Who Does Social Media Want Me To Be?

As women, we live with the constant belief that we must be on display, all the time. And perhaps it stems from the fact that we are on display, all the time. Some days I have the desire to be on display, other days, most of the time, I fear it, loathe it, am embarrassed by it.

Lately I’ve been thinking: have I shared enough of myself with the world? Photos on Instagram, dancing reels on TikTok, status updates on Facebook, or witty one-liners on X. Why is it now, at 28 years of age, that I’m constantly thinking about this? Is it because I’m single, while all of my friends are married? Is it because I’m being bombarded with even more ways to share myself on social media platforms and feel as though I’m being left behind, rotting away on a one-way platform to irrelevance?

Each year as I get older, the more I morph into a version of myself that the world tells me I must be. Sometimes I wonder whether my friends would contact me more if they physically saw on their screens that I was holidaying it up in Bali or enjoying drinks with workmates on a Friday night. Would they reach out if ‘virtual me’ was always doing something? Even if that something was sharing a story of me folding laundry?

Because I don’t post, have my friends forgotten about me?

I realise now, as I reflect on my twenties, that I haven’t played the system right. The good years have passed when I should have barraged social media with photos of me me me. Photos of the good old days when I was thin and hot and had better style. (Apparently, skinny jeans aren’t in fashion anymore. I only discovered this yesterday…) That’s what the world wanted to see, not me working on myself in the shadows as a lone hermit. They wanted me to be paraded across a vibrant grid in bikini pics and gym selfies. To oggle and comment with fire emojis. 🔥👀

Would I have a better job if I did that? Like my manager who shares her daily activities on Instagram as though she’s on the cusp of becoming irrelevant – from getting lip fillers at a beautician in Port Melbourne to a bird’s eye view of half-eaten acai. Daily photos from every facet of her life: fillers and fruit bowls and oat milk lattes and new tattoos and piercings and what Victoria Secret underwear she’s wearing. I’m not hating on her though, she’s just a salmon caught in an upstream of self-subjectification – instilled by a patriarchal belief system.

Am I always going to be stuck in this era of ambivalence, no matter what decade I’m in?

But If I were to share more of myself with the world, where would I even start? Before I can take a photo, I need to lose some weight, paint my face in makeup, wear something cute (so first buy something cute), understand what TikTok is, understand how to apply filters, and then suppress the thought that what I’m about to do is extremely boring and not me at all and remind myself that this isn’t about me, it’s about virtual me and who she could be. Virtual me needs to be seen and looked at and cheered for in order to validate that part of real me that yearns external affection because I’m not getting it in my average, no makeup, no style, no contrived photoshoot life. 

There are endless possibilities out there for virtual me. If I tried, I could become an Insta-influencer: a runner, a baker, a food blogger. I would definitely need to find a niche and sell that version of me to the world. How about a slob sitting on the couch? Even if I don’t like running or baking or food blogging, I would have to commit to it because that’s how career pathways open up, like that one baker-turned-podcast-presenter-turned-Love Island-contestant-turned-award-winning-news journalist now uncovering the latest atrocities in the Gaza strip.

Out there, in the algorithm ether, the possibilities are endless. I do worry though that one day it might end me before I’ve reached that bright light goal of becoming an animatronic fembot it’s training us to be.