I saw an article the other day about a bloke who had made up an elaborate lie through various social media channels about his life; he claimed to be this high flying, champagne drinking, ladies man when really he was still living at home with his parents with a very normal job making fake deals with actual business men and living totally out of his means. It got me thinking. The internet must be absolutely ram jam full of people lying, not to the extent of that guy but just being a little bit false to please the masses. I know I personally tone down a lot of my swearing and I've learnt to keep quite a big chunk of my feelings and opinions to myself because I just sometimes cannot be bothered with the backlash it can cause... but keeping it in really does frustrate me sometimes and it makes me wonder whether I just mix in the wrong Twitter circles?!
We all know that negativity is not good, and nobody wants to read the tweets of a serial moaner because negativity tends to breed negativity, but surely nobody can be happy ALL of the time! I'm a bit of an oversharer which I think is one of my downfalls because I probably say things I shouldn't and voice opinions that aren't too popular. Then I look at the 'super popular' bloggers and vloggers and see nothing but positivity and I can't help but thinking 'really? is it really possible to be like that all the time without ever really showing any weakness'. I remember once when Zoe Sugg (Zoella) posted a video on secondary YouTube channel of her crying because 'it had all got too much' for her and that really started to pull me back into her little YouTube fan base because I thought actually yes she is like me, she is being real but she even felt like she had to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the video to 'warn' her viewers that it wasn't '5 minutes of happy time'. I think that's really, really sad that she feels she has to justify showing people that she's sad.
I aren't popular by any stretch of the imagination, I just tootle along at my own pace, writing about what I want to write about but I still feel quite pressured to be positive and often feel like I shouldn't be tweeting about negative things because of what people might think of me. I want portray the real me because that's what I like to see in other bloggers, I want to know that it's not just me that struggles to be positive all the time and to be honest I find those who are upbeat no matter what quite fake and transparent (oops there I go again with my opinions). Some of my favourite bloggers are Bethany Worrall, Big Fashionista and Qworter Life Crisis and they all have one thing in common; they're honest and they don't tend to hold back with what they say. I feel like I can really relate to all three of those ladies whereas there are lots of bloggers who I feel totally different to even though they're the same age as me. Maybe it's because they're aiming at a younger audience (similar to that of Zoella) or maybe it's because they are genuinely different to me in their real persona.
I sometimes think it takes a bit of fakery to become a successful blogger/vlogger; whether it's buying things you can't afford to make it look like you live a more luxe lifestyle than you actually do or never mentioning the times when you actually feel really quite down and maybe a bit depressed... there's obviously something that is pleasing the masses because the vast majority of super bloggers/vloggers seem to have this perfect life where everything is all sweetness and light. But then I am aware that lots of popular bloggers have touched on the subject of anxiety and the impact it has on their life but I can't help but point out that depression affects a total of about 121 million people in a period of 12 months (mentalhealth.org) so I do wonder it's never really touched on in the blogosphere.
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