I'm speaking to YOU, my twentysomething comrades (and we can include Matty in there for one more solitary year, as the old man turned 29 last weekend); we have great educations, decent jobs that subsidize most of le bills, some have produced at least moderately adorable children, and if you're like Taylor Swift, some of us even have drawers of our things at 'his' place. We might not have the plough-pushing physical and mental fortitude of our grandparents, but we've been hearing that baloney for years and we're over it-- we're doing pretty o.k. for ourselves, all things considered.
But despite everything that we have going for us, lots of us are still walking around constantly thinking "Am I doing this right?"; a worry that our grandparents didn't typically contend with while pushing their ploughs. We live in a constant state of confusion over our life choices and no amount of friendly reassurance, Facebook album investigation, or twitter tagging will ever assure us that we don't look ridiculous to everyone who is not...well, us. We will not rest in our quest for validation!
So other than about 70 years, what separates our young-adulthood experiences from that of our grandparents? Why this need for approval? The answer to this question coming right up, after a word from this sponsor.....
What do you do when you tweet, blog, or write a status? You fill others in on WHAT you are doing, WHY, and HOW you feel about it. You make a short "life-commercial", much in the same way that our friends at Xenadrine-- no doubt a super-safe and reputable weight loss product-- advertise on TV. In terms of Xenadrine, people will show they "approve" of this commercial by purchasing their dubious bottle of poison at their local Foot Locker or Abercrombie and Fitch. When we advertise ourselves in social media, we're saying "Follow what I'm doing! Check me out! Approve of my life choices... or don't, but either way, remember me!" I think this all started out innocently enough (college kids wanting to know what other college kids thought about the general college experience in...well, college), but it has grown into the conference center for Narcissism, U.S.A. A lot of people think this is generally harmless, and to some extent I agree. But I think that the true bugbear of this trend is that we now REQUIRE the approval of others in order to feel validated, safe, non-awkward, and socially adept.
Take for example, the following anecdote...
The other day I was down at the beach in North Carolina with my family; Chilling out, relaxing, doing super-fun stuff that would make people jealous of my life. I felt an immediate need to share this feeling of mellow satisfaction with anyone and everyone who might look. So I did exactly what you would do: I posted a status. In my opinion, it was perfect-- everything a status should be: witty, informative, nostalgic, and included a heart-shape thingy AND smiley-face. It was Michaelangelo's Status of the David. I posted it, went to the beach all day, came back up and eagerly checked to see how many of my friends gave their approval.
Not one.
Not a like, a poke, a thumbs-up, or a "LOL." Nothing. E-Crickets.
I felt SO defeated! I checked for misspellings...none noted. I checked to make sure my internet was working. It was. Nobody commented because NOBODY CARED. I started to ask myself the kinds of existential questions that--in the olden days--only came up after a long day on the plough and several swigs of moonshine; Why am I not funny? Why does nobody care what I do? Am I a loser? Should I delete my Facebook? It had a friggin' SMILEY and HEARTS!
Rest assured, I recovered within hours and was posting normally again by dinner. But it made me wonder...why all this self-doubt? I don't think I'm alone in my experience. When we are so used to "making life commercials" and having people respond positively (or negatively, in my case, because I tend to piss off people on Facebook on the reg.) it becomes hard when we make moves without someone there to say "you're doing great!"
Maybe our dip in self-confidence is actually caused by our increase in self-broadcasting. We SHOULD feel better about ourselves when we make spiffy self-advertisements, but we don't because any lack of approval is earth-shattering. So we're left wondering things that our grandparents didn't lose sleep over:
Should I be traveling more?
Does this haircut make me look as cute as she is?
How is he in Grad School already?
Should *I* start thinking about having a baby?
I'm alone and it's Saturday night and I have no pictures to post...am I a social pariah?
I'm not engaged yet and we've been together for 3 years. Is something wrong with me?
I think that once we start to either a) calm down with social media or b) find a happy place where we can broadcast without doubting ourselves, we can become the leaders that everyone at the 5th Grade Junior Achievement Assembly told us we could be.
Let's all just relax, enjoy the ride, and use Facebook strictly for fun and not a meter-stick by which to measure your life.
Also, Jersey Shore Ronnie uses Xenadrine so clearly you should too.
