Exercising Demons Part 2 🏃♂️🏃
So now that I have one demon: wanting attention, as I discovered in my previous post, I can address it plainly and feed it. "Hello demon, you need attention let me give it to you." I think what I failed to mention in the previous post was the meal I like to cook for this demon is self love. Very potent for satiating this one.
Now lets talk more about social media experiences, there are other demons that need to be found and ran around.
I think getting attention is one thing but being validated is an entirely other level. There is being watched and then there is being seen. Did someone see what I wrote or post and did they relate? Did they respond or react? How did it make them feel? How will I ever know? Enter...
Quantitative Validation
I think facebook really popularized it with the concept of likes (This blog platform even has a version of this... I'll address that later!). A way to give and receive positive interaction with a click of a button. I think about this a lot and how in some ways it is equal parts a blessing and a curse. The feeling of acceptance, a feeling that you belong and are loved, that what you do and say matters, you can give and receive that feeling instantaneously to anyone, anywhere and it actually truly gives you dopamine. That in it's own right is amazing! Yet there's a darkness here.
Validation for me in the real world is nuanced and it comes with such a range of experiences where as in social media validation in the form of likes is the simplest user based action and a number. The lizard brain wants bigger number. It's wild to consider that "your writing changed my life" and "I acknowledge you exists" are the same button press. I don't know if people ever get to talk about this but there are instances I have had looking at something I posted on social media and feeling disappointed it didn't receive a certain number of likes. I'll catch myself unconsciously checking a post I just made multiple times to see if anyone responded or booped a like button. I WANT THAT DOPAMINE DAMNIT. This is starting to enter the territory of addiction. Not only that, I am now willing to change my behavior to get that dopamine, and repeated failures to do so will bring me to depression. The original intention of posting something to share with people is now totally lost. All of what I have just said, I have experienced and tried to escape it and yet I still do it!
Right now it's letterboxd, I'll write a review of a film I've watched, post it, check the post, check it 4 to 5 times for the next few days, see if it got any likes. It's low stakes but I'm still going through the learned motions social media has trained me on. There's this other thing that has crypt in though, vanity.
Letting Go or Grabbing Tighter?
I often think writing is a great way to get rid of thoughts cluttering your head and let go of things in order to move on but recently I've found myself rereading my reviews over and over again. Is this madness? Is this narcissism? I think a little bit and a couple of other things. I think it's validating the validation or lack there of. Checking if what I wrote makes sense or rings true. Writing for me about feelings or how something felt or what an experiences was like is an attempt to make the ephemeral concrete. There's a strong desire to re-feel what was felt and so through reading my writing I can attempt this impossible act, of feeling something again through a memory. It's kinda like nostalgia but probably more closely tied to sentimentality.
OK, so that's good for today we've got a couple more Demons: wanting attention, wanting validation, social media addiction, vanity, sentimentality. I guess there will be a part 3!