A little while back a great article did the rounds on the internet which involved an actual teenager breaking down their thoughts on social media. Inspired by this piece we reached out to our regular Cool Accidents contributors (who range in age from late teens to upwards of 50) and asked them to add their views on social media to the conversation.
First up is 20 something year old Nat Tencic who went with the angle of writing about what people think each social channel is for versus what they are actually for…
What people think Facebook is for:
Facebook is your all rounder social network. It is inescapablebecause it is so ubiquitous. Not having Facebook tells people you’re either a selfimportant douchebag who believes they’re better than all this base slavery to the machine, or you’re Amish (and even then you have no excuse).
Facebook will tell you it’s for organising your social sphere with events and groups, staying in touch with loved ones and posting lens flare photos of you and your friends smiling under waterfalls or on trains emblazoned with inspirational Helvetica (’Sometimes friends are the destination’!).
What Facebook is actually for:
While Facebook has its functional side, ie. organising your social life with events and groups, modern Facebook is mainly for two things: image crafting and advertising.
Your Facebook profile is for people to paint themselves as a better more successful human beings than they really are, so your News feeds ends up splattered with soul-crushing smug. Posts of vague acquaintances under the Eiffel Tower, front row at Coachella, getting into Harvard or cuddling dolphins are only good for making you look at your fat useless self and wonder where it all went wrong.
Or you may have friends who are terrible at Facebook, posting one cat pic and Buzzfeed quiz about which letter from the title of ‘Frozen’ you are (yes, someone was paid to create that) every 5 minutes. You’d probably call that friend and give them something to post about if they weren’t so boring.
But you can only see those posts when your Facebook isn’t clogged with bullshit. Is your feed full of crude 9Gag galleries about how men differ from women, recycling lame diatribes once relegated to shitty misspelled T-Shirts from Asian two-dollar shops? (Lol, men fear commitment! Is funny because is true!) Because when 16 year old you got Facebook, you could like things like 'Chewing pencils’ and 'If I get 1000 likes I’ll change my name to Douchefart’, and you never thought that would come back to haunt you. Otherwise it’s people posting the same article about GTA being offensive, or Tony Abbott being offensive, or Triple J being offensive or Bread being offensive, and burning you at the digital stake if you politely disagree.
What people think Twitter is for:
Twitter is supposed to be a place where you can get content in real time. It’s for breaking news and witty quips. It has, for the most part, grown beyond “My poop is looking more green than usual #weird”.
What Twitter is actually for:
Now, Twitter has become the social manifestation of ADHD, a throbbing rabid beast of conversation, with topics escalating to hyper levels of crisis importance before nearly instantly burning out before all the news sources have told us mere mortals what the fuck just happened. Remember #AlexFromTarget? Of course you don’t, because it was the world’s biggest thing for a night, then it was gone. Is anyone still talking about Colleen McCullogh’s obituary? Here today, gone tomorrow. The truest foil for the modern news cycle.
The unique thing about Twitter is free exposure to the thoughts and opinions of strangers, which, as anyone who uses Twitter knows, is as horrible as it sounds. People with like interests, from #marriageequality to #HarryStiles eschew well reasoned lengthy conversation for 140 character bursts of inanity. Twitter is like a big shouting match, which is more interesting to watch than participate in.
What people think Instagram is for:
Narcissistic teen #selfies, #hashtag abuse and #pictures of #food.
What Instagram is actually for:
#Narcissistic #teen #selfies, #hashtag #abuse #and #pictures #of #food.
What people think Snapchat is for:
Dick pics.
What Snapchat is actually for:
Dick pics, killing time, videos of cute animals you’ve met. I don’t know what the Discover thing is for though.
What people think Tumblr is for:
Blogging? With Disney gifs?
What Tumblr is actually for:
Women in their 20s who still think like teenagers.
What people think Google Plus is for:
A profile for using other Google products, YouTube, Gmail etc.
What Google Plus is actually for:
Google employees.
What people think Pinterest is for:
Pinterest has been dubbed the digital equivalent of clipping Women’s Weekly magazines. It has as such been laughed off as a frivolous feminine past time, because any time spent doing womanly things is deemed frivolous.
What Pinterest is actually for:
Pinterest is the best social network/content curating tool. This is because it’s not about you, your lame cat or your fifth trip to Bali where you got plastered and hooked up with a local taxi driver. Pinterest is for collecting pictures of things everyone likes: awesome food, cool outfits, pretty rooms, and cute otters. Pinterest is the fastest growing social network, with user numbers doubling over the past year, for this very reason. Pinterest lets you collect awesome things, and then lets other people look at your awesome things and collect it for themselves. Gentlemen, come join the wondrous zen experience of compiling pictures of awesome things.
- Nat Tencic
