Social Media to My 10 Year Old Self (Blog Post #3)
It’s quite hard to put into words how influential social media has been to the world we live in today. Social media has been the genesis for the mainstream boom of meme culture, the phenomenon of Minecraft and Fortnite, and has birthed a seemingly endless amount of other cultures. A decade ago, when I was 10 years old, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook were all less than five or six years old, and Instagram hadn’t even launched to the world yet. I didn’t even own a phone, which is a far cry from how it is in the present.
The challenge is to write a letter to ten year old me about the role social media is going to play on my future (or present) self. People around my age are in a special position, being born not necessarily into the “golden age” of social media that we live in now, but also young enough to become “early adopters” of the medium as opposed to it going under the radar. We had the chance to really see what social media was all about in its infancy, which is exciting, but also posed many challenges down the road, and will no doubt continue to in the future.
The main thing that I realized was that the internet has no filter in contrast to previous mass media. Comment sections, forums and blogs simply have no chill, due to online anonymity allowing people to vent and say things they may otherwise keep to themselves in the “real world.” Furthermore, people online are coming from all walks of life; they will have drastically different values, and ideas, which may conflict with your current ideologies. This will come in to play when I made my first YouTube Channel in 2012. My channel was quite small, with 500 subscribers before I “ended” it, but the point is that there was content being posted that was public to everybody, which opens it up for criticism. There are many great, and encouraging comments, but also many that are unfortunately the opposite. Especially as a content creator, you have to develop a thick skin, and be able to filter out the negativity, and focus on the positives. There are people out there, not just on YouTube, but on Twitter, Instagram, and more, that just mean to put people down. In this case, it’s simply better to ignore it than to engage in such negativity. Despite this, social media has brought me close to some other great content creators and people who care about the same subject matter, and these communities are something that should be held onto.
Although I was uploading videos relatively early on in my life, I was a late adopter to social media such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and I never touched Vine or Snapchat. The most important thing about these platforms, is that everything that goes into them, stays in them, regardless of if it is deleted on your side. It is always important to think about what you are posting before you are posting it; you never know who will see it, or dig it up. It could be a future employer, and could cost you a job or opportunity. In the year 2019 and beyond, social media plays a key role in your persona, whose reach and therefore repercussions are visible not only in the virtual world, but the physical as well.
At the time of writing, I have been more active in social media than ever before. I am currently trying to build my artist persona, DJ Randy Tee, which I am active in YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and SoundCloud (please check it out). Even though these platforms are separate, the way I use them are interconnected and attempt to build up each other. The world of social media has become increasingly complicated. People have found out how to play with algorithms to gain more clicks and reach. These algorithms are always changing, which requires more time and energy to stay up to date. If the world is moving in kilometers per hour, then social media is heading forward at lightspeed. Ultimately, social media is like a final boss with unlimited alternate forms; you can’t beat it, and sometimes it is best to simply put it down and give it a break.
