It's day two of Blaugust and I'm already unsure of how I'm going to complete this thing every day. Mostly, I have no life, but for some reason everyone decided to be born in August. Friends, you're not allowed to have babies in August. I forbid it.
I just got off work and I looked at my phone, and I had an Instagram notification. I clicked it, and it was a person I don't know, mentioning multiple people in a comment on a picture from 12 weeks ago that said, "follow4follow?! Or like4like". Really? Is this 2009 YouTube? When did this become a thing on Instagram? Why is this a thing? Why would I follow you? It wasn't even my picture. The person didn't even reply with anything relevant to the comment I made, let alone follow me. I'm used to this from other websites, but this is the first time I've seen this on Instagram. I think. Sometimes I forget things. And while it is the shallowest of social medias, this is a phenomenon that really gets to me.
I remember my friend Kym making a video on the whole follow back thing a few years ago. She parodied "Holla Back Girl" and sang "I ain't no follow back girl!" This mantra has stuck with me. Begging for followers like this is not my jam and I can't help but find it a bit pathetic. Sometimes I ask people on one social network to follow me on another, but the thing is, those people already follow me in one place, are likely my friends, and maybe possibly interested in my life in some capacity. Plus, I don't ever directly ask individuals. Bribing random strangers is dumb and actually offends me a little. I have some sort of connection to everyone I follow online. Those people are all friends, friends of friends, people I have common interests with, or I'm interested in the things they make or do. If someone engages in conversation with me on Twitter or something, I will follow them back almost all of the time, because that's the point. Communication with people. They are people. They are not numbers. And I'm not a number either; I won't just be another person in your list of hundreds or thousands of people who look at your face online. It's like a part of this generation defines how much they're worth by how many people like their selfies. That actually means nothing at all, especially on a site like Instagram where liking is so passive. We've been given this awesome thing called the internet that allows us to communicate with people from all over. Yeah, it's fun to share silly photos of our faces or what we ate for dinner, but in the end, it's a complete waste of time to be on the internet and never make personal connections with anyone.
Listening to: Strange Desire by Bleachers
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