My Instagram Post is a Gift to You

Surprise! My Instagram post for your birthday is actually the one and only birthday present that you will receive from me- since I am actually advertising the, most likely, insignificant friendship of someone that I will struggle to remember the name of in 20 years- but really the self-proclamation that I am desiring attention through the click of a digital heart.

A photo posted by @happy_birthday_card on Dec 6, 2016 at 8:44am PST

It is easy for us to assume that people who do not have certain social media accounts are misers who are afraid to share their gifts to the world, but also do not want to accept ours in forms of followers from a shout out about their recent passing of a kidney stone. 

We, the only self-aware Millennials, are seen as egoists by our uncultured Baby Boomer parents who far to well know how to take poorly angled selfies. Easily arguable, we can simply say that we are enlightening the world with our epiphany on life. 

Do I sound a little pessimistic towards my use of gifts to acquaintances? As unfortunate as it sounds, I plea guilty to nearly all the instances mentioned previously (slight exaggeration about the kidney stones). It is as similar as giving a Christmas present to our favorite pet. We cannot help but hope they will receive happiness and return everlasting love. This is something that is rarely thought prior to gifting the present as a self-interested aspect of ego. We have been born into generations who somehow receive a form of gift and by result provide feedback through verbal communication, or by a physical monetary matter. It just turns out that today we use our social media platforms as our form of gift-giving.

We use our social media sites as a secret Utopian society where we are inferior to the economic status of reality by creating the person we wish to be. When I post something on any of my social media accounts, I will either gain followers from my wittiness, or certain people will recognize something I think is significant. If someone skims over our clever captioned picture without acknowledgment, our self-confidence is lost and we strive to top it with the next, leaving a lacked inferiority complex. 

We all use our goals of blogs and posts as a plea for retaliation from the readers in some varying form of recognition. It creates a "give and take" persona that is much more easily accepted through a virtual world rather than reality. 

My only hope through social media is to say that I once sat behind that one guy in my Spanish class who re-tweeted the girl who got a reply from the once famous child star turned drug addict's tweet about getting the newest Starbucks drink.