extra! extra!

“Yes, it’s true,” says amateur photographer Shellnah, “‘Our reality is less interesting than the story I will tell.’”

When asked what she meant by this statement, she showed me this picture.

 “You look at copy of the picture taken by this girl and it may look like theyre having a fun time in class. But in reality it probably was only half as fun as whatever she captioned it on whichever social network she posted it to.”

“I see, I see...” I said, jotting down some notes on what I thought this could mean. I wasn’t really sure at all what this had to do with the question I asked, “Could you give me a quote on your experience with Hurricane Sandy?” Nonetheless, I think she gave me a new direction for my purposeless article. We probably both were just feeling the cabin fever in a growing intensity with every day we remained stranded in Brooklyn, while everyone else began to carry on with their lives. When she asked to take a look at my notes she laughed and said, “Oh no, it’s not the cabin fever, I just like to talk about random thoughts I have normally.”

Got it.

Well, anyway, the point she raised truly aroused my curiosity. We all do it, play ourselves up on social networks. How come then, we all believe the facade people keep up, when we should be able to see through them? Instead of questioning the ethos they have conscientiously created for themselves, we buy into this honor of helping these characters grow by favoriting and liking their posts. 

When I wrote down a couple of questions I could think of on the subject, like who are your favorite instagrammers or tweeters, what do you think of those who use them too much? I realized that there must be a connection between peoples favorite users of social networking, and their favorite people’s usage of it. 

So I went to one of twitter and instas most popular community member, @Beehadd, I got this quote, “I’m not sure what I think of those people who tweet or instagram a lot, like I’m addicted, but some people have no life and do it too much. I also feel like if a person puts up too many pictures of themselves on insta they look obsessed with themselves.” 

“And what about twitter?”

“Twitter is different because a tweet is different, like, idk.”

Ok. 

Here I thank @Beehadd for confirming the connection I drew between the usage of these social networks and popularity on them. The connection I drew was valid though, those who use a network too much can be considered a “social netwhoreker”. There is the inherent condition, @Beehadd pointed out, to take into consideration. In order to be considered an “instawhore” your pictures would have to be mostly of you. This goes hand in hand with the results that turned up, asking different people’s opinions of who the best intagrammers and tweeters are. Those beloved users tended to be those who did not play themselves up on these social networks. It was those who tweeted deep thoughts, and humorous ideas and or instagram pictures of places and things.