I love being noticed

I love being noticed

The secret of my social media addiction

I like to think of myself as being above the single-click ego-validation cycle of social media. Everyone else’s stream looks to me like a desperate bid for attention. Not mine, of course. “I don’t care about followers,” I say. “I’m just putting stuff out there for myself because I enjoy it,” I say.

Every now and then I’ll look down from my high horse and say, “I’m so done with the platitudes and inane politics of Facebook and the righteous indignation of Twitter and the shitty over-processed photographs on Flickr.” To prove a point, I’ll cancel one of my accounts and proclaim that over-sharing and like-baiting are a waste of time at best and psychologically damaging at worst.

Then someone will like, re-blog, favorite, re-tweet, or whatever one of my photos somewhere and I get that little charge. If I’m honest with myself, I love that little charge. Some stranger clicking an icon is all it is, yet it makes me feel good. There is probably something wrong with that, but I’ll take it.

For all of my anti-sharing rhetoric, I share lots of things. I pretend it’s just a nonchalant thing and I don’t really care if anyone looks at what I’ve done, but secretly I wait for the little messages on my phone telling me that someone noticed me.

Being noticed feels good. I just wanted to admit that, and of course to share it with you.