A recent conversation in an old-school Facebook group inspired me to write this post about social celebritism. Before I continue, I’d like to add that this post isn’t meant to offend anyone. Every person is free to do whatever he or she likes to do as long as nobody gets hurt. And thanks to the freedom of speech I’m also allowed to share my opinion.

I started blogging in 2011 for the single reason that I felt the urge to be creative in my very own way. Since the age of six I’ve been passioned about fashion so it seemed clear that this would become the main subject of the blog Nathalie from Yayzine and I happily shared till the end of 2014. We didn’t do it to gain popularity or for the free goodies, most people didn’t even take “those bloggers” and their social media channels seriously and nobody was interested in the amount of followers we had.

Slowly (in these times the meaning of the word slow has to be put in perspective but you know what I mean) everything changed and I don’t need to spell it out for you that at this specific moment the situation looks entirely different. Thanks to talented pioneers in the blogosphere such as The Sartorialist, Chiara Ferragni, Rumi Neely, Suzy Bubble and so on “the industry” finally discovered that bloggers could help to increase their popularity and most importantly their turnover. The actual act of blogging became less important, more and more brands and companies started to look at the social media channels and more specifically, Instagram. At first it was just a drama-free alternative for Facebook with some nice filters but quickly it turned into a microblog.

Nowadays it doesn’t even matter whether you blog, vlog or whatever… everything has been replaced by the general term “influencer” and there’s just one thing that actually counts: numbers. Whether you create your own content or whether your followers are actual living people became less important. Some companies only like you for the amount of followers you carefully (or not so carefully) gathered. Sometimes I even wonder if they take a look at what you really do or do they just decide to sponsor someone based on quantitative features? I work both in PR and sales so I know how important numbers are but everything has its limits.

What worries me about this evolution is that our social media lives seem to become more important than our actual ones. Thinking about the fact that other people, brands,… see you as a social celebrity or an amount of followers is, if you ask me, kinda scary. It’s not about who you are anymore but what you appear to be and more crucially, how many others like who you appear to be. Social media can be great tools when used wisely and not as a forced thing that makes you a nobody if you don’t have reached the 1, 5, 10 or 100K. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”, good that everyone can become a social celebrity but let it never be the focus or worse, the road to a life full of online attention (doesn’t keep u warm at night  – tried but didn’t work out… better use a hot water bottle).

I wrote this post because social media in general, the influence it has on our lives and society really interests me. As you know, I’m also an active Instagram and Facebook user since I simply like sharing thoughts, things I love and care about. And of course I’m proud when people like what I do, I can even admit I felt honored after reaching the amount of 10K followers on Instagram after 180 weeks of posting pictures. But did that essentially make me a happier person…nope! What does make me happy is you reading this post and being inspired by it.

 

Quote – Pinterest / Header Picture – Epic Times