Friendship Has Its Limits (Social Media Isn’t Social. It’s Just Media.)
Think about the last time you updated your Facebook status. You probably edited that snippet of text a dozen times to get every word just right. And then, right before you posted it—cursor hovering over the Share button—you likely considered how your friends were going to react.
“People are going to Like this,” you thought. “Maybe I’ll even get a few comments.”
Now, how many times have you run that same internal monologue before blurting out your opinion during a face-to-face chat with your best friend? I’m taking bets on the answer. And my money is on never.
Every time you post something on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram, you’re influencing—or trying to influence—how the world views you. Each carefully crafted 140-character message that goes out into the metaverse fills a publicly accessible database that defines you to people you’ve never met. In the end, it isn’t who you really are. It’s the hilarious, adorable, fascinating, intelligent, so-worth-Friending version of you. Social media isn’t about having a conversation with people you know. It’s about advertising yourself. It’s not social; it’s media.
