one of the most real, least staged photos I could find on my phone from this month
Gosh, I have so much to say and it’s been so long since I have sat down to write a personal blog post, but I just love getting my thoughts and feelings about social media off my chest over here, and it seems like so many of you connect to it as well. Please let me know if I should do these little chat sessions more often! Recently I’ve been noticing a lot of instagramers narrowing their focus into what they know “works well” for their audience (and by works well, I mean garners the most likes/ comments/ engagement). There’s fitness bloggers, who focus solely on creating quick workout videos so you can save them for later, body positive bloggers who post in swimsuits or workout clothes to show you to love yourself, mommy bloggers who will share anything from the color of their babies poop to where they shop for their kids clothing, fashion bloggers who link like.toknowit 50 times a day, and I am sure by this point you get my drift.
As accounts narrow their focus, they share more of the intricacies of their truth – instead of the 2018 of trend of sharing perfectly curated homes, kids and lives, everyone is showing their weaknesses – the rolls on their tummy, their children mid-meltdown, how even though they run a fitness account, they too have love handles but just pose a special way to look more fit. The trend has done a 360 degree turn from a FAKE REALITY to REAL REALITY, but it’s all in hopes to garner likes, and it’s always in a pattern based off of what has worked in the past, or what will perform the best, to sell people stuff. I can’t help but ask myself, is this truly real reality? Is it “more real” to collectively change our strategy as influencers to what we think people want to see? Is it more real to show the part of our day where our toddler screams after snapping a few photos instead of the actual photos themselves? Or is it just another way to spin our own personas online?
I am left over here, running my account sort of how I always have, just sharing my outfits, home and family, with of course some strategy behind it, but I haven’t found a focus to narrow to, or a point to drive home over and over again. I’m not quite a mommy blogger, not quite a travel blogger and not quite a fashion blogger, but a little big of each of them. Recently I am wondering if that makes me MORE REAL, because I am sharing what is VS the narrative I’ve spun, but I also for this same reason sometimes feel inferior. Have I not found my purpose in this space? Am I letting down my audience because I don’t have specific uplifting and positive words to share with them every week? In the reality that we all live in here in 2019, it is so hard to tell WHAT EVEN IS REAL. I even wonder sometimes – what would I do if instagram or social media didn’t even exist? Would I still dress the same? Travel the same? BE the same?
I was listening to the Fohr Ground podcast yesterday, and Idalia Salsamendi was saying that she enjoys spending time living in Spain away from where she works, because when she spends time with her fiance’s Spanish family, they ask her about books and movies and they could care less what she does for work. I feel this same way very often – when I’m around people who don’t know what I do, and I have deeper conversations about music or shows or how I feel about something other than the internet – in those moments I have a voice in my head that tells me THIS IS WHO YOU REALLY ARE. I have to remind myself to make my way back to the things that I loved and that inspired me before that list included staring at a screen and scrolling.
How do we all get connected to the people we were before social media came to be, or at least BRING those people into our online accounts once again? How do we unlearn what we “think” people want to see, and just share with the world the things that bring us happiness? I ask myself these questions a lot every week…
Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or DM me!