Social Media Fakers — Oh, They Seem So Perfect Online

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?

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?

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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 oth­er words: 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:

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:

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

PR Resource: Social Media Sharing

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Why We Share on Social Media

“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

When we share on social media, we share for a reas­on. And that reas­on typ­ic­ally has some­thing to do with ourselves:

• We share to make ourselves look smart.
• We share to fit in and to stand out.
• We share to express individuality.
• We share to belong to our in-group.
• We share to be loved.
• We share to pro­voke reac­tions for attention.
• We share to extract sympathy.
• We share to make us feel bet­ter about ourselves.
• We share to get ahead.
• We share to grow an audience.
• We share to com­pensate for our shortcomings.
• We share to get the respect we need.

If you can get social media to work for you, great. But you should also be mind­ful not to let the pres­sure get the bet­ter of you.

“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

Learn more: The Narcissistic Principle: Why We Share on Social Media

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PR Resource: Social Media Logic

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Social Media Logic

Media logic is a set of the­or­ies describ­ing how the medi­um affects the media. Typically, the format (as the medi­um dic­tates) influ­ences the medi­ated message.

“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

As fam­ously stip­u­lated by Marshall McLuhan, “The medi­um is the mes­sage.” What are the typ­ic­al media logic effects on medi­ated messages?

Classic Media Logic Effects

Media logic is hypo­thes­ised to influ­ence the news media in the fol­low­ing ways: ⁶Nord, L., & Strömbäck, J. (2002, January). Tio dagar som skakade världen. En stud­ie av medi­ernas beskrivningar av ter­ror­at­tack­erna mot USA och kri­get i Afghanistan hösten 2001. … Continue read­ing

• Aggravation. As a res­ult of media logic, the news media will exag­ger­ate events, con­cepts, and ideas to make them seem more ser­i­ous and/​or 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. Because of media logic, the news media por­trays events, con­cepts, and ideas as more conflicting/​provocative 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. Because of media logic, news media will report events, con­cepts, and ideas more straight­for­wardly 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. Because of media logic, the news media frames events, con­cepts, and ideas as more aligned with con­ven­tion­al perceptions/​opinions than they are.

The effects of the above media logic can also be recog­nised in social media. Still, social net­work algorithms seem to add even more effects:

Social Media Logic Effects

“Social media logic, rooted in pro­gram­mab­il­ity, pop­ular­ity, con­nectiv­ity, and datafic­a­tion, is increas­ingly entangled with mass media logic, impact­ing vari­ous areas of pub­lic life.”
Source: Writing Technologies eJournal ⁷Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Writing Technologies eJournal. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​7​6​4​5​/​M​A​C​.​V​1​I​1​.70

Based on the sug­ges­ted addi­tions for social plat­forms, we can add four extra dimen­sions to the clas­sic media logic effects model:

• Programmability. Social media logic enables and encour­ages users to cre­ate and manip­u­late con­tent, lead­ing to a tailored por­tray­al of events, con­cepts, and ideas that might not fully rep­res­ent reality.
• Popularity. Driven by social media logic, con­tent that gains ini­tial pop­ular­ity can dis­pro­por­tion­ately influ­ence pub­lic per­cep­tion, regard­less of accur­acy or completeness.
• Connectivity. Social medi­a’s inter­con­nec­ted nature, rein­forced by social media logic, facil­it­ates the rap­id spread of inform­a­tion, often without suf­fi­cient veri­fic­a­tion, lead­ing to a dis­tor­ted under­stand­ing of events and ideas.
• Datafication. The social media logic of con­vert­ing inter­ac­tions into data points emphas­ises quan­ti­fi­able aspects of events, con­cepts, and ideas, poten­tially over­look­ing their qual­it­at­ive nuances.

Social media logic seems entangled with clas­sic media logic. While more com­plex, social net­works seem to amp­li­fy the effects of clas­sic media logic.

Learn more: Social Media Logic: The Amplification of Media Effects

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PR Resource: Seeking Attention

“There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
— Oscar Wilde

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The Anatomy of Attention

Attention is an essen­tial com­pon­ent of pub­lic relations:

• An organ­isa­tion, starved of atten­tion, trust, and loy­alty, is com­pelled to wage a per­petu­al struggle for its con­tin­ued existence.

