Feeding One's Ego Through Social Media

Illustration by John Holcroft

How many 'likes' does one need to feel fulfilled and satisfied? British artist, John Holcroft, nicely summarizes society's current magnetism towards social media in this one illustration. Nowadays people of all ages, especially the younger generation, are drawn to Facebook, Twitter, etc...because these mediums provide them with opportunities that were never available before. This includes forming some type of connection with their favorite celebrities, and to some extent becoming a celebrity themselves. For instance, individuals will go to YouTube to post videos, knowing that they will get some type of views, and hopefully become famous one day. Justin Bieber is a prime example of how a young Canadian kid on YouTube can get scouted for his singing talent. However, do these individuals realize what is happening behind their screen?

The documentary, "Generation Like" exposes how teenagers has migrated to the web for cultural interactions, and this movement has started the game of 'cat-and-mouse.' In the past, corporations have used various marketing techniques to catch their audiences' attention, ranging from hiring celebrities to endorse their products to buying up time slots on television so they can air their commercials. In contrast, social media users, especially teenagers, are now being seek to advertise for these same corporations. As a result social currency, such as "likes" and "retweets" has become a thing in the monetary world. Social currency helps social media users buy branding, money, and fans.

These monetary values might be important to some users, however, it seems like it is the validation of their presence that is significant to them. Receiving the "100 likes" substantiates that their post reached at least 100 people, and of that 100 people, they share the same interest. In our current society, the worth of validation has inflated. No longer do people feel satisfied with "100 likes" or "100 followers," but reaching that next "100" is the goal, which forms a endless circle. In a way social media has become a 'drug' since it is so addictive. People want to get that same 'happy' feeling again and again, and the only way to do this is by posting more. So going back to our main question, how many "likes" does one need to feel fulfilled or satisfied? People still seek empowerment from social media, but moreover they want to receive the instant gratification they will obtain by posting on social media.

Branding, Icons and Religion

We are our own media companies. We create ourselves and ‘brand’ ourselves anyway we like. We are empowered by the web, and the web is empowered by us. But is this really the case? How much are we really in control of our own identity? As Einstein writes in her article, “identities are constructed through consuming”. Therefore, we are not the product of our hard work, dedication and beliefs, but a consequence of what we buy (clothes, cars, laptops etc.). The brands we wear and the things we buy are more than just goods and services, they play a vital role in communicating our ‘true’ identity to the rest of the world. This branding translates to the online world, where the things we share, tweet and like become the primary means of revealing our characters.

This communication is very critical for the “like generation”, not because it reveals their personalities but because it provides a source of validation, as well as connection to the celebrities and the online community. One source of validation comes from the idea of being liked by lots of people. If that happens, you become an icon, a secular source of  “divine representation” that can inspire others. This is where religion and identity branding meet. Tyler Oakley and Steven Fernandez are true icons in this sense, they have the capacity to induce powerful and transformative experiences within a group. Their fans look up to them for a number of reasons, either in search for a life advice or simply to be entertained. Neither Tyler nor Steven expected to reach these levels of followers at first, yet the idea of being liked and “worshiped” as a celebrity was definitely flattering.

After reaching this level of celebrity adoration, how much are they still in control of their own identities? It seems like both had to give up parts of who they are in order to reach that status. Inevitably, both of them had to adjust their content according to their needs or the desire of the fans, whether it was advertising their sponsors or adding naked girls to the videos. In the end, it seems like it’s the fans and the followers who are the true marketers, they have the ultimate power to make Tyler and Steven alter their identities in order to meet the demands of the web community.

The New Age of Company Branding

       In the Frontline Documentary "Generation Like," the film discusses a new type of way for companies to "brand" their products. As said by Mara Einstein, branding is an attempt by companies to "create loyalty among its customers."(p.71) The ultimate goal of branding products is so the brand "becomes part of popular culture." (p.71) In the past, the branding of products had to be done by the companies through commercials, billboards, and other means of trying of show their product to the masses. The rise of "generation like" has shifted more of the responsibility of spreading the brand to the consumer. In today's Internet, the consumer spreads the brand's message through the use of "likes" and "sharing." In the documentary, a film called "The Hunger Games" used unpaid social media users to spread the message about the upcoming movie. This new way of advertising brands works because people trust other people more than companies and having your friends endorse a product makes you more likely to buy that product (as well as tell your other friends about it).

       Another central goal of branding is to creating a specific identity. People choose specific brands to create their own identity. These brands define us in society (and we want them to define us). The brands a person wears tells us about their wealth, family, religion, and many other things. Today, it is one of the central ways we define people. Social media has allowed us to expand how we identify ourselves. We create an online identity by "liking" and "sharing" brands online. One's "likes" are identified for all to see, and is a prime way companies target specific customers. "Liking" an Oreo with gay pride colors as the center combines the use of social media and brands to define us. Branding and the use of social media compliment each other, as both try to put people inside a community of like-minded people, hopefully creating a long-lasting following for both the brand and for the person. 

Branding and our Identity

           

As a capitalist society, the importance of companies and brands in America cannot be understated. The power of marketing can be seen everywhere around us, whether it be a simple commercial on television or a more subtle sign in the Hamilton diner encouraging you to drink Coke. This has an important effect on our individual and collective identities. According to Mara Einstein, “Brands are not just perceptions about a product or service, they are also bits and pieces of our identity” (Einstein, 73). In many cases, people will actually pay more to make a brand a piece of their identity. A plain white shirt is a common and cheap item, yet when Kanye West designs and brands one, it sells for $120. People believe that by purchasing and wearing the "Hip Hop T-Shirt", it incorporates Kanye's brand, and even his persona, into their own identity. This is what APC, the company that manufactures the Kanye clothing line, aims to accomplish. This is a very common phenomenon throughout marketing and branding. Gatorade’s marketing campaign that simply states “Be Like Mike, Drink Gatorade” is a particularly blatant example of this.

