Hall - Jesus is the reset: (10-pk)

Not long ago, a teenage supermodel from Australia quit social media, stunning her six hundred thousandplus Instagram followers and causing a publicity stir several continents wide. In a teary interview, she said the reason for closing her account was that the platform was contrived perfection made to get attention. Soon after her online exit, she deleted thousands of pictures shed postedpictures that she said served no real purpose other than self-promotion. For the posts she allowed to remain, she edited the captions to reveal the manipulation, mundanity, and insecurity behind them. She described how many selfies shed snap before posting the perfect one to her account, determined to get the right angle, the exact look, the enviable shot. Sound familiar?

She was doing this for herself but also for her sponsors, who needed her to push products on the watching public. The dress she was modeling, the makeup she was wearing, the destination she was highlightingall of it meant big bucks from the followers who werefollowing. It was good money, for sureespecially for an eighteen-year-old. But at some point, the game she was playing turned on her, and now she was the one striving to follow some man-made machine of perceived happiness. Living for likes is not really living at all.

In essence, she was saying that the pressure to produce moment-by-moment perfection became too much to bear. And if were honest, well admit the same thing: posing for perfection is exhausting. At some point, we cant pretend and play the game any longer. And while our Facebook profile shows how important we are, our last tweet reveals how witty we are, and our Instagram displays how great we look, along with the amazing people and places in our life, the reality is still that we are aloneand often posting while sitting in our pajamas at two in the afternoon, eating cold cereal, and wasting a ridiculous amount of energy trying to figure out how to make ourselves look good to the other people following us. Our posts and pictures may make it look like were living the life, but collectively were dying inside. Comparison is killing our generation.

What do people assume about you, based on your posts, pics, and feeds?

I recently read that we are exposed to as many as five thousand advertising messages a day, which is a tenfold increase since forty years ago. If you consider the steady stream of posts and feeds from our friends, that number of course is much higher. Its not just car manufacturers and clothing designers who are vying for my attention, but every person I follow online. Every waking moment I am inundated with images of flawlessness and excitement and adventure and celebrity and riches and the new pair of Jordans I really want, images that remind me every hour, hour by painful hour, that Im not living the life I wish I could.

And so I play the game. To solve this problem, this ache for something I do not have, I start trying to fix it. I work out, hoping to look a certain way. I go shopping, determined to find the shirt or pair of jeans or shoes that will let me fit in with them, that will make them like me. And for a few days, I might feel good. Sometimes I even feel like Ive arrived. But then the next thing comes out or the next post arrives on my social media feedyet another thing I dont have, another reminder that I dont measure up. I dont have the right stuff. I dont know the right people. Im not funny or good-looking or smart or luckylike they are. I try and try and try and try, and yet still I come up short.