Today’s post revolves mainly around a Convince and Convert article by social media and content strategist and speaker Jay Baer. The article talks about how instead of bringing us closer, technology is weakening our connections and creating shallow relationships. What you can learn about a person via an online account is very different from interacting with him or her in person. This relates again to the idea of keeping up appearances. Technology allows us to keep up appearances perhaps more than we could in our daily lives and routines. If someone were to post on Facebook or Twitter, for example, that they were really happy about something, who’s to say they weren’t? Why wouldn’t we believe what a person chooses to share? But there’s more to a person’s life than can be shown through social media sites, and maybe there’s an image or reputation they are choosing to uphold.

Baer writes about the shock that came upon hearing of his friend, Trey Pennington’s suicide. As it so happens, the two met online. There’s a pressure to know more people, according to Baer, because this seems to allow more opportunities. Baer states, “interacting with more people is inherently better than interacting with fewer people”. However, interacting with more people doesn’t necessarily translate to knowing more people. This is proven further by the fact that Baer had no idea what Trey Pennington was going through, despite considering him a friend. Baer makes a good point in saying, “Social media forces upon us a feeling of intimacy and closeness that doesn’t actually exist.” This quote struck me as a true and universal idea. It can be hard to tell how a person you know and see every day is feeling sometimes, and having the barrier of the Internet and possibly false information only makes it more difficult to be close to and understand people. Someone who seems relatively happy can portray themselves this way, without having to go through the trouble of faking smiles, etc. In a way, it’s possible to keep up appearances without actually being seen. It all has to do with what others expect of us.

We are constantly trying to modify our appearances, striving to meet unrealistic expectations. When we’re younger we want to look older, and vice versa. This is magnified by media and advertising, from anti-aging makeup commercials to Hollywood stars looking perfect on the cover of every magazine. It seems we are always pretending to be something we’re not. There’s a push to one up ourselves in everything, and similarly we expect celebrities and other famous figures to continually be better. But what’s the limit? There’s an idea in psychology called the adaptation-level phenomenon, which describes the “tendency people have to quickly adapt to a new situation, until that situation becomes the norm”. For example, if a person gets a raise in salary, they will be content until this new salary is the norm, and they need another increase to feel happy. Or if a celebrity looks great at a red carpet event once, fans will expect her to look even better next time to be satisfied with her appearance again. The problem with keeping up appearances is that with ever-increasing expectations, we can’t reach an undefined potential.

Works Cited:
“Social Media, Pretend Friends, and the Lie of False Intimacy.” Convince and Convert: Social Media Strategy and Content Marketing Strategy — Social Media Strategy Social Media Consulting Content Marketing Strategy Content Marketing Consulting. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2013. .