- When I was eight, I dreamed of becoming a cartoonist. At 16, I wanted to intern at Teen Vogue just like LC. But at 20, I unknowingly began my longest and most rewarding career journey.
For the past 13 years, I have been a digital content creator right here on this channel and it's been the best job I've ever had because it's changed my life in ways I couldn't even imagined. And these days there are so many kids that wanna be social media stars when they grow up and it's really easy to see why. But I wanna talk about the other side of the coin.
How does this career affect our minds? What's authenticity when we're always on? Well, I have a lot to share on this, particularly in the ways that it can distort our sense of selves especially if we're not careful.
So let's get started. One of the most addicting parts of creating content is having that chance to build a perfect version of you. Now in real life, I tend to stutter, I overthink and I get overwhelmed very easily.
But when I'm editing, a piece of content suddenly becomes a highly controlled environment. Like when I first started my channel, I was going to college and working at a smoothie shop but what I portrayed online was this happy go-lucky girl who went to shows and thrifted all the time. But I removed all the parts that I didn't like about myself, my anxiety, my neurosis, my meltdowns.
And after so many years of editing myself, it started to bleed into my real life. Like to this day, I still have intrusive thoughts like, ah, I wish I could refilm that or ugh, get to the point. It's like giving that critical voice a microphone in my head.
Pretty much every social media personality creates a more refined version of themselves online to showcase their brand. It's a carefully crafted mirage of what they see as "perfect" at the time of upload. It's not all of them.
If anything, it's mostly how they wanna be portrayed as. And the most obvious tropes are like beauty, fashion, lifestyle. But now there are like sneakier ones because even like being relatable is a trademark or being unfiltered and honest can be your signature thing.
But ultimately it's still just a small fraction of who you actually are because it is impossible to upload the full complexities of a human being into one post, one video, so we don't. And what's wild is that as humans we are constantly changing and evolving and growing but the internet is permanent. So sometimes it trips me out knowing that there's like a 2017 version of me online with like her brows and her products, even though she's not biologically here anymore.
Next up, comparison. Each time you flick on open that social media app, you step into the game of what I like to call compare and despair. I think subconsciously we're sizing ourselves up to what we see.
And it could be something small like, "Oh, that person ran a marathon. "Ah, I should probably work out too. " But the most pernicious way it distorts our sense of self is when you start comparing your real life you to the dazzling digital you.
And these days there are so many different filters that tweak the way you look to make you look more beautiful, or so we think. Like fun fact, did you know that the most common requests that plastic surgeons receive are people requesting to look like that filtered version of themselves? And the more active I was on social media, the more I started to compare my highlight reel to my actual reality.
And when you feel like you're not living up to that online version of yourself, of what you portray online, that is when things get really dark. In my mid to late 20s, I developed a pretty severe case of imposter syndrome. I would have a lot of anxiety when I would meet people, especially subscribers because I felt like the real me would be a disappointment.
Like nothing could ever live up to that fantasy portrayal of me. And the further I felt away from that, the worse I felt. Like there's a reason why even at the "peak" of my career, I was like a mess.
Online, I was this confident fashion founder but in real life, I was just a nervous wreck trying to make everyone happy from my team, my customers. If anything, I felt this overwhelming pressure to be perfect or else everything would be over for me. And it's because I didn't have self-esteem.
I mean, people think that once you become successful, it acts as a magic wand that blesses you with self-confidence and self-love but that's not it at all. If anything, it just amplifies your current state. So if you are a self-loathing ball of nerves, then you'll still be that same mess.
. . but in a fancier house.
Like there was no amount of i love yous that could fill this dark hole in my heart. Like I really thought that I could cheat myself out of it by collecting external validation from others. But that didn't work.
Like I really had to freaking roll up my sleeves and really start loving all parts of me, not just parts that I put up online. And the thing is with self-love is it's a journey, it's a commitment. And I'm still on it.
Like there are so many days where I feel like, ugh, like I'm not healed. I'm not making any progress. But I have to remember that self-love is not a linear journey.
And I think now I'm at a point where I truly do feel happy with myself and I feel like I deserve the good things in my life. So in the iconic words of RuPaul- - If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gotta love somebody else? - Let's take a moment to talk about the validation you receive from commenters.
I think after 13 years of reading comments about myself online has created this huge database in my head to predict what a commenter might say. On a good day, my devoted audience will say, "Ah, yes, Queen, you're doing such a great job. " But on my bad days, they shame me.
And I think both are toxic because it inflates your self importance. It makes you think that the world is revolving around you. And our ego loves social media because social media can make us feel like we're on the top of the world.
It gives you the sense that everyone is waiting for you or waiting for you to post or they're waiting for you to say something wrong and cancel you. It's really addicting to create a post and then see what people are saying about it or even see who watched it or who hasn't. Regardless, it's just too much data.
