Everyone's A Star ... Of Their Own Show

By Edward Adler

“Everybody is a star,” Sly and the Family Stone sang in a rapturous song of empowerment decades ago. “I love you for who you are. Not the one you feel you need to be,” they sang. The song urged those who felt down in the dumps to plow ahead to bigger and better achievements.

In today’s social media era, the song would be way different. Sly could now reboot the tune and call it: “Everybody Thinks They Are a Star.”

In 1968, pop artist Andy Warhol opined that everyone in the future will be famous for 15 minutes; many say Warhol predicted social media.

Using Instagram, everyone now thinks they are famous and a star, but for a lot less than 15 minutes, perhaps a few seconds.

The pandemic-difficult, Groundhog Day, COVID life we have been living for the last 20 months has only increased the way social media has toyed with our self-perception, altering our reality of what it means to socialize, to communicate, and to be a friend or relative. We have often used social media particularly Instagram and Facebook to fulfill a void as we need to prove that we are living normal and worthy lives.

Many people have become addicted to the scrolls and posts, as it gives us the soothing balm that everything is fine, and we are living fabulous — and normal — lives.

When everything seems upside down, we feel we can use social media to turn it right side up.

My wife wakes up scrolling and scrolling and tells me about relatives and friends we haven’t seen in months and what they are doing and how they are feeling. It seems silly, but I’m game to hear about it before I start scrolling.

During the pandemic, social media stocks and the profits of their parent companies have never been higher. More and more people are jumping in. Like pharmaceutical firms, they are giving us the drug, and we are taking it.

With great regularity, we post sanitized versions of our lives to a small group of friends and relatives. I’m sure many feel like stars appearing on their own shows, craving acceptance and applause. But, unfortunately, we are not stars, and we have created an addiction around a drug called Instagram that makes us think we are more important to others than we are.

Many people are chronicling their lives, but, I suspect, to very narrow audiences. I often wonder how people keep putting up endless pictures of their very young children at all stages of their development (even on the potty!), when only a dozen people, usually aunts and uncles and a few friends, actually view and like it.

In the old times, you may have created minor FOMO by sending a letter talking about the year past with a holiday card adorned with a family picture in a fabulous locale. Now you get the equivalent of a card, a letter, a picture sometimes multiple times a day.

Most studies say teens are affected by Instagram and that it causes them low self-esteem. But I see among my adult friends the desire to show a small audience how perfect their lives are.

On my friends’ feeds, you find the humble bragging that never posts a bad vacation, a fight, an illness, an airport delay, or a bad meal. You see beautiful lives and congratulatory emojis. One can easily feel down and wonder why your day is not as good. Instagramers want acceptance and want their audience to give them a perpetual state of validation.

When I log into Instagram, my mind keeps moving from image to image, keeping me anxious and edgy in a minimally engaged state.

How many people have you run into who follow you on social media who act like they have kept up with you and know your life?

I’m guilty of thinking that my small audience cares where I vacation, what my sunsets look like, how I’m relaxing in front of a fire, or what I ate for dinner. BTW, my son is engaged and getting married soon, but those who know me saw it on Instagram. He is marrying a great person. You saw the amazing pictures.

Unfortunately, if Instagram has captured you, you’re stuck. The Stockholm Syndrome takes hold. You hate the evil captor, but you keep going looking for the validations.

I’m sure TikTok is worse, but it is too hard for me to use, and no one younger than me will friend me, so I’ll never know.

Edward Adler is a strategic communications professional who lives in Southampton and Manhattan. Find him on Instagram @eadler12.