Social Media - A British Perspective

As mentioned in the intro post, I have recently watched through the Netflix Documentary 'Social_Animals' and this is a movie which follows three teens through their experiences with social media in the USA. Now, I know for a start that the US always does things bigger than the UK, so the issues, use etc. is blown more out of proportion over the pond so don't expect such drama over here.

I started my foray into social media a long, long time ago, even then I believe I was late to the game among my peers. I believe it started with a probably long forgotten website called Bebo. I honestly don't remember a huge amount about this website or my goings on (memories are a wonderful by elusive thing it would seem), but it should shed some light on the fact that I am from that generation which has literally grown up alongside social media. I was pretty much there from the early years of the craze.

Bebo didn't last long before Myspace popped around and took the world by storm. It was the must have thing, and not only did you have to have the usual (lots of friends, likes, comments etc.) but you had to have the best, most interactive or customized background with the coolest music embedded into your site. I have fond memories of Myspace, not only was it a place which you could express yourself in many many ways, but it was a place to find new music which, before Youtube was about, was only really able to be done by word of mouth, or magazines with free CDs in.

Then Zuckerberg came about and brought in Facebook. Suddenly is wasn't ok to have Myspace anymore and you had to reinvent yourself in a much more basic tone for Facebook. Facebook is now the main bit of social media I have. I've played about with Twitter, Instagram etc. but to someone who isn't keen to broadcast much publicly about their lives, the new guise of social media is not something I really get involved with.

How I use social media goes against pretty much everything that is 'cool' or 'popular'. I am not one of those glitzy girls who posts countless selfies or photos of little clothing in a alluring pose, neither am I one of the guys who posts pictures or their muscles and boasting about their gym exploits. I am not a hipster who is not content with a dinner or plate of food unless it is pictured and posted on their many accounts prior to the plate of food actually fulfilling its main purpose of providing the body with fuel. I don't have countless 'friends' and don't post pictures for the sole purpose for getting likes.

I literally have just the people I know on Facebook. You know, the likes of old school friends, university friends, old colleagues I have moved on from and wanted to stay in contact and friends of the spouse. Although there are often friend requests from others I see little point in accepting random people into what is pretty much a documentary of my life.

I post photos of my experiences, days out with friends, holidays, sport events I have been to and wonderful sights I want to remember. I post the odd selfie of my spouse and I of date nights or others times we go out and about from our abode. The posts and pictures held on my account our memories of my life, nicely set out in date order and of which Facebook now reminds me with a nice set of memories from each day. These memories, be it photos or status updates are there for one purpose only, and that is for my own pleasure. I do not care what others think of my page, posts or pictures and luckily I have never been part of the world of horrid comments which shows that the world seems to reciprocate those feelings.

There are some embarrassing photos up on the page of my early days, my haircuts are shameful and my years in university with shoulder length hair are beyond horrific. But they are my life events and are what made me, me. They are the sort of pictures you look through and laugh about with friends, loved ones and one day maybe the kids. I see it as the modern day photo albums, like the ones my parents pull out with baby pictures of me so the spouse could laugh at them.

I am in the point of my life where I am beginning to take stock of my life and where I am. I am beginning to realize I do not want nor need attention from random people on the internet and am perfectly happy in my life without the stress of the online community of trolls and keyboard warriors. I have had a youtube channel set up for a while and am one of those small time channels ~1000 subs and I take the approach with the comment section where if the comment has no context or is just plain rude it will not be accepted and I delete it without any further thoughts about it.

But, having said all this, it seems that I am in the minority with this sort of thinking. In the modern world going on out there without me, this beast of Social Media is running amok.

A Foray into the Unknown

Obviously, I am new to the blogging community and generally figure that I have the sort of life which doesn't warrant blogging about. But recently I have decided to give this thing a go, if not only as a nice way of airing out frustrations with life in England, commuting in London or other minor annoyances of the modern day world.

So just to set the scene, I have grown up with technology, having gone through the early years of social media site such as bebo, myspace and facebook but have never had a sizable following (or ever a meager one for that matter!). I am past all the school years, university and am now into, what is called, adult life with a house and a spouse. I'm one of those quiet people, shying away from the attention, lurking in the corners of rooms and avoiding social occasions at almost all cost, probably the sort of quiet person others say are always the ones to watch... however, if you did there wouldn't be a whole lot to see.

I have had a good life so far, good education, stable close group of friends and a wonderful fulfilling relationship which is still going as strong as it was 10 years ago. I went to Uni to study engineering and came away with a boring 2:1 degree which lead me to the (realistic) job I wanted as a kid. Reading that back as I type it, life has been very good, so you'd think there wouldn't be a huge amount to complain about, but this is the modern era we are talking about. First world problems are the biggest and most numerously talked about and serious issues are ignored and passed up. People seem to care more about what 'celebrities' are up to than what their own friends or family are.

I love my tech and the buzz of the internet, but I have never got a handle on the pull of social media. I have used the early starters in the 90s and 00s before facebook took a handle on the title. I have toyed with the idea of twitter, but the thought of having to vocalize everything little thing in my head for the world to see seemed 1) scary, 2) inappropriate and 3) boring as hell for anyone to view. I've looked many times into how to create vlogs on youtube, constantly reading over 'how to create a successful blog' posts and reviews but then coming to the realization that 1) I need a decent personality for it, 2) I need a better and more audible voice, and 3) I need to be better looking and more memorable/likable, so decided that it was not a good idea.

So that is a little about me to set up this blog space, I know it hasn't really delved much into the potential on-goings of this blog, topics or the likes but I will keep this space fluid to suit my needs and maybe those of the readers.

I can mention though, the 2nd post will be on the topic of social media, especially after watching the Netflix show Social_Animals.