son so thirsty for attention?”
  • “What is this per­son com­pens­at­ing for?”
  • “Don’t they under­stand that we can see through them?”

A word of caution:

Anyone too thirsty for atten­tion and val­id­a­tion through social media risks becom­ing a pari­ah. Instead of pro­mot­ing an élite class, the main­stream might equate des­per­a­tion with weak­ness and shove them to the bot­tom of the status ladder. 

“A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing it with oth­er PR- and com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als. For ques­tions or PR sup­port, con­tact me via jerry@​spinfactory.​com.

PR Resource: Media Logic

Media Logic: Never Trust the News

Media logic is a rhet­or­ic­al approach to PR.

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, media logic is not one single the­ory. Instead, it’s a col­lec­tion of the­or­ies about how the medi­um and its con­text influ­ence medi­ated messages.

“The dom­in­ant pro­cesses, estab­lished routines, and stand­ard­ized formats which frame and shape the pro­duc­tion of mass-media con­tent, espe­cially its rep­res­ent­a­tion or con­struc­tion of real­ity, and its man­u­fac­ture of news. Media logic inter­sects with com­mer­cial logic and polit­ic­al logic — con­flu­ences asso­ci­ated with such phe­nom­ena as tabloid­iz­a­tion and the medi­at­iz­a­tion of polit­ics. Media logic exists wherever medi­ation exists. It con­trib­utes to the shap­ing of social order in mod­ern post-indus­tri­al cul­tures.“
Source: A Dictionary of Media and Communication

“Media logic is defined as a form of com­mu­nic­a­tion, and the pro­cess through which media trans­mit and com­mu­nic­ate inform­a­tion. The logic and guidelines become taken for gran­ted, often insti­tu­tion­al­ized, and inform social inter­ac­tion. A basic prin­ciple is that media, inform­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies, and com­mu­nic­a­tion formats can affect events and social activ­it­ies.“
Source: The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication 5Altheide, D. L. (2016). Media Logic. The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, 1 – 6. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​2​/​9​7​8​1​1​1​8​5​4​1​5​5​5​.​w​b​i​e​p​c​088

“The pos­i­tion and size of art­icles on the front page is determ­ined by interest and import­ance, not con­tent. Unrelated reports […] are jux­ta­posed; time and space are des­troyed and the here and now are presen­ted as a single Gestalt. […] Such a format lends itself to sim­ul­tan­eity, not chro­no­logy or lin­eal­ity. Items abstrac­ted from a total situ­ation are not arranged in caus­al sequence, but presen­ted in asso­ci­ation, as raw exper­i­ence.“
Source: The new lan­guages (1956) 6Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

“[…] each com­mu­nic­a­tion chan­nel codi­fies real­ity dif­fer­ently and thereby influ­ences, to a sur­pris­ing degree, the con­tent of the mes­sage com­mu­nic­ated.”
Source: The new lan­guages (1956) 7Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.

As a res­ult of media logic, the gen­er­al por­tray­al of events, con­cepts, and ideas in the news media will be skewed:

  • Aggravation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will exag­ger­ate events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them seem more serious/​dangerous than they are.
  • Simplification. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will dumb down events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them seem more under­stand­able than they are.
  • Polarisation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will por­tray events, con­cepts, and ideas as more conflicting/​provoking than they are.
  • Intensification. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will sen­sa­tion­al­ise events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them more inter­est­ing than they are.
  • Concreteness. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will report events, con­cepts, and ideas as more straight­for­ward than they are.
  • Personalisation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will over-emphas­ise the role of named indi­vidu­als in con­junc­tion with events, con­cepts, and ideas.
  • Stereotypisation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will frame events, con­cepts, and ideas as more aligned with con­ven­tion­al perceptions/​opinions than they are.

Learn more: Media Logic is Dead, Long Live Media Logic

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ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 Zhou WX, Sornette D, Hill RA, Dunbar RI. Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Feb 22;272(1561):439 – 44.
2, 3 Zhou, X., Sornette, D., Hill, R. A., & M. Dunbar, R. I. (2005). Discrete hier­arch­ic­al organ­iz­a­tion of social group sizes. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 272(1561), 439 – 444. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​9​8​/​r​s​p​b​.​2​0​0​4​.​2​970
4 The situ­ation worsened as the first per­son to be voted off the island, Sinisa Savija, com­mit­ted sui­cide, for­cing SVT and the pro­duc­tion com­pany to re-cut the rest of the pro­grams to lessen the drama.
5 Altheide, D. L. (2016). Media Logic. The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, 1 – 6. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​2​/​9​7​8​1​1​1​8​5​4​1​5​5​5​.​w​b​i​e​p​c​088
6, 7 Carpenter, E. & McLuhan, M. (1956) The new lan­guages. Chicago Review. 10(1) pp. 46 – 52.
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at KIX Index and Spin Factory. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Cover Photo

The cover photo has nothing to do with public relations, of course. I share for no other reason that I happen to enjoy photography. Call it an “ornamental distraction”—and a subtle reminder to appreciate nature.

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