Sometimes, ‘I Find Social Media to be a Soul-Sucking Void of Meaningless Affirmation’, and Other Thoughts
The title of this blog post might remind you of Netflix’s tv-show - Wednesday, which has been the talk of the town (or maybe the world?) for the past couple of weeks.
The modern day jokes, the dark theme and the concept that Wednesday (played by the brilliant Jenna Ortega) is enough and focuses on herself and her hobbies (however creepy they might be), without the need to chaise social status, friendship and love, is so on point with everything Gen. Z and all following generations are trying to promote. I believe that’s the reason why the show became a sensation overnight, even outperforming the documentary of the most discussed royal couple - Megan and Harry. (how about that!)
Now, back to the original concept of this post…
As you can assume from the title, I’ve decided to unleash my frustration with Social Media in this blog post.
And more specifically social media channels used to create personal brand through… generalisation and unnecessary content that simply floods my home page every single day.
Is it only me? Am I alone in this struggle? Or you also think that posting your lunch on channels like LinkedIn is not empowering, but rather unnecessary and not in line with the whole purpose of the platform.
Now’s the time to point out that (obviously) I am a huge supporter of growing your personal brand online. I believe that one of the best ways to do it is through LinkedIn networking, pushing your personal/company brand through it and all that good stuff, as long as it’s bringing value to people, it’s original and it’s not too much.
For example, I love the content of people like Sophie Miller, an influencer and a woman that truly embodies the word entrepreneur.
Sadly, she is one of the few people with authentic and educational content on the platform, at least in my network, that’s just on point and never too much.
Nowdays, so many people are trying to boost their engagement rates on LinkedIn with constant networking and most of all - daily posts. As someone who works in a digital marketing agency, I understand the appeal of all that. But regular blast of irrelevant, copy-cat content does not bring any value to a company, let alone a personal brand. If something, it’s the opposite, at least in the long run.
Recently I saw a post that was something like “we should normalise reshaping of posts on LinkedIn” and it got me thinking, when was it NOT normal? I do it constantly. The post was very generic, but still had around 50 to 60 interactions.
WOW
I guess that’s the model of today’s Personal Branding, and the LinkedIn platform is no exception.
If you go to YouTube and type ways of increasing followers on Instagram and TikTok, you’ll most probably notice that most of the videos repeat the same thing - copy the content of people with a lot of views/followers base, use songs which are trending, and just keep on posting, daily, hourly or whatever works to trick the algorithm that your content is worth people’s time.
As if the whole consumerism and capitalistic model we apply in our political and economic systems suddenly became part of the way we “promote” ourselves on Social Media.
That’s one of the reasons I find social media to be soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation, but as the optimist I’ve always been (or maybe the hypocrite?), I am still browsing the platforms, hoping to find more relevant and interesting content.
I can almost hear Wednesday laughing at me, LOL.
