Being inspired in the Digital Age.
+How do desires shift when we are frequently exposed to a limitless category of aspirations and goals?
Hi, Hello dearest reader! I know I’ve been gone for a while but I missed this space every second. Life has been shifting and so have my thoughts.
I’ve changed my goals for Substack, social media at large, and my online presence. Everything feels neater, more quiet, less busy. There was a time that I needed to be zipping from pillar to post but now I think I can be more focused with my online work. I am grateful for your subscription and support of my ideas and words, the rest of this year shall be very very fun. Hope to hear from you a lot more!
Sarah J x
I think about the wonders of the digital age frequently. The black hole of scrolling, the frictionless propagation of 21st Century ideas, the phenomenon of digital scrapbooking etc. But I feel to ascribe a more appropriate term here as ‘miracle’. Yes, the “miracles” of the digital age; as a way to discuss the life-altering capability of the facilitation of human dreams, aspirations and desires available through the cyber web.
In the time that I have been on social media I have seen it completely alter the trajectory of people’s lives. Post-covid, life online has been wholly unpredictable and I believe this is what draws individuals to developing a digital career. Everybody wants to try their luck at the wheel of social media fortune that just keeps spinning. Whether it be a key hashtag, sound or trend, your life has the potential to completely upend, for better or worse.
Ordinary people have transformed into micro and mega celebrities. Voices, names, identities we would never have known if not for the genesis of a single account have become global brands and figures. It’s no surprise then how we revere the Internet.
In this think-piece reader, I ask: What do our goals and dreams look like now when we have such a tool regularly advancing these requests, and evidencing that no dream is too crazy to come true?
Are we thinking bigger and crazier? Are we believing in algorithms more than ourselves?
Rather than filling one’s self with rage, envy or disappointment, we can think critically about the designs of our time that has enabled such transformation.
There are far more cons than pros of social media but we live in an age where it is inescapable. Nevertheless, it has transformed lives to the point that an entire heritage, generation and/or future is malleable by one post. One account. One platform. But that is reserved for much more philosophical, existential thought.
Many of us now operate social media with this burning hope of experiencing a lucky strike on the wheel. Subsequently, substituting normal engagement with content to a hyper-fixated one. It comes as a component of platform-dependent labour by which creators find themselves in a constant state of ‘doing’ on social media to gain visibility and therefore exposure.
And such is simply reality. To get the followers one has to be in a constant act of doing. Create, edit, share, repeat. If I never wrote and published I would never have readers, that is self-explanatory. But when one faces an algorithm, billions of users from all different walks of life and high-scale competition, doing quickly becomes exhaustive.
This mindset has turned social media into a sort of Roman colosseum for the digital ages, and though we are getting mauled mentally, nobody wants to leave. It is designed for users to see the fight to the end, claim the prize and then go. But is there really a prize available to all?
There is that finicky and often contested idea of everyone having the same 24 hours (*cough cough Molly Mae). Well, I recast it to propose that we all have the same social media platform, the same algorithm and at times the same device. What’s obstructing you ,then, from achieving what another person has through their own page…? What informs you that you cannot fulfill your own dreams and desires via the inter-web? If they can, you can too.
I do want to stress, however, that our end points, goals and motivations are not at all linear. Personally, I come on social media to connect, learn and also educate in the smallest way I can. It is not to join the majority who promote their appearance, consumerism, personal events etc but to enlighten through a theory of relatability I am yet to develop fully.
In the real world, our skills, knowledge and expertise differ significantly, so why then is it that when we enter the abyss of the flat screen that we discard this difference?
First work out what your goals are for social media (I advise to refrain from using these platforms aimlessly). And this will lose all credibility when emerging from a place of vanity with goals like “free stuff, hundreds and thousands of followers/subscribers, brand trips” etc. So take time away from the screen and write it down, solidifying your thoughts with paper and ink.
Be intentional, meaningful and selective. Who do you want to impact, where exactly do you want to go, how long do you plan to actively exist on the internet? Is it a year, six months, five years? The more you see social media as a people centred business and not, through the lens of capitalism and consumerism, as a get rich quick scheme, your soul will be at ease.
I write this as much for myself as I do for you. Social media has been a headache for me recently, but I started with redirecting my perception of it. Thinking meaningfully and not materially. With longevity in spite of its ephemerality.
I have a lot more to share in this space so whilst I hope this helped ease your mind, may it also to get you to foster alternative attitudes towards success online.
Again, try and let the rhetoric of an ‘[inter]web’ excite you and not daunt you because just as a spider weaves its way, you too can weave a life online unique to you. You can leave a digital, as well as social, footprint that is telling of who you are and not who you think you should be.
And so finally, I tweak the famous Descartes maxim with a digital perspective to propose:
“I think therefore I am, I write therefore it exists, I see others do and therefore all is doable.” - SJO
Engage! Let me know below (or in a reply) who your inspirations are in the digital age? Is it influencers, celebrities, big/small creators?
-What was a significant moment online that revealed to to you the power of social media in transforming lives?