Blog Post 4 - Dissociation (Colby Harrison)

 Blog Post 4:

Since this post is our choice of topic, surprisingly, I am going to talk about social media. We all know social media distorts our perception of reality, as professor Herman put it, it puts a “veil overtop real life”, which I think is a perfect way to describe it. Anyways, I mainly want to talk about the dissociative side of the medium. It's something that our generation glosses over like a dumb headline in the news that actually turns out to be pretty important in the end. We are constantly projecting ourselves, our personality, into the virtual world where we can be whoever we want to do. That sentence itself feels like a utopian sci-fi film and I don't think we are far off from that. Regardless, we have become so preoccupied by who we are online that our sense of self in the real world begins to diminish and we begin to feel split between our virtual lives and our actual lives. 

Dissociation is the feeling of being disconnected from yourself or the world. It's a fascinating yet solemn phenomena that I guarantee we have all felt at some time in our lives. We begin to space out, wondering what we are doing and why we are doing this? Not only are we all already unsure of who we are, no one is in their early 20s and its fuckin scary, but here we have social media adding another layer of anxiety to spice up our lives further. At the surface level of the dissociative properties of social media, most would mainly address the artificiality of the medium, one that feeds into vanity and a false sense of reality that people carry due to social media. It's the ability to inflate oneself through social media that becomes the fuel to feed the machine of social media, running off of the egos and greed of its users. On the other side of this spectrum we have the insecure and anxiety ridden users of social media. I mention this because social media is built off of this duality of love and hate, eerily similar to the duality of dissociation brought on by the medium. 

Understanding the dissociative properties of social media as one that feeds the platform itself is already bad, but what's worse is the effect this leaves on the self. People have used social media as their way of “being” themselves to the world, making friends and connections along the way. But we ALL know that no one is genuine on social media. Most of the time it is nothing but an act, a projection of the self. You see the partiers, the pretty ones, the sporty ones, the thrifty ones, the edgy ones, the artsy ones, the outdoorsy ones, the aesthetic ones, the cooking ones, and so much more. Once again, at the surface level you might think that this is just a characterization of the things people like to do and that is 100% true. My concern comes from the fact that this is what people believe themselves to be. 

Sure these factors make up their sense of self but it's in the way they promote and market themselves as that person, because I can assure there is more to that person than just sports, or aesthetic shots of random buildings, or food photos, or whatever. It's the way which social media culture has forced humans to be conscious of their projected self online because this is what you will be remembered as. Social media has become a job portfolio in this sense, we all want to look good and are scared to look bad, reducing our amazing, multi-layered personality to photos of an alleyway you thought looked cool or an expensive meal that wasn't worth the price but looks cool. We become so concerned with how we look online that we become lost in real life when how we act doesn't line up with who we put online; DISSOCIATION. We have split our great individualistic nature into meaningless content to showcase to people online because of what, the etiquette of social media!?!?! 

Although this is somewhat pessimistic and I apologize for that, there is truth in what I am saying. We are all so unique, and interesting, and fun, and smart, and beautiful, and funny, yet due to the cruel restricting nature of social media, we have begun to forget these amazing parts of ourselves and dissociate from life and our sense of self. I miss the time when social media was casual and not the consuming and damaging force that it has become today. Let me know if you guys agree with what i mean or even disagree with me, I love talking about this stuff. I hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading.