Ep. 2 - You Matter Too!

Welcome back to the conversation. For the past week, I have just been purging things that are no longer necessary. Normally, when it comes to clothing I'm pretty good at this. I look at my closet and if there is a garment or something I have not worn in 6 months to a year, I throw it in a bag and donate it to Goodwill. I've had that habit since I was a college student.

But what about social media? As we continue into the future, AI technology and social media networks will continue to evolve and be apart of our daily life. I am from the generation that introduced the world wide web and social messaging. I still remember and have experience of complete social engagement offline. I notice newer generations do almost all of their social engagement ONLINE outside of personal calls, texts and face to face convos.


This has created a level of importance to "social media" identity my generation never had to deal with. As long as we knew who we were AND what we were about we didn't care as much about what was happening online. It was not our entire world and it definitely wasn't the end of our worlds if something happened online that didn't go in our favor.


In this era, your social media profile is THE BIBLE to how you should be perceived publicly in the world. People don't even care if some of your posts and content include gags. What you see is what you get and people are free to just take it and run with it.


It began when baby boomers and beyond hopped on to Facebook. Suddenly, being fake or presenting a "well-manicured" profile presentation became a necessity cause you always conduct yourself a certain way around your parents or other people's parents. When it was "just us kids" having a laugh, creating inside jokes within our friend groups or embracing our bodies and individuality it was BETTER.


Then, social media got less "social" and more corporate because people started seeing the ways to make money with it. I'm all for capitalism and enterprise 100%! However, the LOVE of money has sent social media to the pits. I blame the Baby Boomers because that generation didn't grow up on video games and virtual reality gadgets.


The Baby Boomer generation definitely gave us one of the best music eras ever BUT it was largely because they could not separate reality from fantasy. Which is wild and ironic because LSD and other drugs were popularized in their era. I'm compassionate because they had lots of heavy stuff happening in their developmental years. They were the generation that saw assassinations happen like wrestling matches - Malcolm X, MLK, John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. Imagine growing up during a time your President got his face shot off on TELEVISION...yikes! So it's understandable why that generation journeyed through life afraid of everything and inflicted fear onto their children.


"I'll never forget when my dad first found my FaceBook page (which was a platform that started for college students only) and criticized my posts because 'I'll never keep a job if they see it' and I told him to the contrary "It gets me the jobs I want! Only jobs I don't want would care THAT much about my social media". It was a very true and bold statement! I met casting directors via my original facebook page. My Twitter account "trending topics" comments led to work referrals for stand up comedy gigs and writing gigs. I even saw my peers getting booked for things solely based off their funny content and perspective online. Like that year (2016 I think) Leslie Jones got HIRED to tweet her reactions to the Olympics in real time. She did it for years prior just cause she liked the Olympics and all of the comedians live tweet and discuss their fave shows. She was killing it on the standup circuit and NBC loved her tweets then BOOM. She also became an SNL cast member. That's just one example, I had a colleague Johnny Loquasto who went on tour to host bands and events based off his twitter account. Now things have changed!


Gen Z and beyond do not know of any other reality where people ARE NOT posting their highlight reels and "well-manicured" profile presentations. So Gen-Zers trap themselves into living up to everyone else's fantasies and expectations. NOW, your social media profile can mean life or death for you because if something happens to you and you were not posting consistently ANYBODY can pretend to be an insider and "have an inside scoop of what really happened" and it doesn't have to be true. Now salacious WINS! If it's sounds juicy, who cares if it's true, people will make it seem true - and they got the technology to do it!


Now employers are all online. Every major company you can think of at least has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn. Now your social media can't afford to be non-manicured UNLESS you are rich and don't need these companies money. Now more than ever this is pressure TO CARE about what you present online. Long gone are the days when you could enjoy random free-for-alls online because you had YOUR REAL LIFE and YOUR ONLINE ACCOUNT to HAVE FUN. Now, the creeps are more rampant online and they have taken the fun and replaced it with danger and evil recklessness. Now everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law or conference room you don't even have to be in!


So today's takeaway to stay sane in this crazy world is remembering who you are and the fact that your life matters. If you want to have fun in this crazy world by all means do so as much as you can without hurting anyone or hurting yourself. Part of staying sane, is staying safe! When you feel confident that what you are doing is not causing harm to you or anyone else you can relax more. Information is power and so is energy. Sometimes in our efforts to be seen and heard by the right people, we end up inviting all the wrong people to our online "Ted Talks" and slideshows. You cannot control what people do with your posts but you can control how much information you give them and how much energy you waste with them.


I've decided to purge social media posts like I give away clothes to Goodwill lol. Social media brought some uncanny changes to my life, finances and work environments. As much as I hated and complained about the obstacles that were formed, I also had to take accountability for the role I played in it. I had to realize I had a conscious and an unconscious role I played. I went through a period of time where I survived brushes with death and used social media as a way to combat people trying to rewrite my life story and identity. I combatted it for almost 7 years and realized my last 2 years online, I posted mostly as a trauma response. It served a purpose for a period of time but it also had negative affects that were not so helpful.


Part of my healing was in getting back to why I even used social media in the first place. It was a digital town square to have a laugh with people, discuss politics, music and social trends, drop my 2 cents and chuck the deuces. I had to realize as painful as some of my experiences were... NOBODY CARES! I'm not saying that in a woe is me kinda way either. It's just a fact that NOBODY CARES they are too busy caring about what's going on in their lives and healing or avoiding their own pain. I never went through life expecting people to be responsible for me - not even my parents. So there is just no reason to have a presentation of content that doesn't clearly represent who I am and who I wanna be.


So my solution was simple. Now, I go through all my profiles and ask " Do I still need this post?" "Is this post a real representation of how I am?" "Does this post clearly promote my business?" "Do I really need to do this much explaining in this caption?" The second the answer is "No", I delete. Good Riddance. Whoever coined the term, "The Art of GoodBye" was a genius. There is indeed an art to it. Letting go of anything because you realized/decided it is impeding progress and happiness is a beautiful feeling. In fact it feels so beautiful, it makes you wonder why do we bog ourselves down with so many mundane, non-purposeful things? If we're truthful, it's usually because we are trying to uphold someone else's expectation of us. What is your expectation of YOU? Why is YOUR EXPECTATION OF YOU any less important or urgent as other expectations? Give yourself a break. Give yourself peace. Give more love to yourself in whatever way you can cause you matter. Everything WILL go on without you. However, without you how much can it really matter?


I'll leave ya'll with this. A former college friend of mine used to have this saying that I thought was hilarious but irresponsible when we met. He was late to EVERYTHING! When he showed up he would shrug and say, "Nothing starts until I get there". I would argue that lateness was disrespectful to other people's time. He would counter argue, "if something is going on and I play no major role in it OR it was gonna happen anyway with or without me being there, then the part of the event/experience I was meant to partake in doesn't begin until I get there". Nearly 20 years later, I totally agree with his point.


The world still spins whether we do something or not and NOTHING WE DO can interfere with this action. No matter how crazy this world gets or your life gets, there is only one you and you deserve love and there is an unconditional supply of it every time you take a breath or see a new day cause God loves you.
-Love,
Your Favorite Behavioral Analyst Comedian and Happiness Cheerleader,
AaronaTheVirgo


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