Hi all,
The biggest news in the UK for the past week has not been Brexit, Climate change, Turkey’s invasion of Syria, anything to do with “The Donald” or anything like that.
No, it’s been this story about two footballer’s wives.
Now admittedly it can be quite interesting to watch 2 people arguing but that’s not what this blog is about.
As everybody who knows me will testify, I hate social media. Hate it with a passion that is almost unrivalled. I really think more harm than good comes from it and therefore you won’t find me active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even Linkedin.
I used to be active on Facebook but I would just find myself having disagreements with people I don’t know about things that didn’t really matter. And it was really getting in my head. I found myself waking up at 3AM and checking my phone for updates and it was pretty much all BS.
I find Instagram is even worse. I know loads of people with A LOT of followers on Instagram and almost all of them are insane, or lying.
And this is why I don’t like Social Media. It’s fake life through a filter. It’s taking 800 pictures to find the one you can actually post of your holiday. And it generally leads to people being dishonest, even if they don’t mean to be.
The problem is that even though we know it’s bullshit, we believe it when someone posts something online. We expect there to be some level of truth. The Kardashians, footballers wives, models, athletes etc. all have millions of followers that want some of what they’ve got. Or at least they want to see what they’ve got. And then the people with these accounts start posting things in an effort to sell us something and we buy it because we want to believe they’re not just selling us stuff.
And so Mrs Rooney has an account for 1.3 million people that she can sell a fake lifestyle to, and an account for “friends” that she can be “honest” with. But she never mentions to the 1.3mill that it’s all just one big commercial.
Social Media Influencers have to put the word “add” in a paid for advertisement, usually a little hagtag somewhere will do. Others will mention it on the specific post.
The issue with that of course is that it implies the rest of the posts are not “adds” and they actually are. The whole account is an add.
And it is harmful to our self-image when we see people who don’t have any problems. Women who don’t have stretchmarks after giving birth to twins. Women who got a 6-pack 3 months after giving birth. Women who claim that life is always amazing now that they’re a mum.
We don’t get to see the real account where they talk about pelvic floor weakness, diastasis recti, sleepless nights and babies not wanting to latch on. Toddlers having tantrums every 5 minutes because they’re jealous of the new baby and you peeing when you sneeze or get up off the floor. Back and neck-pain and the whole “not having a fecking clue what you should be doing” feeling. We don’t see the effort that goes in to getting the body back to where it once was.
They keep that seperate and therefore “normal” women start doing the same.
But here’s the kicker; though I don’t like Social Media, and don’t have a personal profile on it, I do have to start using it for Healthy Post-Natal Body.
I don’t have much of a choice really as we would really like to grow HPNB. I’m putting quite a bit of money into it and we need to get the word out. I have been really bad at keeping the Facebook page active but am bringing in someone to manage that for me. So you’ll be seeing HPNB a lot more on Social Media.
Don’t worry, we’ll never put anything through crazy filters and we will keep everything a safe-space. Our pages will be bullshit-free places where honest people can talk about what’s really happening and get genuine expert advice.
Take care,
Peter
