Living for likes

We might have all been there. There was a stage in our lives when the number of likes defined the purpose of our actions.

Here’s my story.

When I was just starting, I would frequently check my notifications to see how my numbers were doing. Yes, the number of likes, comments, and shares I got for each post. I would end up constantly refreshing my feed, reading comments, and replying to them one by one to get more engagements. The more you participated, the higher the probability that people would notice you and the higher the chance that the post would resurface on other people’s feed.

I did not notice it at first, but soon it became one of my priorities. I would share my posts to a lot of groups to further increase my network. And then, the followers began pouring in. Suddenly, collaboration offers would pop in my inbox. In those times, I felt that I was beginning to get noticed. So I tried to keep up, I tried to keep the ball rolling, to keep the momentum running. I saw to it that I posted new content almost every other day, if not every week. And this mania went on for months.

Traveling gradually turned into a content-producing activity, a photo factory. The more pictures I took, the more I had to share. So instead of enjoying vacation, it would end up becoming a photo shoot. Waking up early no longer meant watching the sunrise and feeling its warmth on my skin. It now meant getting pictures with no photobombers in it. The choice of food was not based on how good they were anymore, but the manner they were served and how appealing they would look in my photos.

I said to myself, once I hit this number, maybe I’d stop wanting more. Maybe I would get contented. But, needless to say, it was all just a maybe. That ever-growing number of likes was addicting, and it consumed me.

And then one day, when I thought I was doing well, complacent with my previous posts getting viral, suddenly people seemed to stop noticing me. Even if I had posted the nicest photos, after spending hours to edit and caption them with the catchiest phrases, they were no longer making it to the top list. Questions circled in my head: Why didn’t they like it? Was it the arrangement of the photos? Did I post it at an off-time? Was the caption not good enough? Was I not good enough?

We’ve made an alternate world through social media — carefully curated feed, perfectly edited photos, well-thought-out captions. These are some of the fantasies we create in order to leave a mark on people, by letting them think this is our reality. But you soon realize that the mark won’t last. That version of reality can quickly become a fragment of the online world, soon overtaken by a newer, more appealing post.

For a moment, these numbers will define your worth. Social media acceptance becomes an obsession. Until that one moment that changes your whole perception.

I was browsing through my friend’s page when I began to notice something. Her content was one of the best I’d seen, but the figures did not match the quality. Her meager reach did not justify the value of what she was creating. But still, she continued to post and did not seem to get discouraged based on the numbers. That’s when I realized that her purpose was not to go viral, but simply to just create and share what she loved and did best. She was not there for fame or popularity. She was there to inspire people. That was my eye-opener.

From constantly being on the phone for new notifications, I would now post or share and leave it for people to see. Is it performing well? I don’t know for sure. Is it getting a lot of clicks? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, I have shared what I think would help people, and that was enough. The content is intended for them, and not for my own ego.

From this, I became more productive with the lesser time I spent online. Engagements now meant actual conversations. Reactions were no longer buttons but facial expressions. Likes no longer meant social approval.

It was a journey to get over the addiction to likes and come to terms with it. And I think I am still on my way. But the numbers no longer matter; as long as someone out there has been touched by what I create, that is already pretty much something.

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Michelle Kay Villanueva, 29, is a chemical engineer from Albay.