Branding Yourself: Like Repost Like

On a recent Sunday I found myself at a desolate corner on the southwest edge of Greenwich Village in New York City. I was meeting a friend who had sent me a text with the proper street coordinates and a line that read, “Meet me inside at noon,” for brunch. It was all very Murder She Wrote, if Angela Lansbury’s character could text, so naturally I was completely on board. I had no idea why said friend chose this arbitrary spot for our catch-up over eggs and bottomless coffee. It wasn’t a local treasure or on any list of recommended restaurants—so an hour in, I had to ask, What gives with all the mystery? Turns out, we were there because my friend saw on Instagram that her crush had been making the rounds at this spot every Sunday. “Now look like you’re laughing really hard so I can Instagram a brunch picture and he sees it,” she advised me.

What said friend was really doing was cultivating her image. It’s by no means a revolutionary argument to say that the practice of branding is powerful. Professional marketers representing juggernaut businesses and small-scale start-ups alike spend billions every year in hopes of leveraging their brand with the right tagline or compelling story. And while industries are pouring energy and resources into social media strategists and branding consultants, there’s a new type of packaging that’s emerged from motivation of a different kind. And like business-savvy branding, this type might also add partners to your rolodex. I’m referring to, of course, the branding of You. And like masters who’ve convinced us that the contents inside a Heinz jar or Crest tube are magic on the tongue, capturing the essence of your neatly packaged You takes deft craftiness in the form of witty tweets and filtered photos.

In 2013 the vast majority of us have graduated from the beginning stages of social media to wearing virtual gap and gowns and receiving honorary doctorates in the field. There’s Facebook to illustrate the breadth and depth of our friendships. I’ve got a boatload of friends, and you can count all 900 of them! There’s Instagram to demonstrate that we’re seeing concerts we wouldn’t care about if it weren’t for the pop-up notification that read “that dude you’re interested in is now following you.” Now there is even video capability on Instagram to demonstrate that See! I was really at the aforementioned concert I uploaded pictures from!

It’s remarkable that we have ways of presumably connecting with more people than ever—but on the flip side, all of these connectors may leave us grossly disconnected. Scan a room at Saturday brunch and notice the gaggle of tables spending more time Instagramming their plates than actually chatting with one another. And would those denizens have even gone to said brunch place had they not planned on uploading the salivating food-tography?

In the next years or so, researchers will have to pay extra close attention to the role of social media in social comparison theory, which posits that we use others as a benchmark to gain “accurate” perceptions of ourselves. But in an age when everyone is expertly marketing their self-brand, we may be comparing ourselves to friends’ lives that don’t actually exist. Moreover, the father of social comparison, Leon Festinger, observed decades ago that what might prove most maladaptive is our tendency to compare ourselves to those whose abilities we perceive closest to our own. While Beyoncé might actually cause you to up your crunches because she represents aspirational motivation, a close friend’s feed could reverse the effect. Instead, this can leave us disheartened by not having achieved the same level of desired content [KA1] we see popping up on his or her social feed.

We should take our social media with a grain of salt, allowing it to capture a sliver of life, but not letting it dictate our days. And understand that the seemingly perfect lives you’re viewing through rose-tinted filters and “likes” is just the work of a brand manager—not a benchmark for the way you should spend your Sundays. Ah yes, and if only Angela Lansbury’s character could text, she’d say: u r tots right.

References:

Festinger, L (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations 7:117.

Festinger, L (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations 7:117.