Social media and disappointment
Step away from the apps when you're feeling crap.
I got some disappointing news this week about funding I’d applied for months ago. It was the sort of funding that I could have legitimately called ‘life-changing’ if it had arrived, and so I knew that the chance of me getting it was low. The waiting and the application process themselves underlined how big a deal it was. Nothing that could be life-changing is ever going to be easy to come by.
So I had prepared myself for almost inevitable disappointment, but I was still surprised by what happened immediately afterwards, and what it showed me about how social media can make us double down on feeling bad when we don’t get something we wanted.
I opened the ‘sorry, but no’ email while walking home, a silly mistake in itself. Never check your emails on the go when something big could be waiting in your inbox! But it gave me the chance to let the news settle in as I walked, and by the time I got home I was still disappointed but starting to rationalise it all.
Then I looked at Instagram.
It was just a post from an author about their latest work-in-progress, but the timing wasn’t ideal. In it, they said they’d written 96,000 words in 42 days (and as they’re a published author, I presume they have a deal or at least a pathway to a deal for that book). The author knew this was a special thing, to produce this much in so few days, and they were celebrating it with their readers.
But looking at the post in that moment, I thought about the three-quarters of a first novel draft that’s taken me well over a year, and to which I am still constantly adding and cutting and trying to make ‘work’. All I could see was my failure to achieve.
And now I didn’t even have the funding needed to give me the time to do something like this author had - something, if I was honest, that still seemed pretty impossible.
With a few days’ perspective, I’m able to understand that this post caught me at a bad time, and I really feel empathy for myself in that moment. Of course I’d feel like shite after reading it, through no fault of that author’s.
But it made me see even more clearly how social media, and particularly for me, Instagram, can be a stick to beat yourself with. I’m not sure this is something we acknowledge enough, beyond repeating the idea that Instagram or another app (perhaps your version is a Discord server, or Reddit forum, or TikTok) is a ‘highlights reel’. On an objective level, I think most people understand that what others put on Instagram, etc, is just one tiny glimpse of their life, and the reality of it can be really complicated. But do we really feel this? Does it actually land with us?
I know from seeing the reality behind other people’s posts, and my own, that there can be a gap between what people might see, perceive and understand about a person and their life based on a social media post, and what’s really happening.
We all know that a photo or video cannot capture everything, and that on social media we’re encouraged to curate a particular story to broadcast to people. But these platforms and apps have come to represent a form of reality to people, and so we can be emotionally affected by what we see on there.
What happened when I saw that post from the author was a jarring moment for me. God, how easy it is to feel jealousy towards someone you don’t even know, about something you don’t really know the circumstances of, based on your own recent experience. I had to step away to look at the reality of things: that I’m working on a draft, that drafts take a huge amount of time, and that I am privileged enough to actually have the time to work in fits and bursts on this draft, unlike a lot of people.
I know, too, that when people see my own Instagram page, they see lots of posts about my work and what I’ve achieved lately. I don’t post about frustrating incidents, or freelance fear, or trying to make it all work. The irony here? I don’t do that because I don’t want to complain online, or give too much of an insight into frustrating things (even writing about this on Substack feels like a risk!).
Some part of it is because I’ve somehow fallen into the Instagram trap of keeping my story positive. But another part of it is because I don’t want to always let people ‘in’ to my failures or frustrations. I want to keep them to myself, out of respect for myself and my emotions. In realising this, I can see why others keep their stories online positive too, and can comfort myself with knowing they, like me, have their reasons for keeping certain things private.
Thinking about all of this makes me see that the decisions behind what people post online are less binary and more nuanced than I might presume. I can probably correctly guess that each post about a ‘win’ has plenty of moments of disappointment behind it which haven’t been posted about. This could hopefully lessen the impact of those uber-positive posts that feel like a kick to my solar plexus.
I share this in the spirit of knowing I’m not alone here, and to acknowledge that sometimes we shouldn’t take everything we see online as proof that we’re somehow deficient or behind.
Social media is its own form of reality, and if we put too much stake in what it ‘says’ about us, we’ll always come out losing.
So. Back to that draft…
Looking for a book about the impact of social media on Ireland? Might I suggest my bestselling and Irish Book Awards-nominated non-fiction book Social Capital? Order it from your favourite online store - or pick it up in your local bookshop or library.
Cork Midsummer Festival
If you’re in Cork over the next few weeks, there’s a cool experimental event I wanted to draw your attention to - it’s at the Triskel Arts Centre on 15 - 16 June and 21 - 22 June as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. Notably, it’s part of the Arts Council’s late night events pilot and so the venue will stay open until 3am.
9.57 (Sunset) involves two weekends of live performance, electronic music and (hurrah!) late-night DJs, the latter of which feel like an endangered species these days. The events on 15-16 June are curated by DJ ELLLL, and include performances by Fixity, Holy Tongue, Okkyung Lee, Jasmine Wood, Méabh McKenna and others across the two days.
Then on 21-22 June Emer Yip has curated a weekend (for Sample Studios) featuring Cindytalk, Howlbux, Kate NV, Felisha Ledesma and others. There’ll also be a ‘live performance experiment’ on 22 June, and an ‘immersive chill space’ in the Triskel Sample Project Space.
That’s a whole heap of great stuff happening in one of the city’s best venues - you can find out more and how to get tickets here. (Plus check out the entire festival line-up while you’re at it).
Fair play for applying in the first place. For giving it a go and keeping at it. I often can't even get past the voice in my head telling me its all not worth the effort in the first place... So make sure you hold on to whatever confidence is getting you going on those applications/submissions and those next few lines of the draft your working on.
Thank you for writing this. I also had a 'no' this week on what would have been an incredible opportunity and similarly spiraled. This was helpful perspective!