You Are Using Social Media Wrong!

As an influencer, the block button is my best friend and here is why it isn't the same as ghosting or shouldn't be equated to bad boundary setting.

As most of you know, a large part of my job is being an influencer and having 400k followers across all my social media channels means I am quite resilient to the comment section. Until I am not. Every so often a comment gets under my skin. It’s hard to say why it happens.

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

Call me fat or ugly and I won’t care. But when it comes to my values or morals, it’s a soft spot for me. There are also a number of other soft spots as well and sometimes it can even be how something is phrased. I’m allergic to people being passive-aggressive or phrasing a negative comment under the guise of being helpful. I truly believe criticism isn’t love and I’d rather you come outright and say it than to cover it in niceties that are fake.

Sometimes my sensitivity is less so about the comment and more so about the state of mind I am in. Having done this for 8 years, I am quite good at pulling myself away from my phone in this instance and recognising when I’m run down or having a bad day but sometimes I will see it, right before I pull myself away and I won’t lie, it will hurt. Anyway, saying all of that, the other day I got a comment on my page:

I'm really surprised to see you advocating blocking as a way of having boundaries. I'm disappointed that this post lacks the nuance you normally offer. It would be helpful to reiterate that communication always comes first. Eg I'm blocking you on social media to help me move forward. Blocking needs more context & is a powerful communication that should be taken with care.

It was under a post which was about a trend on TikTok where people were assuming that if you are still blocked, it meant they still were thinking about you. I was countering that once someone is blocked, they are never unblocked and therefore I would be thinking more about you to unblock you. Also, I stated, why are you still checking if you are still blocked?

As you can see, it was not a post about how to communicate. It was a post about how we shouldn’t assume meaning from an online action. One of my greatest frustrations about being a content creator is that as much as I love context and nuance, it is impossible to repeat everything you’ve ever said within each post. There is an increasing pressure to make shorter form content like 60-second reels or 15-second TikToks and yet with this expectation, we are meant to include every piece of nuance? It’s impossible and the expectation on creators is unrealistic.

That’s why I love books, they have space and inbuilt in them is the attention span to get deep into issues. You are given the time to actually explain what you mean and can add as much complexity and nuance as need be. I have a whole chapter in my book about blocking. I talk about how and when and the intricacies involved. All of which cannot be summated in 15 seconds and if it could, I would have not got a book deal. One of the questions they ask when you get a book deal is “Why must this be a book? And not just a social media post or an article online” 

Social media is a different medium and whilst the criticism that social media doesn’t include enough nuance and context is valid. That is a criticism that falls on the platform and the nature of it, not the individuals who have to create within the space we are given. It’s a flawed system, I agree but I did not create the system. Moreover, maybe it’s the user who is at fault here. Maybe, it’s how we consume it that is the problem.

Maybe, you are looking at social media wrong. Instead of each post existing in isolation, each post exists on a page full of content. See each post as a page in a book. Each post can’t say everything but in its totality, all points are covered. As the user said themselves, I had already made this point before so why would I make a new post to say the same point? You have already learned that so now I’m adding to it. Also, can you imagine how boring it would be to just keep repeating myself over and over again?

Or maybe I should say how boring it would be for me. In fact, that’s why I stopped posting about body positivity because I felt I had said all that was there to say and in terms of my job satisfaction, I was bored. 

Other accounts have been able to do it. There are people who build a following by digging deep into one niche. In fact, there are creators who just repurpose the same pieces of content phrased in slightly different ways. It’s amazing what they do but that’s not how my brain works. How my brain works is I get bored easily and therefore I always want new wisdom and therefore I am also learning and growing and changing my passions. Probably too often. If you want me to be saying the same thing over and over again, buy my book and that way every time you read it, it will say the same thing.

My point on social media though is that instead of suggesting how others can improve their content, create your own. Stop criticising and start creating. Once you started creating you will realise how difficult it is to fit everything in on one short clip. You might understand why I talk so quickly in order to fit in what I want to say. And with that, you might also recognise that when a piece of content is created, it is not for a specific individual, it is for a mass population.

When a follower says they are disappointed in me, it’s as if my piece of content is created directly for them. It’s not. And it’s entitlement to think otherwise. When it comes to parasocial relationships, I understand it might feel like you know me well enough to be disappointed in me but you do not. It struck me as that annoying sentiment parents say about not being angry but being disappointed. It’s more than annoying though, it is a way of embedding shame. 

In terms of actual boundaries, no you are not required to give the same warning as you would with other boundaries. You do not even necessarily need to communicate. I have blocked many a follower without a conversation because, as I have already said in my books, the consent is not there. A relationship between you and another person exists like a house. You chose to open the door. You see me because I said yes to meeting up. You can call me because I said yes to giving you my number. However, on social media, I didn’t say yes to anything. It is not a house, and instead, it’s a stadium. The door is already open. A social media forum is an equivalent of you buying a ticket to a stadium and me as the person on stage asking the bouncer to kick you out. In my own house, I would have to tell you myself, I would have to communicate. Both a house and a stadium have rules and codes of conduct, but since there is only one of me on stage and 200k of you in the auditorium, I can delegate that to the bouncer, or on social media, I can delegate that to a button. You are not owed a conversation because we do not have a personal relationship.

And that’s where the boundaries of social media are important. It would be good to remind yourself once in a while that you do not actually know the person and if my content has bothered you, then I will do you a favour and block you. Without a conversation. ;)

Lots of love,
M xx