Alice Vol. 3 No. 2

By Kallen Sebastian
Social media is like when you were a kid
and your mom had guests over and you had
to clean your entire house from top to bottom.
It was ridiculous. Your house is a complete
disaster for 95 percent of your life, but
when you have guests over, any trace of disarray
or normality must be drowned in Windex.
We put our best foot forward for people
who don’t get a front-row seat to the day-today
action, and social media works the same
way, except it’s not just your house, and it’s
not just 5 percent of your life. It’s you. All the
time. Always.
“I think social media can definitely be misrepresentative,”
said Sarah Willen, a nursing
student at The University of Alabama. “I
find myself looking on the Explore page and
see girls traveling all over the world and living
these extravagant lives, and I don’t think
it honestly represents the average teenage
life. It brings out a lot of envy in me.”
In Los Angeles, an American cultural
epicenter and perhaps the capital of social
media celebrities, this problem seems to
be magnified.
“Celebrities wouldn’t be celebrities without
social media these days,” said Anna
Dearen, a student at the Fashion Institute of
Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles. “If
you were to ask someone who their favorite
celebrity is, they probably wouldn’t name
an actor or producer. It’s going to be a person
with a huge following on social media.”
We are intrigued by those we believe
to have a unique or ridiculous life. Unlike
traditional news or social channels, social
media makes us feel like we’re getting that
front row seat.
“When you follow a person for so long on
social media, you feel like you know them,”
said Dearen. “But what people put on social
media is the very best version of themselves.
You really don’t know that person at all.”
Working primarily in public relations, I
find myself at the crossroads of honesty and
ego on a regular basis. I know the ins and
outs of developing social media platforms
but I have found some employers hold the
same standard to my personal accounts. I’m
expected to use my personal life as a portfolio
- clean it up, make it professional. Put
my best foot forward, so to speak. But filtering
what I post and how I appear often
comes at the expense of candor.
“Social media has fully taken over modeling,”
said Dearen, who is also an aspiring
model. “You will not get booked if you aren’t
big on social media. For people who are
already ‘famous’ on social media, it makes
it super easy to transition into modeling.
I don’t use my selfies to show clients but
I’m pretty positive all agencies look you
up online.”
To be successful, we have to be filtered.
People outside of communications, the
arts or modeling get a bit more leeway, of
course. Surgeons can’t exactly show off their
latest patient masterpieces, but some of us
are expected to.
Perhaps this is why the quality of (or at
least the effort put into) photos on Instagram
seems to have exponentially increased
over the last five years and being a “social
media influencer” has suddenly become an
attainable career. It also helps explain the
rise of celebrities like the Kardashians.
Kim Kardashian has 106 million followers
on Instagram and frequently takes
to the platform to promote her family’s
television show, her own clothing, jewelry
and perfume lines, as well as her modeling
experiences. Her social media platforms
are her voice and her business and
they are meticulously curated to promote
her brand. Kim Kardashian has raised
the social media bar and many now try to
achieve or surpass it to attain her level of
notoriety and wealth.
Alice Spring 2018 43