Microessay: Social Media in the Era of the Wolf - A Call to Aura Farm
Throughout the years, social media has gained the reputation of a chaos rune. Something which, if stared at too long, inevitably drives one mad. A counter-function tool, an isolation engine voluntarily hyper-segregating its users into ever nicher sub-communities. There's a millennial cannon that, by definition, social media drives its user to present an ideal version of themselves, of their lives. An illusory idea that everyone else is living tremendous lives, and it is you alone who struggles and slogs through daily gelatinous mundanity. This is, or perhaps was, true; but only representative of the second major era of social media. The first era defined by forums and IM-based services, your Something Awfuls. The second era is the most traditional, the ever-battle between MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, concluding in the eventual near monopoly of Facebook cum Meta. The third era, in which we find ourselves now, is an era of the wolf, of hyper-nicheification. Various services and companies seeking increasingly obscure ecosystems in which they can be the Big Dog. The millennial cannon fails in the third era because it ushers in some depreciated, democratized idea of influencerdom. In the third era of social media, anyone can be an influencer for anything, and maybe, it's actually all pretty lame.
The response to influencer-style posting becoming cringe is the labored cyclical journey back to Earnesty-Posting. What social media can now front-face is not an ideal lifestyle, but a cultivated and performative sense of taste. Taste which certainly earns one an alt, goth, emo, bisexual, e-girl girlfriend. In the third era, social media is meant to center not tastefully edited bikini pictures from whatever recent vacation, but your letterboxd top 4. Keep an eye on every movie I watch, every album I listen to, every book I read. Notably, not every videogame I play, as those aren't art. Check out my latest run! Look, I logged the birth of my child in Strava! Please, refer to the graph, if you'd be so kind.
Besides the clear concern of cultivating such a tidy data packet of interests, locations, likes, dislikes, fears, etc. from which some shady company will try to construct a digital homonculus they can send ads to. We do ourselves a great disservice by becoming so available. Second era social media drove isolation through envy, third era does it through boredom. Social media has made our lives an encyclopedia for our friends, family, and acquaintances to peruse at their leisure. I can now know everything about you, without ever even having to ask. So, what should be done? Stop posting on the cursed and befouling tool that is social media? No, of course not. Someone without social media isn't anyone at all. Instead, share less. Lie in some fun and harmless way. Include poisoned patterns in all your posts to destroy whatever AI model is being trained on your likeness, even as we speak. The only pure and honest way remaining is to use these foul tools to cultivate mystique, to invite the question, "What the hell is going on with her?" In the Era of the Wolf, the only option is to aura farm like nobody's business.
