The Pressure to Perform Instead of Being Real Online

I watched a short clip yesterday that came to my mind immediately I read the prompt. It was about a young man promoting books that will help his audience make money after condemning some books, I recognised the condemned ones, though I'm yet to read them. But that's not the point here.

I noticed something about this young man but didn't want to feel weird thinking about such when I look at a random person on social media, so I went down to the comment section. What I saw there were all craziness and more people pretending to be who they really are not, crazy!

I saw comments like "Has these your recommended books helped you become a billionaire?", "you should show us proof that reading these books will get you rich" and more like that. It will make a lot of sense why they were saying all that in the comments if you see him.

More than looking unkempt and almost not serious, I noticed how he was trying so hard to blend in to what social media wants... Fakes. He seemed like he had just gone through some brief difficult situations before he set his phone for a recording, makes me wonder about his real life.

That got me wondering if I really want to be on camera growing my social media page because I'm seeking for validation or some sort of approval from people. I know I've got something to give to my audience should I grow my pages but it's only a very thin line between doing it for the impact I'll make and doing it to seek approval.

So yeah, that's one of the main reasons people feel the need to hide their true selves. They think that showing who they really are will bring lots of disvalidation because people do think differently. It's a sad situation but there are still people out there who are being real and people love them.

I think the use of AI have raised the standards even high that people even fear to show their processes, their real lives and their real thoughts on a topic. We'd think it should be the opposite but that's not the case at all. To be real in this era takes a lot of courage and I wish it for every one.

The only way I think we can encourage more honest and open selves is by being less of critics and more of genuinely loving the real ones because there are still real ones out there. It's almost easy to spot them with the fakes too many, especially now. Let's encourage the few.