I'm not quite clear when it happened, but in future years I'm sure there will be studies written about the moment social media turned sour, the point where it stopped being about free hugs and backslapping and became more a pit of rage. The honeymoon period is over for ye olde platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Narcissism has always been the fuel in the social media engine but recently there is a sense of things tipping over into surreality. The idea that we’re “being ourselves” on social media is now quaint. It was always a construct but it’s beginning to feel like a parallel universe.
"I want my brain back," a friend of mine said recently, referring to the constant pull social media exerts. Nobody has to have a Facebook account, nobody is forced to Tweet their thoughts about The Great British Bake Off, or post photos from festivals on Instagram, or perform on Snapchat. We don't have to do this, but companies spend large amounts making sure we return and retreat to these platforms as often as possible, so we shouldn't feel too bad that they end up becoming an itch to scratch.
So annoying
When I find myself scrolling through Twitter, or looking over a friend’s shoulder at the Facebook account, or being handed a SnapChat Snap to watch, more often than not I wonder when did everyone get so annoying? When did everyone get so full of themselves? When did everyone get so angry? When did everyone get so stupid?
Interesting “content” is the exception. The splurge of dodgy opinions, self-obsessed commentary and boring selfies is overwhelming. We are broadcasting ourselves into oblivion.
Social media is largely bookended by narcissism and outrage. Opinions fall like rockslides, pebbles pinging you with stupid, reactionary points of view. Everyone is Donald Trump or a hollering Liveline caller and an instant authority on shot lions or Taylor Swift. This noise is replicated, and perhaps even led by, the media, which churns out reaction, commentary and opinion on even the most frivolous things. Something happens – generally in popular culture, perhaps on the lightening rod themes of gender or race – an angry storm brews online and then the aftermath moves into the columns casting judgment, before a consensus has been reached and then forgotten about instantly, only for the tide to be sucked out and let form another wave that crashes shortly after. All columnists are guilty of contributing to that noise. But the hysterics on social media have become deafening.
You can check out of it to a degree, avoiding people who rant and rave online and not reading every scrap of analysis about something someone said or did. The problem is though, when everything is so heightened and people on a daily basis get consumed with the latest outrage on Facebook, it’s harder to extract what the important news is or what is genuinely significant. The era of phoney rage means that when righteous and worthwhile anger is earned, it gets mixed up with all the pointless stuff.
This era of rage works in tandem with one of narcissism and delusion. It’s obvious that an increasing number of people are more drawn to what goes on in the small rectangle of their phone screen than outside it. That small little rectangle becomes the reality.
You interact with people’s Facebook profiles and not with their real life personalities. You develop a language of shorthand and phraseology to communicate with people on Twitter that does not exist in spoken conversation.
Ultimately, you start to change yourself, curating your personality and activities to an assumed audience, saying goodnight on Twitter, sharing a picture of a meal on Instagram and filling Facebook with pictures of your children (whose permission you haven't sought before sharing their intimate photos with strangers). On SnapChat, people act as the lead character in their own little Truman Show, nattering like nutters as if presenting personal reality television shows. Why just have a drink with friends, when you can present, edit and broadcast having a drink with friends? Why sit on the bus when you can blab into your phone about sitting on the bus?
Escape from life
Previously, the loss of experience to social media broadcasting was outward looking: filming at a gig or taking photos of sunsets. But with the sinisterly omnipresent selfie culture, the person has become the subject of broadcast. You don’t even need anything interesting to look at any more, just put it out there. Such an escape from real life can’t have great consequences.
There’s no doubt that given an opportunity to project what an individual views as an idealised version of their identity online (with the results generally being a skewed version of who the person actually is, who overshares or over-poses), the online identity will begin to influence the real one.
The new digital element of the psyche, the igo, will take over the ego. For those immersed in social media, where will their real personalities go when the online one is so pervasive?