It's too many opinions about us. And our brains can't compute the sheer volume of information that's coming online and it's information that we don't even need. It's not essential.
We're not meant to read the comments all the time. Like there's a reason why when celebrities read about themselves in the tabloids too often, they self-destruct, like our brains can't compute it. It's interesting that we tend to just blast through the positive comments.
It's just like, oh, business as usual. If anything, we just hone in on the negative ones and those are the ones that just stay with us for days or even months. And it can really harm your mental health.
And this is a huge contrast from what reality is because in real life, maybe one person says something nice about you but it's honestly rare, if anything like unheard of, for someone to say something rude to you in your face. This leads us to our next mental trap which is believing everything is content. Now, I hate to admit this but I have done things just for the gram before like any milestone or even traumatic moment, there was a thought in my head where I was like, "Should I be recording this?
" This is where the lines between working and living your life really start to blur. And that constant feeling of being on can definitely wear on you. Like before, when I didn't have boundaries of when I film, I would just have this anxiety like this humming anxiety in the back of my head because I was just observing my life through an external lens trying to find like something worthy to share.
Like instead of living my life, I was trying to find ways to make this video more interesting. And don't get me wrong, I love my job. I mean, I feel extremely lucky to be able to do it but there is a reason why I don't blog as often and it's because it takes a lot of effort to make a vlog good because I'm thinking through it through like a storyteller lens.
And what's really helped me with this is to designate specific days on where I choose to vlog and it's on the calendar so that Ben can see, this is just helped me compartmentalize my life and my work because when I know that, oh, it's a vlogging day, I can flick into that vlog mode and then turn off once the day is over. I think I'll always love observing the beauty in life and sharing it. But it took me a few years to quiet that urge, like that pain of pressure to capture everything that feels beautiful.
But I don't know, maybe it's just inherently in humans to want to capture things. Like historically, we've always done that. Like back in the day, if you saw a beautiful sunset, you would have to paint it, and that would take days and then once the camera rolled around, you would take a picture but that was extremely expensive.
And now the camera phone has democratized photography. I think ultimately, there's nothing wrong with this urge but I think it's kinda bringing it back to mindfulness like remembering why you're taking this photo or why you're recording this moment. So one of the most common tips for growing your audience is to find your niche.
Keep trying everything until something goes viral and then do that over and over and over again so they say. For a long time, my niche was fashion. And so I ended up creating hundreds of mostly impractical outfits that I would never wear because in a day, most of the times you just wore one outfit.
It started to feel really repetitive and a little bit harder for me to wanna express things that I actually wanted to share like the books I'm reading or self-development things because I felt this niche looming over me. You become what you spend your time on so be careful what you choose to master. So if you spent all your waking life pouring your energy into being the best DIY or a fitness crew or mixing different variations of slime, then what's left when that trend fades?
What's left when people stop caring? The thing is, we are multifaceted. There's so many complexities and nuances within us so let's please explore that.
Tap into your curiosity and make it your superpower, capture any thoughts, ideas, feelings, moments and ask yourself, what moved me? How can this help someone? And don't be afraid to take your time, you know really simmer on it because depth takes time and patience.
And honestly, in this digital world that's rapidly becoming this dumpster filled with ill-prepared processed microwave content, be that warm, nourishing, homemade meal straight from the oven that's perfectly seasoned and marinated because that's what humans crave. That's what we fucking need. Now I wanna share some rapid fire tips on how you can reduce your time online and use social media as a tool to connect rather than compare.
There's a reason why so many of us are just on autopilot when we're reacting to our phone. So having a delay or a barrier to make you rethink whether you actually wanna go on social media can be very helpful. So I downloaded this app called One Sec which forces me to take a deep breath before opening any of my social apps.
And then it gives me a chance of whether I want to continue on the app or exit. And most of the times I end up not going on it because I had a moment to think about it. And shout out to Ali Abdaal for this tip.
My next tip is to turn off the notifications for your apps. It's like seeing that red button of numbers, it wants you to go back into the app like you wanna see who messaged you. Turning off the notifications makes it really easy for you to not get pulled back into the app.
So instead, I just choose a designated time to respond back to everyone all at once. My third tip is to charge your phone as far away from you as possible because if it's near me, I will 100% check it. And my final tip is to check your socials on your laptop or your computer.
This establishes intentional time rather than on your phone which can be like just an extension of you. And plus, I prefer engaging with you guys on my laptop rather than typing on my screen because the keyboard is far superior. When we're on these apps, it can feel like everything is happening all at once and it can really fracture our attention.
And the thing is, your attention is one of the most precious things that you have because you become what you focus on. So be mindful of that. Anyway, I hope you guys found this video helpful.
I would love to hear what you guys think in the comments down below. I will be talking with you guys through my laptop and until then, I will see you guys in my next one, bye.
