Shit days of faking it till you make it are over! Fuck that Faking it is tha new making it. In tha past, people emulated wealth, status, and pedigree along their path to success. Our society is so com-modified that more times than not one has to look tha part in order to get tha part. I remember the first time I wore Penny Loafers, a sweater vest, and a sport coat with patches. I was as broke as a joke, but I looked like I came from tha right family and went to tha right schools. That costume still opens doors for me. There is a generation using social media to create tha conditions for success or tha appearance of that success. They understand how important a good image in cyberspace is; sometimes, it’s every bit as valuable as a good image in tha real world. Social media is a gift and a curse. In society we appear to be at home we may be but on social media, we can be whoever or whatever we want. Our profiles can be refined caricatures of ourselves or complete fictions that reflect our deepest desires. Social media personas have become every bit as real as flesh and bones.Before Facebook and Twitter a 1981 book “Simulacra and Simulation” society had moved to a place where tha symbols of reality not only displaced reality but became more real than reality. See tha writer of this book knew that cultivating a personality would be replaced by just creating tha image of a personality. Creating a new identity is easy. The “social” aspect of social media takes place in a world where authenticity and inauthenticity aren’t easily distinguishable. Yah see to me I can say “Facebook is where you lie to your friends and Twitter is where you are honest with complete strangers.” with tha experiences I’ve had. Before social media self-creation involved defining who you are over and against societal classification systems based on any combination of cultural, racial, sexual, religious, and socioeconomic factors. We’ve always had tha choice of not cultivating a self, but now we can easily upload a reproducible identity that has the same intrinsic value, or (an even scarier proposition) more instrumental value than we have in tha material world. I’m curious how this period will be understood by sociologist, philosophers, and psychologists 100 years from now.
Tha perfectly #manicured and airbrushed version of ourselves we share on #socialmedia lacks many of tha #imperfections that make us who we are.
