The other day I posted something on my personal Facebook and watched in horror as no one liked it. Full disclosure: a couple of people liked it. But after a few months of working at Buzzfeed (an international media company), I have become Internet spoiled. Before I started my job, I had about three Instagram pictures and five tweets, one of which was a stock picture of a penguin. It personally didn’t make any sense for me post into the void. Sure, I was a comedian in Los Angeles but I could never even wrangle enough people to attend a bringer stand-up show. Who was going to give a shit about my attempt at one liners and snap-shots of my pedicure? I faced enough rejection in my attempt at a career. I couldn’t take anymore.
But then something amazing happened. I suddenly had a full-time, creative job that gave me access to millions of people. My face was showing up in people’s newsfeed and it wasn’t just in the form of a desperate plea for someone to come to a comedy show. With the encouragement of my best friend, an online guru, I started to tweet. I started to post pictures. I started to take part in all the social media that had been happening without me for years. What’s even crazier? People actually cared. I remember sitting at breakfast alone, during my Christmas family vacation, plotting out how many followers I wanted and setting goals for myself in the next year. If I could just get to this number, my film degree would be validated. I would no longer be one of thousands of creative people floating around in Los Angeles without anything of substance to hold onto. I had followers. I had a fan base. I had a goddamn fan page. Me. The girl who dropped out of her sorority because she didn’t have any friends. I felt victorious as the sun warmed my face. It barely bothered me that I was eating alone while the rest of my family was spread throughout a resort. I was no longer myself, I was an Internet presence.
Here’s the thing. I’m not actually “famous.” Compared to movie stars and politicians, my follower base is minimal. Sure, if someone of my parent’s generation stumbled upon my Twitter account they would assume that I was doing something of significance with my life to gain 20,000 followers, but they would still have no idea who I am. Because here’s the other thing: followers don’t actually matter. Great content matters. Being a good person matters. Throwing away all your trash matters. Follower count does not directly correlate with your value as a person. But it’s hard to always remember that.
Sometimes I text my friends and they don’t text back. But I never post an Instagram picture without what feels like an immediate influx of likes and comments. It’s an easy feeling to get addicted to. I have nothing to do on a Friday night? Fuck you, I have over 50,000 Instagram followers. The problems in my daily life no longer matter if I can get more strangers to notice me. It’s a bizarre phenomenon that has had negative and positive influences on this 25-year-old version of me. For years I felt like no one wanted what I was putting out. Now all I need to do is snap a slightly blurry shot of my new haircut and it doesn’t matter as much that my scripts aren’t getting made. All those terrible open mics are slowly washed away with every retweet of a recycled stand up joke. I have grown more confident in the past six months than ever before, and I’m not even seeing my therapist anymore! When I feel like giving up I don’t because these incredible young girls from all over the world are telling me that what I do helps them and makes them laugh. That is an incredible feeling and I never want it to go away.
What I do want to go away is my incessant checking of a new post as soon as it goes up. I want to stop keeping track of every new follower and comparing it to the numbers on my friends’ profiles. I want to stand by a tweet I think is funny even if it doesn’t immediately get a bunch of likes. I want to live in the moment. I want to be happy and fulfilled and nice. I basically want all of the same things I wanted before I dove headfirst into the social media game. As the numbers on my accounts change, I need to remember who I am: a slightly unstable comic who will never take #OOTD seriously. Unless, of course, someone pays me to do it. Hashtag Unfiltered.
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