I honestly tell you: I can’t do without social media. Yes, I also plan to look at my cell phone every morning. But what happens just every morning: I totally fail because of it. Yes, I also plan to look at a screen every evening. But what happens every evening? I fail because of it. And so on and so on. My relationship with my cell phone, but especially to Instagram, Tikok, Bluesky and Co. is honestly unhealthy. Of course I am not the only one – it would be nice! – But that actually consoles much less. How would it be if I was the only idiot that is completely addicted to social media? The world would be a better one, definitely.
Recommendations of the editorial team
But, like many of us, I am also totally dependent on social media. I am a freelance journalist, which means: I have to apply constant via social media, demonstrate my skills as a reporter, author and moderator. And it is best to collect enough followers so that I can really call me an influencer. Problem only: as unhealthy as my consumption is, I am so bad in strategically building a followers. Also because it is a job for itself that takes up a lot of time and space. And in which the rules change constantly, so you have to reorient yourself again and again.
Unfortunately, social media is also fun
And despite all these uncertainties, together with my girlfriend Ciani-Sophia Höder, I raised a new little social media project: “Make yourself unpopular”. In it, people who find really cool ask to make themselves really unpopular and cancel them. Sounds like a contradiction to my rant up there, but that brings me to my third point: Unfortunately, social media is still a lot of fun at really good moments. It is not only the most important tool for pop culture today to bring music, films, series, books to your audience and to discuss with him, but it is also a pop cultural genre. Memes, short video formats, discourse. Otherwise we wouldn’t be so addicted, right? Without social media, Meme culture would still be a niche phenomenon. Without social media we would not have any formats like Chicken Shop Date,, Track starHot ones or Subway Takes. Without social media, there would be no OotDs and no Tikok trends and much more important, no one who would pull them through the cocoa a thousand times.
So how with social media procedure? In the last episode of the first season of “Make yourself unpopular” the author (and music express columnist!) Julia Friese unpacks the most uncomfortable of all truths:
We should not depend on these platforms and if so, then we should use them as we brushing your teeth: two to three times a day for three minutes. And do not knock out a careless and illustrated political or social take out and do not spread fear. Julia is absolutely right – and I agree to her more and more since I finished the book “Careless People” last night. Not a novel, but a memoir, as the subtitle already suggests: “A story of where i used to work”. The author,
has worked on Facebook for years in the field of international politics, and gives quite exciting, but also rather shocking insights into the executive floor of the meta group. She tells of billionaires that nobody says ‘no’ anymore who live in a bladder cut off the world that they have no connection to reality. She tells of people who tell of transparency, but their own social media appearances are more than just manicatures-they often tell the opposite of what they really believe, do. And of course my favorite fact, which is now anything but a secret: while people do everything in Silicon Valley to captivate as many children and adolescents as possible on their platforms with allegedly “child -friendly” products, the screenings of their own children are completely regulated and they often do not even give their own children a smartphone themselves.
So how should we deal with social media?
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, naturally finds Sarah’s memories anything but amusing and funny and wanted to ban her to apply for the book. And as so often, this has caused a large public to find out about it. To be honest, “memoirs of a former Facebook employee” do not sound so interesting.
After all, a success for Meta and all other social media platforms, which the butt goes on basic ice, that their employees also get out in the inside and write non-fiction books and memories about their time in these companies-on Bookstagram, Bookktok and Co. So far, the book is not a big hit. For Romantasy, everything is a bit too real and too blatant.
So how should we deal with social media? I don’t know either. My cheese dealer recently told me that he did Cold Turkey and has only used social media professionally since then – and now even read the newspaper again every morning and book in bed every evening. Another colleague includes her cell phone in the outdoor pool and reads printed magazines again. For example, this here, but in the paper variant, with Glossy cover and all the trimmings. And then I look at my towel next door and think: “They do it right!”