How's Yer Social Media Presence?

I got into a conversation last night with my housemate about our preferred social media platforms. For him it's Twitter which he uses mainly to liaise with people in his specialism (design). He likes to reach out to them for instance to organise a podcast that he hosts. However, he added the caveat that it's inevitable everybody becomes something like a brand online.

I agree with which is why for me the answer is (almost) none of them. I've largely been decreasing my social media presence over the past few years because I find the upkeep too much hassle. I find they've all become all a bit impersonal to the point where they seem about curating highly specific image of how one wishes to appear to others. The price we pay for a non-neutral avatar, I suppose.

We got into a further debate about the value of Instagram. Now, I don't really it use it because the idea of 'liking' people's selfies in front of their mirrors doesn't appeal much to me. We decided though that so much of online behaviour is guided by a form of passive reciprocation. Put simply, if you like other people's posts, then they tend to like yours more often. You feel good about yourself and it becomes a lot like game where the end goal is to received mutual feedback.

My housemate is also running a personal experiment where he compares the amounts of likes he gets when he posts a picture of himself versus when he post a picture of something neutral - arguably a more impressive picture from a technical point of view. The answer so far if is that the personal images outrank likes by a ratio of 3:1. He asked for my opinion about why that might be and I said it's because people probably feel they're engaging with you personally when they can see your face.

I find this whole subject fascinating because obviously I run this blog. I also use Reddit and forums a lot. I hold steadfast to the view that my motivation to do so is mainly about 'information gathering'. For this blog though, I suppose it's about the joy of putting together content. Posts are things I can go back to at a later date to find out what I thought at a particular moment. By comparison, the type of posts you find (and are expected to make) on Facebook, Twitter, etc don't really allow for it.

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