#SeekingFollowers: A Social Experiment

On Thursday, bored and avoiding work on three (three!) final projects, I decided to try an experiment: I wanted to see how many followers on Instagram I could get.

Instagram is by far my favorite social media platform, and that’s probably because I’m a pretentious, ironic millennial (read: hipster and maybe tack on wannabe). I also won’t lie, I watch my ratio of followers to who I follow. Followers are the currency of social standing. (And this is what makes me a wannabe hipster; a bonafide fair trade coffee-drinking, thick-rimmed glass-wearing, scarf-in-the-summer millennial isn’t concerned about these capitalistic, mainstream woes. At least theoretically.)

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Is Selfie-Confidence the New Self-Confidence?

A guy once did a good creep over of all my social media accounts and asked/told me: "You're a good-looking girl, but there's no selfies so you must lack self-confidence?" We never talked again because what the hell.

But then it happened again. A new friend request, then a few days later, "It's weird that you don't post pictures of yourself anywhere. Why is that?"

That was less bizarre to me, so I engaged further in the dialogue, only to be met eventually with the question as to why I wouldn't put up more selfies of myself UNLESS I didn't have confidence in my physical looks.

This time, though, it did make me really wonder about it. Why am I getting slammed for not posting pictures of myself? Doesn't it mean something that I value myself enough, and have enough confidence on my own, without needed the "likes" and approvals of my social media peers? Is "omg hawt" from my friend that feels morally obligated to comment on a selfie really supposed to make my heart flutter with self-confidence?

Why is it now assumed that because I don't take daily pictures of myself and subject my followers to scroll through them imply that I am a heifer? I mean, I am self- aware enough to know I am no model, but I am also confident enough to know that my looks don't make people want to burn their eyes out. Or at least, no one has yet to burn their eyes out after seeing me, that I know of.

If this is a sign of the times, I want out.

I want back to the days where a guy will compliment you in person, and not just throw you a "like" on one of your super-filtered is that even you anymore selfies and call it a day. Let's #throwbackthursday to a time before #wcw'ing someone was a way of telling them you liked them. Oh. My. Gosh. Maybe we can even talk about our feelings face to face and not via text messages rife with ambiguous emojis.

Nah, I'm probably asking too much.