I need to preface all this with: I’ve never gone truly viral. We’re talking Rebecca Black “Friday”, Target Alex, Ken Bone with the red sweater. (Do these references reveal my age? Oops.) In the grand scheme of the grand, grand internet, whatever online presence I might have is but a microscopic blob.
But I’ve gone viral for me, which, for the purposes of this post, we’ll define as getting-more-online-attention-than-expected. Since, again, I am but a microscopic amoeba in a vast sea of cat photos and TikTok trends, there really does not need to be much attention levied my way for one of my posts to be considered “viral.”
Most recently, I had a funny interaction on Hinge, which I posted about on Twitter:
Anyway, I didn’t think too much about the post. It was one a.m. After spending a few more minutes scrolling through various apps on my phone, I plugged it into its charger and went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up to more Twitter notifications than expected. Apparently, a lot of people…were invested in whether or not pi was rational? I’m still not entirely sure what the appeal of this post is.
There were people commenting that actually, pi is rational because it is 22/7, and there were people commenting that those people were wrong, and then there were also some 280-character-long proof attempts. Even an indie rock band that represented Slovenia in Eurovision 2023 chimed in. All that was perfectly fine, and a great use of the bird website.
But unfortunately, there were also a few responses insulting the guy in the screenshot, insinuating he was stupid or poorly educated, which didn’t feel fair. I don’t know too much about him, given that this has been our only interaction thus far, but it felt mean-spirited to attack him when really, he hadn’t done much wrong and was maybe just confused about some math definitions.
I added another Tweet as a follow-up:
Anyway, the insults seemed to stop after that. But still, I reflected on my role in all this. Sure, it was unlikely this guy would ever see this post—I had cropped out his name and photo—but what if he had? What if he had felt hurt by some of the comments?
This instance is yet another example of a larger trend I’ve noticed on Twitter. It is so easy to grow a following through expressing contempt, or “dunking”, on other people. I see some “big accounts” that have hundreds of thousands of followers—the content that goes the most viral are the posts that mock or shame others. Yes, often the derisiveness feels “deserved”—for example, there’s a female influencer who will quote-retweet men in her comments who are saying misogynistic things undermining her success—but still, it doesn’t feel like the kind of positive interaction that I want to spend my spare emotional energy on, and I wonder about the net benefit of giving some random troll with sub-100 followers a much bigger platform.
You might be wondering, okay, Rona, so why bother with Twitter at all? And I’m not entirely sure of the answer myself. There’s no denying that I’ve meet some wonderful people through it, that I’ve gotten multiple emails from startup founders and venture capitalists wanting to chat after seeing my Tweets, and that it is useful to curate an online, accessible database of who I am and what I believe in.
But I also believe that social media does change you, if you’re not careful. As a teenager, I once wanted to make travel vlogs about my life, and immediately, there was a shift in how I approached the world. My surroundings became filtered through the question of, is this something worth filming? Is this Content? I didn’t want to live my life like that, so I quickly stopped doing vlogs.
A change like that is obvious, because you’re now holding the camera, viewing the world through the lens. Something like a trend towards Tweeting about certain topics—topics that offer a dopamine rush fueled by virtual social approval—is less perceptible.
My Twitter following has grown quite a bit in the last few months—and I can feel the increasing distance between my real life and my online life. None of these people know you, I remind myself. Who do they know? They know a pixelated profile photo, captured at a posed moment where I looked nicer than usual, and some quirky quips that passed through my mind. But then again, who is to say which one is the “real” me? Can I really pretend that all these online interactions won’t have any bearing on my “real” self?
I want a life brimming with love, introspection, creativity, curiosity. My favorite people in the world—my closest friends, my family—don’t have any social media presence. Recently, I’ve started wondering why I spend so much time in spaces where few of my favorite people exist.
Social media has significantly impacted us as teenagers! I used to be one those guys who insanely use those platforms, but I stopped after I couldn't answer "How is this contributing my life?" satisfactorily. though it's helpful in terms of connecting with my friends and family, I alternatively try to use it as a source of motivation, gathering ideas and following up the trending info or anything that relates to my work and life. Tbh, most of those people I follow/like are nerds in some way and don't spend some time as much as I do, which highly reminds me whenever I come across their contents to just live my life, mind my business, and like you said no one in here knows me beyond the fancy profile pic.
"But I also believe that social media does change you, if you’re not careful."
Absolutely agreed. It's especially hard when you're up against behavioral scientists who work at these companies to maximize the time you spend on them. You can use them for your good though, even if it's hard to get to that point initially.