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It's not enough to act like a king. (The Gentlemen)

 I'm 22 years old. I have had Facebook for a couple years, but I just got on Twitter and Instagram within the last few months. Like many of my homeschooled friends, I had Google+. I briefly was on Snapchat, but I quickly decided it wasn't for me. What's the point of this? I'm very different people on each of these platforms. 

On Twitter, I have a bare bones profile. I don't even have a picture. I just follow a couple of pages and occasionally scroll through Twitter battles, laughing as I reach for the popcorn. One could say I'm just a casual spectator on Twitter. On Instagram, I have a sleek, feminine page. I used a filter to give my profile picture a whimsical, dusty appearance, but I mainly read my friends' stories and DM people stupid memes and TikToks. On Facebook, I will occasionally post relatable memes and different things I do with my boyfriend when we visit each other, but I again mainly follow meme pages.

I know that none of these are the complete "Emma", and I am okay with that. I mainly use social media for entertainment purposes; I don't really invest very much time or effort into my persona on social media. I actually did that on purpose, though. I purposely keep my posting habits pretty random so that I don't set an expectation for myself or others that I constantly keep all of my followers up to date on the goings-on of my life. My impression management style is that I might talk about the superficial things on social media, but I reserve who I am for in-person interaction (or texting/calling people I know).

Even though it is something we do all the time and isn't inherently bad, I think that impression management on social media can be a dangerous hole we can dig ourselves into for two reasons.

  • Firstly, it's easy to propagate exaggerations, even lies, but it's even  easier to have those lies exposed. If your Instagram shows a quiet night home alone, but your boyfriend sees a photo of you and your ex on your ex's Snapchat story, you have two problems on your hands. That deception (and exposure, whether purposeful or accidental) can lead to serious relationship problems, not just in romantic situations.
  • Secondly, it's really hard to maintain a perfect persona. When I first got Facebook, I'd post pretty regularly, but I ran out of interesting, new things to say. If you set an expectation for yourself, you might never live up to your own standard. And if  you are an influencer, your followers have an expectation for how you should be and what kind of content to look for from your accounts.

Of course, social media is a great place to experiment with what kind of person you want to be, from peppy to poignant. And you certainly should present a different face in the classroom than you would on Friday nights. But there comes a point where if you allow people's perception of you to be your ultimate priority, it will seriously damage your relationships with others and with yourself. As Matthew McConaughey's character Mickey Pearson said in "The Gentlemen", "If you wish to be the king of the jungle, it's not enough to act like a king. You must be the king. There can be no doubt. Because doubt causes chaos and one's own demise."

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