It’s All Content, Remember That
Tiktok, Instagram and the black hole that is aspirational content.
Social media has come a long way. From the literal ‘face book’ directory that Mark Zuckerberg first coded in his Harvard dorm to the hyper-capitalist advertisement engines we have today. Capitalism breeds innovation, they say. While the utility of the digital halves of our lives is a topic for another blog post, today I want to discuss some of the long tail effects of human life as “content”.
“Content”, in the way we use it today, is a relatively new term. The Cambridge library defines it as the subject or ideas contained in something written, said, created, or represented. Apt, I’d say. Content is everywhere, its the podcast in your ears on the morning commute, its the funny TikTok you swipe past in the coffee shop line, its the Youtube video that keeps you & your salad company at lunch and its the #1 ranked Netflix show that you finally doze off to at night.
Depending on who you are and what you value, this content comes in different styles & forms. Among young people like myself, however, we see more and more homogeneity. Aspirational content has taken over. A viral TikTok or Instagram Reel is often a showcase of the ideal. The ideal home, the ideal meal, the ideal husband, the ideal career, the ideal car, the ideal body, the ideal walkable city, the ideal vacation, the ideal wife, the ideal life.
To be human is to yearn. We have been yearning for thousands of years, so I’m not opposed to its modern manifestation. It’s normal. I believe, however, that what’s lost between the post button and the labyrinthine algorithm that brings it all to you and me, is the fact that it is simply that, content.
What I mean by this is; there is an incentive, by a creator, to create and post that content online, for you to see it. The incentive is often monetary. People are making a living out of this. Someone, out there, puts food on their table because you liked their morning routine TikTok. As a consumer of this content, or any content for that matter, it is very important to remember this.
Why? You ask. I’ll answer.
Aspirational content has two effects. It can motivate, but it can also breed envy. While this may seem harmless to those of us who can regulate these emotions, it’s not to others. This content can make people really really envious. That’s not the end of it either. This can progress further into depression, anxiety, self doubt and even feelings of inadequacy. These have been some of the lasting effects of social media since its inception and nothing seems to bring it out much like aspirational content.
In reality, this aspirational content is often not real. When the content is dependent on an audience to consume it, it means that the content would not exist with no audience. That is, to be envious of this would be envy of something that’s not within reality. In any other context, this would be insane. It would be like seeing a family having breakfast in a movie and being envious of them. That would make no sense. There is no family, they are actors. So why don’t we think like this when it comes to social media?
The primary reason why is social media enabled regular people to cross the chasm from popular public figure to creator. These people are indeed real. They may have gone to your high school, or college, or church. As a result, it’s easy to get sucked into the illusion that whatever is being promoted, or indeed advertised, is a representation of daily life. The reality is that it’s not. To think like this would be detrimental because one would be trying to keep up with that which cannot be kept up with, the untrue.
Let’s use some examples to show how futile this would be.
When I watched the Disney channel after school, I didn’t believe that Zack & Cody were actually living on that luxury cruise ship. Imagine if I did. Now imagine if I did into my adulthood. With the pressures of the current world and the responsibilities and expectations that an adult has to shoulder, imagine if I had dreams of one day living in a cruise ship 24/7 and felt inadequate until I did. Does this sound ridiculous?
Well this is what people do everyday on Tiktok, Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube. They are fed a glimpse into a life - often manufactured - latch onto it, and yearn for it as if it were real. Forgetting that 1) It is but a glimpse and 2) They only show you what they want to show you.
To put it simply, people don’t actually live like that. There’s edits, and skips and jump cuts and intricacies of reality that don’t make the final cut. More importantly, they present it like that for YOU, to watch, and yearn and like and subscribe. Even if they did live like that, it would be much healthier for you to think they didn’t.
Whether it’s products being sent received, or sets being rented out, it’s no secret that our favourite creators often skirt what’s real to create their content. The goal is often to create an illusion of reality that will suck the viewer in enough for them to emulate. A viewer watching a daily vlog where a creator drinks from a Stanley Cup is likely to go and purchase a Stanley Cup of their own, to get themselves closer to that illusion. Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup was just one of tens of free ad packages that the creator received that week.
Aspirational content has very strong economic power. Advertising has changed, brands and businesses are having greater success appealing to you and me by putting their products into the hands of people who we relate to. It's no wonder that Google, Meta and Amazon have cannibalized advertising revenue on the Internet. They know what you search & brands advertise to you based on this with their help.
This means that creator X needs as many of you and me to see them using product Y as possible. The more views, the more purchases and thus the more money for brand Y. Brand Y now has more money to hire creator A, B and C as well, widening the net of potential customers that see the product. A well-oiled capitalist machine.
We are pawns in this game. Very key pawns, but pawns all the same. It is in the best interests of creators and companies to feed us bits and bobs of a dream _____.(you can fill in the gap with the type of content that appeals to you the most.) You tell me whether your hard earned $ is worth this.
Crucially, even the enlightened among us can still fall into these very traps. “Haha he’s filming himself walking around in Target” leads to “He’s got a nice condo apartment and car, must be nice”. This is a slippery slope into “Well I don’t record myself in Target and yet I’m sitting here with no condo apartment”. Who’s to know where your mind goes after that. See how something seemingly innocuous can become unhealthy.
Ordinarily, feelings of inadequacy, discontent and self doubt are normal. These are the unpleasant sides of the human psyche, rooted in our innate desire for more. Why supercharge these thoughts by partaking in a make believe that leaves you less fulfilled?
Your decision to participate in this deception game is up to you. However, for your wellbeing, I implore you to be conscious about the content you consume, how you respond to it both consciously and subconsciously and what actions you take afterwards. It would be a waste of your willpower and mental energy to fixate over aspirations that are not rooted in reality.
The world already exists! It’s here, living and breathing in front of you and me. I know there’s enough in it for you to find fulfillment. You can do it without all the fake.
I really, really like this article because it rings so true even to those of us who are “enlightened”. You mention homogeneity in the beginning and it’s something I’ve really been thinking about. How much living for content strips us of our authenticity. We all dress the same, buy the same things, decorate our houses the same way, and even force our relationships to fall prey to a certain standard of sameness. We’re losing out on so much creativity and so much real life in the name of content.
The tiktok-instagram creator you mentioned, (Nara) who’s living the picturesque life, is infact on Substack as well. She shares recipes all-paywalled with 9k+ subs since starting in November. It does help to have an audience who wants a slice of your life.
Ultimately, they fund her life so she can keep furnishing content... it’s a “win-win” no matter how you look at it
Some people don’t want change or more for themselves.