It feels like social media fakeness is seeping through into real life more and more. and every one is working harder on perfecting their façade ?
what do you think ?
We live in a simulation, so everything has always been 100% fake.
Post-pandemic, I started to value my privacy a little more, leading me to put up more of a wall of separation between my “public persona” and my real life. Not sure if this applies to others as well.
I’m with you in this one. The more I learn about internet privacy, the more I distance both.
From Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything:
For instance, if Pinker is correct, then any sane person who had to choose between (a) the violent chaos and abject poverty of the ‘tribal’ stage in human development and (b) the relative security and prosperity of Western civilization would not hesitate to leap for safety. But empirical data is available here, and it suggests something is very wrong with Pinker’s conclusions.
Over the last several centuries, there have been numerous occasions when individuals found themselves in a position to make precisely this choice – and they almost never go the way Pinker would have predicted. Some have left us clear, rational explanations for why they made the choices they did.
Graeber goes on to give a couple of these accounts. They tend to mention a loneliness associated with “western civilization,” as well as a feeling that I think lines up very well with what Marx described as alienation.
Some emphasized the virtues of freedom they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and wealth.
Later in the book, and I apologize that I can’t find the reference right now, he comes back to this topic for a little bit, and talks about the depths of relationships that these people describe, and how their relationships in the “civilized” world are more shallow and less satisfying. Deep human relationships are the opposite of fake, so I think here we have a point in favor of “yes.”
Add to that that the concept of “privacy” as we know it is relatively new. It’s been 10+ years since I read a book about this, the title of which I can’t even remember, but it argued that the expectation of domestic privacy, even from one’s own family, is a phenomenon from the last few hundred years, especially outside the elite. People lived far, far more communally, with the expectation that they just were in each other’s business more. I’d argue that it’s a lot harder to be fake if you can’t hide who you really are.
Between those two things, I think it’s reasonable to argue that yes, society has gotten more fake.
Anyone can watch videos of some african villages being visited by outsiders and how happy the local population generally appear. There’s a ton of negative stuff for those people to deal with, but I think there’s something to be said about the benefits of communal living no matter how much I try to convince myself it’s fine being by myself.
What if, let’s say, that person has something to hide… nothing dangerous or that might cause harm to others, something that society frowns upon. My reasoning is that, it would be OK to be “fake” in those circumstances.
I think it’s becoming more see-thru. More fake … what’s an example of a non-fake society?
Yes.
Because 20 years of social media have programed people to behave in very fake, upvote/like/positive attention dopamine reward center overdriving manners of actions to maximize attention and reward.
Capitalism. It’s not fake, it’s just a commodity, now.
Meh, social media has been fake for years. To be sure, recent increases in advertising enabled the whole “influencer” activity to become profitable and thus capitalistic, but everyone online has been faking their social media presence since Myspace.
All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.
Nah, we use to call that keeping up with the Jonses.
As in misinformation and decimation of fictitious information yes social media has given everyone a megaphone. It’s also easier to find people who have similar conspiratorial views and spiral down into believing and contributing to fake news etc. and the general feeling that you can trust something to be real and not something yelled at you from a big megaphone.
As with individuals, I’m not sure where I read it first and I don’t feel like googling it now but…
Everyone has three selves: a public persona, a private persona and a personal persona.
Public is strait forward it’s the face/mask/personality one has in public with strangers, acquaintances, and some work colleagues.
Private is your personality with very close friends and family. Things you would not do or say in public but would around your close circle.
Personal is the inner you that you share with no one. Your inner thoughts, your conscience, your inner voice and inner monologue.
This is generally by a spectrum that blend into one another and change over time rather than three separate buckets. As you get older and more aware of these different perspectives some people act more like they are buckets not a spectrum. These people seem much more fake especially if you ever see their public and private personas. You may have just seen this for the first time.
You touched on something that makes sense, but for me personally it takes more than just having different public vs private personas for a person to seem fake.
Many people naturally have a different demeanor or way of interacting in public than private, which doesn’t necessarily make them seem fake. What feels fake is when you can pick up on a deliberate or curated public persona, especially if it’s being done deceptively or for some material gain.
People used to believe that leeches could suck the illness out of you. There’s always been someone selling bullshit.
If you mean specifically the outward appearance to a general audience, the term “Keeping up with the Joneses” has been around for ~110 years ( https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/01/keeping-up-with-the-joneses.html ).
I don’t know what you mean by ‘fake.’ Do you mean people have a different public persona than a private persona? Because I think that’s been true for most of the history of civilization.
Pretty much as soon as we hit the agrarian revolution and started developing spirit/charisma/mana/face.
Older than that. I, as a layman, suspect it might be one of the points that indicate the development of conscious thought.
Because Chimps, Cuttlefish and Crows can and do lie to each other in the wild.
Chimps will cheat on each other(i.e. a non-dominant male in a group will pair off with a female chimp, but the female chimp remains paired to the more dominant male of the group. Even going so far that the “other guy” will shield his erection from the first guy to avoid a beating.
Large Cuttlefish males will create and defend “harems” of female cuttlefish during their breeding periods. Smaller male cuttlefish are known to pretend to be female to sneak into a harem and mate with them.
Crows will make false caches of food if they suspect they are being watched by another crow.Oh for sure. We already had complex social relationships that involved lying when we were only homo erectus and likely incapable of speech and were hunting full grown elephants and hippopotami(yeah, simple stone tools against those monsters required some serious teamwork). I think that creating a social face for those you DON’T know, though, had to come about once we were in a situation where there were people we interacted with that we didn’t know. Hunter/gatherer societies generally still operated with too much of a cohesion for you to truly be “fake”.
I’ve found everyone to always be fake (In public).
Simmer down Holden Caulfield
Hahaha that’s a good one
Ya know…you probably aren’t wrong now that I think of it. Gonna go compare myself to that character because I am quite cynical.
You might want to change your social media habits?
You are right, but it maybe due to how easy the access to these small amount of people has become
Influencers/charmers were always a thing, was it not?
Influencers/charmers were always a thing, was it not?
Maybe, but not to the extent they are today.
You are right, but it maybe due to how easy the access to these small amount of people has become
Access to them is easier?
There’s a reason “fake it until you make it” is so popular.
Idk if you consider this fake or not, but there’s considerably more plastic surgery, Botox, veneers, teeth bleaching, and appearance oriented behaviors these days. Especially in movies, but also in real life. There’s not a single actor with natural teeth now, except for Steve Buschimi. Even he probably bleaches his teeth. You used to see people everywhere as they were naturally. Now it’s very common to see people who have had cosmetic procedures done. There’s also a lot more bodybuilding and body sculpting now. That one is possibly a positive, since it contributes to a person’s overall health. Go watch a movie from the 70’s. The actors look like real people. Now every actor looks like digitally sculpted perfection.
I think no. On social media, yes, sure. But otherwise no, the past was more tightly controlled societies. Fashion had less freedom, behavior was controlled from top down more, there was way more conformity to styles and in enforcement of all sorts of things. There was always makeup, foundation garments, heeled shoes, etc.
I do think the technology has improved though, people can get closer to their ideal look. But I don’t feel like I have to participate in that world, nor do my kids. One of my sisters, and her daughter and family do live that “highlights reel” life but not many people I know do live like that, and I guess the main difference to me is I don’t feel like I have to.