And it’s not just organ­isa­tions. We all seem to crave atten­tion in some form or another:

“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

It’s fear of social isol­a­tion— and atten­tion star­va­tion.

But what con­sti­tutes ‘atten­tion’?

“Attention is a com­plex, real neur­al archi­tec­ture (‘RNA’) mod­el that integ­rates vari­ous cog­nit­ive mod­els and brain cen­ters to per­form tasks like visu­al search.”
Source: Trends in cog­nit­ive sci­ences ⁸Shipp, S. (2004). The brain cir­cuitry of atten­tion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223 – 230. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​j​.​t​i​c​s​.​2​0​0​4​.​0​3​.​004

Each of the below terms refers to a spe­cif­ic aspect or type of atten­tion (“men­tal band­width”), a com­plex cog­nit­ive pro­cess. ⁹Schweizer, K., Moosbrugger, H., & Goldhammer, F. (2005). The struc­ture of the rela­tion­ship between atten­tion and intel­li­gence. Intelligence, 33(6), 589 – 611. … Continue read­ing

Let’s explore dif­fer­ent types of attention:

• Alertness. This is the state of being watch­ful and ready to respond. It’s the most basic form of atten­tion, rep­res­ent­ing our read­i­ness to per­ceive and pro­cess inform­a­tion from the environment.
• Sustained atten­tion. This involves focus­ing on a spe­cif­ic task or stim­u­lus over a pro­longed peri­od. It’s cru­cial for tasks that require ongo­ing con­cen­tra­tion, like read­ing or driving.
• Focused atten­tion. This refers to the abil­ity to con­cen­trate on one par­tic­u­lar stim­u­lus or task while ignor­ing oth­ers. It’s the abil­ity to focus nar­rowly on a single thing.
• Attentional switch­ing. Also known as task switch­ing or cog­nit­ive flex­ib­il­ity, this involves shift­ing focus from one task to anoth­er. It’s crit­ic­al for mul­ti­task­ing and adapt­ing to chan­ging demands or priorities.
• Divided atten­tion. This is the abil­ity to pro­cess two or more responses or react to mul­tiple tasks sim­ul­tan­eously. It’s often tested by ask­ing people to per­form two tasks sim­ul­tan­eously, like listen­ing to a con­ver­sa­tion while writ­ing.
• Attention accord­ing to the super­vis­ory atten­tion­al sys­tem. This concept, derived from cog­nit­ive psy­cho­logy, refers to a high­er-level con­trol sys­tem that reg­u­lates the alloc­a­tion of atten­tion, par­tic­u­larly in situ­ations requir­ing plan­ning or decision-making.
• Attention as inhib­i­tion. This aspect of atten­tion involves sup­press­ing irrel­ev­ant or dis­tract­ing stim­uli. It’s a cru­cial com­pon­ent of focused atten­tion and self-regulation.
• Spatial atten­tion. This type of atten­tion focuses on a spe­cif­ic area with­in the visu­al field. It’s like a spot­light that enhances inform­a­tion pro­cessing in a par­tic­u­lar location.
• Attention as plan­ning. This per­spect­ive views atten­tion as a resource that needs to be alloc­ated effi­ciently, espe­cially in com­plex tasks requir­ing stra­tegic plan­ning and organization.
• Interference. In the con­text of atten­tion, inter­fer­ence refers to the pro­cess by which irrel­ev­ant inform­a­tion or dis­trac­tions impede the effi­ciency of cog­nit­ive processing.
• Attention as arous­al. This con­siders atten­tion in the con­text of the gen­er­al level of alert­ness or arous­al. It’s about the read­i­ness of the brain to engage with stim­uli or tasks.
• Attention accord­ing to the assess­ment tra­di­tion. This refers to meas­ur­ing and eval­u­at­ing atten­tion­al pro­cesses, often in clin­ic­al or edu­ca­tion­al set­tings, to identi­fy atten­tion defi­cits or disorders.

Each type of atten­tion plays a cru­cial role in how we inter­act with and pro­cess inform­a­tion from our envir­on­ment, and under­stand­ing these dif­fer­ent aspects is key in fields like psy­cho­logy, neur­os­cience, and education.

Learn more: The Anatomy of Attention

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