A Sport of Numbers

The one thing that can be negative about rowing, is that it is number oriented. Why is this such a bad thing you ask... its because it defines who you are. One of the first questions rowers ask each other is, "what is your 2k?" asking for your erg time or what your split is. Sometimes if you have a good test piece, or good workout rowers love to post it on their social media accounts for other rowers to see. This way it does not feel like you are directly bragging about your erg scores, but you know that your whole rowing network can see it. This is extremely popular among rowers in posting their workouts to make them selves feel validated in their speed with people's comments and likes. I am not afraid to say I have done this before and I know several of my teammates have too. It makes you feel good about yourself when other rowers compliment you on consistency, speed or completion of a hard workout. It is almost like gaining respect from other rowers because you had a fast piece. I have even taken down a story from my Instagram account that was a picture of my erg screen because I was not getting enough responses about it. I hate that I am like this, but I know a lot of people do the same. This particular phenomenon is seen with normal social media posts. For example, people will post pictures but then later delete the post because it does not have enough likes or comments on it.

This is the one erg picture I posted and then took down because no one responded, and I did not feel good or fast enough

A lot of my blog posts about social media have been positive aspects, and a lot of conversations that start in my class are about social media in a positive light. I think this is a good week to spice things up and talk about social media in a negative light. This week my professor provided our class with several articles that talked about social media and the negative effects it has on my generation, even referring to us as the "selfie generation". Even though I personally o not post selfies on my social media accounts (mostly because I don't have that type of self confidence), I have a lot of friends who do, and to be honest they are not all friends, but just followers. One of the most negative aspects about social media is that it is numbers oriented; its about how many followers you have, how many likes, how many comments, your followers to following ratio. It is an obsession with my generation, people rate each others popularity and likeness based on these numbers. When using social media, people can construct another layer of self hood that feeds on likes, shares and followers for its existence, but that does not reflect an accurate portrayal of the individual’s true nature. I can list several people from high school that have over a thousand followers on Instagram but in real life they do not have many true friends. Having this mask of almost a fake version of your self can make maintaining relationships etc extremely difficult. The seeds of maturity and depth are left un-sown while superficiality remains the play of the day. Identity formation ends up lagging sorely behind, or worse, it becomes distorted.

Now I want to talk about something specific on social media and that is posting a certain picture or selfie and the reasoning behind it. I feel like a lot of the time when you ask someone in person why they posted a picture a typical response ends up being "to update friends and family". But if you think about it, not many people have family members on social media. So why do people post it? As hard as this is to admit sometimes, some reasons include jealousy, increase followers, to get the most likes, or to impress people with their social life. I have definitely thought about these reasons multiple times when posting my pictures. What concerns me more about “perfect” selfies and “perfect” Instagram photos is that they can make you miserable. Seeing all those photos can make you feel like you’re missing out on life, or like you’re not good enough. The search for Instagram fame makes people do stupid things, from going into debt to illegal activities. Reading the articles that our professor shared with us I read it in denial, and was very defensive about the points they made. After some reflection and thinking about the way my older sister interacts with social media, I found that I part of this self-esteem movement and I am in the "selfie generation". I am not proud of it, but I can't help it. American politician John Vasconcellos believed that increasing self-esteem was like a “vaccine for a disease,” which could protect people from being overwhelmed by life’s challenges. Since the early ‘90s, when the self-esteem movement blossomed, the data shows that narcissism among young people is constantly rising. According to the New Yorker, “it’s one of the ways that the millennial generation was built. At the end of the day the deep need my generation has is to be validated, valued, and loved. In the end, we are just searching for it in the wrong place.