            This phenomenon of forming an identity through branding has helped replace religious identity in an increasingly secularized society. As Douglas Atkin explains, “People today pay for meaning more than they pray for it” (Einstein, 73). With the rise of mass media, the prevalence of branding has changed how we inherently define ourselves. In the past it was family, friends, or religion. Today, our identities can be formed by a patchwork of logos, slogans, and brands. This morning I saw a student wearing a Nike Hoops sweatshirt, along with Jordan sweatpants and shorts, probably indicating that they play basketball and identify with the overall branding message of Nike. On the other hand, that same student would never dream of wearing a Hello Kitty shirt, as it would distort the carefully constructed identity that he, and everyone else, creates for themselves. This common societal understanding of what companies represent shapes the brands we choose to incorporate into our identity, and is replacing traditional sources of identity.

Brands, Religion, and Social Media

In Brands of Faith, Mara Einstein states “branding is about making meaning- taking the individual aspects of a product and turning them into more than the sum of their parts.” This connects to social media, because as demonstrated in the movie “Generation Likes,” kids are creating their own brands through social media forums, like Facebook, YouTube, and instagram. There are the less intense examples, like the kids sitting around trying to carefully construct their facebook pages. This brings up the question, do these social media forums allow people to demonstrate their true self? The answer, in my opinion, is no, because they are controlling what aspects of their personality the public can see. This careful construction avoids showing flaws, which is a key aspect of someone’s true self. However, then you have the more extreme examples, like Tyler Oakley, or the eight-year-old skateboarding YouTube star, who takes his identity as a skate boarder and turns it into a somewhat crude and pornographic image. He creates this image because he know it is what will get him the most views because its what the public wants to see. That is the key to branding and marketing. Companies are constructing products in a way that will help them gain profits and customer loyalty. In the sense of kids and social media, “likes” are forms of profits. Those who gain so many likes are the ones who are wealthiest in the social media world because people are receptive to the things they post. That’s why the face presented on social media is not a true self, because kids are putting up the things they think people will be receptive to, not what they actually like. That shows how similar social media and branding really are.

This “reliance on brands for identity stems from a sense of rootlessness.” This is where religion comes in. Religion was created, originally as a simple cult, in order to bring people together and provide them with a community. That, as Eisntein states in the book, is the same reason for the creation of brands. Brands give people something to share and to form a community over. Brands, like mythologies, work together to create a sense of wholeness from society.

Branding Religion

     Religion and marketing share a chief interest; proposing a "product" that is meaningful and valuable to a mass of people. Religion is associated to a variety of intended "products" disguised as faith, values, and guidelines that offer individuals meaning, purpose, and order to their worlds.
     In The Language of Clothes, Alison Lurie provides a literal example of clothes and jewelry as products in religion that both help project one's religious identity and symbol larger aims of their perspective beliefs. Thus, a cross on a chain becomes more than a piece of metal to a Christian; it becomes a representation of Jesus Christ, of sacrifice, and of faith. Similarly, in her piece Branding Faith, Mara Einstein articulates the function of branding in marketing: "branding is about making meaning--taking the individual aspects of a product and turning them into more than the sum of their parts." She illustrates that consumers are taken by products because of the ideas they represent, whether that becomes a symbol of social status, wealth, or reputation. This becomes most apparent in commercials for products where the message becomes very far-fetched from the actual product. In a 2014 Super Bowl commercial titled "Puppy Love", Budweiser promotes its drink by illustrating an unbreakable bond of friendship between a puppy and the animals/people on a farm, ending with the pun-y hashtag, #bestbuds. By appealing to the deep meaning of friendship, and the undeniable cuteness of the puppy, the company is able to attract a vast array of consumers, uniting them under the feeling invoked by the commercial. Frontline's documentary, Generation Like promotes the same idea, where marketers analyze consumers' interests and friends through things like Facebook to gage future consumers and open their markets to different communities.
     Religion functions very similarly. Although these religious "products" don't have to be tangible, they can "sell" someone like Jesus Christ or something like the idea of salvation to different consumers by applying deeper meaning and purpose to these products.

The Social Media Atheist

The Social Media Atheist

     

     In her book, Branding Religion, Mara Einstein draws important comparisons between marketing and religion, arguing that they share many essential qualities and function similarly. For example, Einstein says, "Consumers see religious products as means of expressing their faith while merchandisers see products - including religious practice itself - as means to spread the faith." Here she is arguing that religious products, like a Star of David for example, function in the same way with respect to spreading one's faith, Judaism, as a pair of Jordan sneakers do in spreading one's identification with the Jordan Brand. Similarly, in Generation Like, the documentary implicitly argued that social media also functions similarly to religion as users strive to gain the most 'likes', or popularity, and present themselves in the ways that they would like to be identified by others. However, while Einstein and Generation Like argue that both branding and social media function religiously, there is an important 'sect' of individuals and users that aren't quite covered by their arguments.

     Neither of the two pieces touch on the atheist category. In the case of Einstein, the atheist is someone who purchases products from companies that don't actively use their products as marketing tools, while for Generation Like the atheist is someone who doesn't constantly post in search of 'likes' or doesn't even participate in social media at all. Since the rise of social media and the omniscience of branding and marketing, those that have actively participated in these practices have become the face of the issue, leaving the atheists overlooked. While the over-consumption of branded products and social media is still a concern, there are still billions of people who don't have internet or buy consumer products. Are we really faced with an epidemic, or are we just allowing the news and media outlet convince us that we do by putting an emphasis on the people already infected?