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Social media snippets
In the first installment of our regular column, these five urbanites describe their complicated relationship with social media
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I
n the first installment of our regular column, these five urbanites describe their complicated relationship with social media. Some can't live with it, and others can't live without it.
@mrshananto
I like the idea that the public can compare notes and discuss various things in social media. I tweet consistently about financial planning, which I hope can be useful for other people. When it comes to sharing my private moments with close friends, I rely on Path. But I can only maintain one at a time; I have never been good at juggling social media platforms.
I also use social media to keep in touch with old friends and network with new friends. The other day a lecturer from Australia found me on Facebook. He invited me to attend a conference in China.
As for meeting people with the same interests, there's nothing better than social media. I recently tweeted about my business trips, and that I'm an avid runner. Thanks to @IndoRunners, I soon found running buddies throughout my trips.
@zoyaamirin
For most Indonesians I know, image-building has become a negative term. It's like awful, fake personas that are using alter egos on social media. For me, social media is essentially an image-building exercise, which psychologically pushes us to create a public persona for ourselves.
I am an active user of Instagram, Google Plus and LinkedIn (Fine! I also had a Friendster account many, many moons ago). Twitter? It is the wild, wild west out there in Twitterland; it makes you vulnerable and lovable at the same time. You must carefully measure how much you want people to know about your personal and professional lives on Twitter.
I have two FB accounts. One is for the public to see me as a psychologist (yup, serious image-building strategies can be found here), and the other is for personal use (which is basically about me, me and more me!).
But I must admit that my real sanctuary is Path, whose system gives me total control over whom I share my virtual life with (bye mean and boring peeps). Path is like a visual diary. Although I do share my emotions on Twitter and Facebook (not advisable), I can sleep well knowing that whatever I share on Path remains on Path.
@iwetramadhan
Dear Social Media, I LOVE YOU! I'm using the benefits of social media to the fullest! I tweet, I post beautiful photos on Instagram, I share my daily thoughts on Path (it is comforting to know that I have an online venue to share my thoughts with my closest friends, which I lovingly call sahaPath). I also blog occasionally on Tumblr. I tried to make a 6-second animated video on Vine, but I gave it up because it was simply too complicated.
Did I tell you that I get great dinner deals and free holiday because of my social media activities? Unsurprisingly, I was recently appointed Digital Brand Ambassador. Yup, I milked my social media savvy down to the last drop. There are a lot of things that we can do with social media, including changing the world for the better.
@ReneCC
Social media? Can't live with it. Can't live without it. We have so many social media platforms to choose from but my top three would be Twitter, Path and Instagram.
Twitter connects me with many cool new friends. It's one great example of how we Indonesians managed to hijack Western technology for our own insatiable social needs. You can choose who to follow, who to mute ' and who to unfollow. That serves me well. Folback (follow back) please.
Path ' exclusively for the inner circle. You can be a little bit more transparent here. But beware: things can get rather obscene and wild here.
Instagram ' I wish I had Edward Suhadi's talent for capturing moments. But this platform certainly makes the images I take look better. What about the rest of the social media?
Facebook? Forget it. I don't know most of my FB 'friends'. And my mom is a Facebook citizen. Not cool. LinkedIn? Way too serious for me, but I have to admit that it can be useful at times.
The rest are not even worth mentioning.
@edwardsuhadi
Has it ever occurred to you that your Facebook timeline is looking a lot like a wall of achievements ' all thanks to your fellow Facebook citizens who post every little good thing in their life for you to notice? Indeed, if there's one thing that is extraordinary about the social media phenomenon, it is that it teaches us to look at who does what. And let's admit it: our friends' well-publicized achievements often leave us green with envy.
But if it is any consolation, think of the social media as the edited version of life, and not life itself. And let's not forget about our real life, as there are a lot of things for us to be thankful for.
