To Win at Social Media, Lie

I am part of the Myspace generation, a social media site so short-lived that the fact it has any relevance to me at all should make it fairly easy to pin down my age.

With a few minor calculations, anyway. But math is hard, so I’ll just tell you—I’m 28. My peers and I grew up in a unique time when social media came of age just when we did. Our parents and older siblings learned social media later in life; younger generations have never lived without it. For us, though, it was a new, exciting thing that our parents were afraid of and we were just figuring out.

But that means people my age don’t have it figured out quite as well as those who have been immersed in social media their entire young lives.

For me, the hardest realization has been this: people don’t want to see your real self online.

People don't want your realness on social media. They want your best. So what do real people do? We make art. Blog about it. Try to post our best selves, instead of our real ones, and find other places to talk about the process of becoming. But it isn't easy.

At first, Myspace was the place to be real, or “real,” at least—a pseudo-honest, edgy form of self that our parents didn’t get but our peers did. Facebook also used to be a vanguard of honesty, in the early days when it was tied to college attendance and every status update automatically had the word “is” in it. “Elyse Hauser is in love” was a real post of mine, circa 2008. At the time, I really thought I was. I probably put a less-than-three heart next to it. How much more honest can you get?

But we’ve come a long way since then. Now, social media is how companies—even mundane ones, like Public Storage—brand themselves. It’s how entrepreneurs make a name. Anyone with a well-curated Instagram and a list of followers in the thousands can start monetizing their posts. The rest of us try to keep up. I don’t want to care about social media, but as a writer, I have to. It needs to look legit so I can have the right author platform when the day comes for me to write a book, or even pitch a story to a major magazine.

Yet I grew up with social media as a place where we’re supposed to be real, so I struggle with that. Posting a perfectly made-up selfie from a night out isn’t the first thing I think of. In fact, I probably didn’t even take the picture. If I’m out with friends, I’m generally too focused on the experience to remember about social media.

So when do I post? Usually when I’m at home, in some state of imperfection. I posted a picture of my sunburn from the park recently. It's a step up from the usual, since at least I was wearing a cute outfit. But I wasn't thinking of documenting the cute outfit so much as documenting the sunburn. It’s not that I don’t want to post my cute looks. It’s just that it’s so much harder to post perfection, or what looks like it. It’s hard to get a great picture of a great outfit, to choose a great filter and make great edits. It’s not something I’m good at. But I’m great at being honest on social media, because that’s how I learned.

So, I post the not-best-self. Recently when I had some friends at my apartment for game night, we were talking about how peering over the top of your glasses always looks creepy. I took a selfie, to see for myself. Then I said, “This selfie looks shitty. Maybe I’ll post it on Instagram.” And I did. With that exact same caption.

Later in the week, I deleted that picture. I’m trying to be better, for the sake of my career if nothing else. I live a pretty great life, and it would be nice if my social media reflected that, instead of making me look like a homebody who lives in sweats and no makeup. (Don’t get me wrong, I love being home in sweats and no makeup sometimes. But it’s not as common as it looks.) And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t envy those picture-perfect social media accounts. I want to have that enviable online look too. I can pull it off in real life. Online, it’s harder.

Then again, my most-liked Instagram post is a deliberate picture of me looking bad. I had just gotten out of the shower, had breakouts on my face, hadn’t moisturized anything yet. But I realized that, in spite of all my selfies, it’s very rare that I actually take a look at my completely undone face. So I snapped a pic and posted it: poor lighting, bad skin and everything. I posted it with a caption detailing my thought process; how I wanted to appreciate the imperfections because they were a part of me. And that was it. My most unattractive post was my best-liked one.

So maybe there is something to being honest on social media. I’m still figuring it out.