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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Thursday, October 15, 2015

entry arrow8:00 AM | The False Glitter of Social Media Lives



The Financial Diet's “My ‘Perfect’ Life On Social Media Is Putting Me In Debt” is a fascinating article about curated lives in social media.

There was a time in my social media life -- two or four years ago? -- where I found myself envying the "Ian" I saw on my own Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. Last month, an acquaintance also told me she loved the life I was living as she perceived it of course on my social media -- and I cringed. Both made for bouts of unsettling feeling.

It wasn't that I was posting lies through photos and status updates. They were all true. But they were also a highly curated assemblage of images I was more or less, consciously or unconsciously projecting to the world. In reality, life is hard, and most times I'm just winging it, always hoping for the good times to come. Not every moment is an Instagram moment. You don't see me or anyone posting photos of ourselves staring into space, wondering or panicking over what to do next. Sometimes I too get sucked into the vicious cycle of envy as I follow my friends' lives as they unfurl in my newsfeed -- and it takes some pinching by reality to drum into my head that theirs are curated lives as well. We're all sad and frightened little creatures just putting on our best social media smiles -- and it's perfectly all right, too. (Just don't get into debt, though.)

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