Selective Social Media

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andreborges/two-sides-of-the-story#.oxZG9MPNl

This article has been circulating on Buzzfeed and Facebook for a few days now and I find it to be such an incredible portrayal of how so many of us interact with social media (I know I'm a bit ahead of the syllabus here, sorry!). The idea of using social media to build a persona for yourself that is almost entirely positive seems to be fairly prevalent among most users of all age categories. While there are a few individuals who will post about bad days and general hard times, most of us selectively post updates and pictures that show the best of the best experiences in our lives. Although an individual themselves might only post about the good things in their lives and likely knows that others are capable of doing the same, it is hard not to get caught up in how amazing other peoples' lives seem based on their online accounts. The dissonance between what we know to be happening and how it makes us feel is fascinating to me. What impact does it have on our society as a whole when the main 'self' that we portray to the world is happy and living a wonderful life all the time? Does this deter us from talking through the difficult things we're struggling with in reality? Is there ever a point where the self we portray in the media is disappointed by the self we are in reality? In general, how do these two personas interact and what does it mean to possibly know somebody's media self better than their living self? More in line with this article I have posted, I think these questions are equally valid if we replace the idea of the 'self' with any given place - India, for example.