I was flicking through Flipbook last night when this illustration by Ani Castillo jumped out at me…
It got me thinking, this image doesn’t just apply to bloggers. Do you ever skim through instagram and twitter and feel overwhelmed by people’s perfect, self-edited lives?
We’re all at it these day’s aren’t we?
The journalist and blogger Kate Bevan was on BBC Breakfast this morning talking Instagram, she said that she finds that her timeline swamped by images so heavily altered using filters that they no longer look anything like the original subject. And she’s not wrong.
But being authentic online is actually quite hard. Everything has to be filtered at some point, for example, if I’m taking a picture of my dogs I’m pretty sure you don’t want to see my dirty washing in the background so why not make things look better than they are. But are we taking things too far? There’s something about the perfectness of lifestyle blogs and instagrams that just don’t seem…real.
Maybe it’s time to start getting real?
Tell me, when was the last time you were truly authentic online? Has social media killed authenticity? Do leave a comment…
PS: If you’re coming to ignite tonight, I’m talking all about negative comments online & will see you there!
Thanks for this article! I’m looking up posts about authenticity for a college course on new forms of literature and this post makes a great connection to these problems today. Here’s our class webpage if you want to check it out! http://newculturesofwriting.tumblr.com/
We do use social media to tweek our online presence. If everyone posted their dirty laundry online, it would be such a different world. I only post images of myself that I like, and mostly everyone else does it. We want to look a certain way to the people that find us online. That may because we want employers to like or maybe we just want our parents to see us in a certain way. I do try to be authentic in my blog posts, and I talk about what really matters to me and what matters to my clients. I talk about my failures and triumphs. I believe there needs to be a nice balance.
There’s dirty laundry and there’s dirty laundry… sometimes a bit too much dirty laundry is aired on-line. I feel it is necessary to be authentic in my blog posts, but as for pics… if it’s of me and it’s questionable, I’m probably hoping you’ll laugh or my clients will identify. I am willing to go out on a limb for my clients!