To live happy, live hidden?

“Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés” a popular quote in France. The same quote my friend told me over the phone a while back, while we were discussing the ups and downs of social media posting and addiction to it. A quote that I think resonates more than ever and highlights our (my? society’s?) double-edged relationship with these platforms.

Your invitation to get lost in thoughts

I use social media every day. In my personal life mostly to chat with my long-distance friends, and check what they publish and how life is going for them. As a person living abroad, who has lived in many different places and met so many lovely people along the way, social media is essential to keeping those relationships, in a sense.

It gives this feeling of belonging and closeness, enables us to keep in touch, and gives us something to talk about. Whether the old-fashioned way, with Facebook messenger, or scrolling through Insta feeds- which I guess is old-fashioned these days- and commenting here and there. It’s mostly positive and warm and fuzzy. It does what it is meant to do: connect. Which is key when your entourage is scattered all around the planet.

As for the professional side, I’ve worked for the best part of the last years in digital marketing: copywriting, creating content and social media strategies, publishing, and redistributing said content on all platforms. Beforehand I worked in the journalism industry, also fiddling around with good old Twitter and anything online-related. These days I’m in the early stages of freelance life. All of these mean hours and hours spent on social media.

As a result, I’m ever-present and connected, for professional as well as personal purposes. Which fuels a love-hate, twisted and strange relationship.

Let’s start with the personal. Despite all the good sides mentioned above, how many times have I decided I would cut my usage or delete myself from social media? Hard to count. How many times have I ended in doomscrolls or on stories from people I should have unfollowed years ago? More often than I care to admit. I’m confident to say that you have probably experienced the same at some point.

During that phone call I mentioned in the intro, I was ranting about the fact I post too often and check my Insta multiple times a day. And that the relationship to social media was unhealthy because it made me feel unhappy. The next day, I was back on it, answering messages, checking old friends’ stories, and publishing some crap.One day happy, the next angry, the third sad, the fourth happy again.

I’ve deactivated notifications, set blockers, and deleted apps from my phone, but I do come back to it, always. And, even if I wanted to do it for my personal accounts, I still manage professional accounts(for my own freelancing business and my clients). So no deleting for me as it is part of my livelihood.

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Let’s deep dive into social media from a professional perspective. Back in the days (adopting a boomer tone here), Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook were the absolute masters of social media. You needed to crack the Facebook algorithm, develop communities on YouTube, and, according to one lecturer I had once at University, post 30+ times a day on Twitter. Only that. But it did bring lots of results, a strong audience, and a fantastic network of professionals.

Then Instagram came into the picture, a bit of Snapchat as well, and the game changed. Lots of pictures, lots of influencers, and even more content. TikTok and its videos are currently shaping and leading the social media world, while a bunch of other platforms quickly rise: Twitch, Discord, and let’s mention anything web3 related.

And, my personal pet peeve, LinkedIn. The platform where a strange, almost comical mixture of personal and professional takes place, where golden content hides among tons of trash.

These days, everyone is a warrior, a fairy, a wizard, or a magician. Posts are published for the sake of publishing daily, with little to no substance to them. It’s like a posting marathon. And, the personal becomes used to sell the professional.

Marketing has always used an element of personal, emotions being key to selling, but on LinkedIn, it takes a whole other dimension.

Professional posts are not only about your product or how great your business is but how x,y,z person learned a supposed life lesson from meeting a dog in the street. How your company is the best because they gave you one day of grieving when your relative died.

How you just made 40k of revenue by selling a PDF about SEO magic tricks which your kid taught you with their first babble.

(Notice the LinkedIn structure there? Super short paragraphs one after the other)

Let’s say that LinkedIn has been the goutte d’eau qui a fait déborder le vase (“ the straw that broke the camel’s back”) concerning my own experience with social media.

I do feel overwhelmed by the fact that every single part of real-life seems to have an online component. Potential for it at least. You still chose whether you post a story, a reel, or a LinkedIn update. Personal private life is up to you to share.

What overwhelms me here is that now professional life has to be showcased online and made quite personal to be recognised and valued. You have to be available online at all times. At least that is how it feels. Personal life is now at the service of this online professional persona. And you need to fuel this online (fake?) personal/professional persona at all times.

It is consistent with the 2.0 hustle culture we live in. If you are given too much work, simply work on your personal self to have better stress management. You are the one at fault, not the amount of work. (This is ironic of course).

In the same line, “work smart, not hard”. You know, you are the problem! Not the ever-greedy economy. All these wannabe stoic gurus love to explain to you that you are responsible for your working conditions, your personal response to stress, etc., which is quite an efficient tool to move away from the responsibilities of external factors and bad management when it comes to burnout and other woes.

But I digress. This is for another time. Back to social media platforms for professional purposes. I’ve myself succumbed to the sirens of posting something half personal (my favourite childhood books) on LinkedIn and peppered the mix with emojis. The results from it were some lovely conversations, but also a lot of anxiety, notifications that required attention, and pressure to follow up.

I only did so to try and stay relevant. And I despise the fact that I have to sell myself on those platforms in the shape of personal branding. I already have my personal social media for my friends and it is hard enough to manage it like that.

I have this strong feeling that mostly extraverted people thrive in that environment, and that people who like to keep discreet are pushed aside by it. Same as in the normal professional world, school, and lots of areas in life. To live happily, live hidden, but at your own professional and personal risk. Cut social media but lose that contact with your friends. Cut social media and use your biggest marketing and networking opportunity.

Aie aie aie is this a long article. Bear with me, almost over. 🌞

The point of this post is to think about this: is a life hidden from social media a happier life? Would it hurt personally with FOMO and lost friendships to be off all social platforms, would it truly hurt professionally as well?

I like to imagine myself without any of those platforms on my phone, using my free time to pursue creative endeavours, reading, practising pole, and meditating. I’d love to get clients magically coming to my emails, to only network in real life and not compete with the entire planet online. But would that make me happy? Is it doable if I want to keep personal contact and find clients? Not too sure about that.

So I guess the idea is to build a healthier relationship with them and accept from time to time that the doom algorithm made to make me overuse them is just very good at what it is doing.

What are your thoughts, and your coping strategies?