Social media really isn’t real life. The fact that someone has thousands of followers, speaks confidently into a camera, and posts motivational speeches every morning does not automatically mean they have life figured out. Sometimes, they’re just as lost as everyone else, only better at packaging the confusion. And I actually think some people eventually start believing their own performance too.
Now don’t get me wrong, the whole fake it till you make it thing sometimes works. Confidence can open doors. Presentation matters but sometimes, people fake so much that they create an entirely different reality online while struggling deeply offline.
There’s this guy currently squatting with one of my neighbors. He has a decent audience on TikTok and every single morning, without fail, he records motivational videos somewhere around the finest-looking part of our building complex. Unfortunately for me, that spot happens to be close to my apartment, so many mornings I wake up to the sound of him passionately telling people to grind harder and believe in themselves.
Every day, it’s one motivational speech after another. He talks about how he made it through photo editing, how social media changed his life, and how people should register for his classes if they want financial freedom too. I do think that if you stumbled across his page online, you’d probably think he was doing extremely well for himself.
But here’s the irony. This man is literally being housed and fed by his friend. He’s squatting. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with struggling or needing help. Life happens and most people are one bad month away from needing support themselves. What fascinates me is the contrast between the online image and the actual reality. Because someone watching his videos could easily start feeling insecure. They might compare their life to his and think, “Wow, this guy has really figured things out while I’m still struggling.” Meanwhile, the successful life they envy is carefully framed between camera angles and motivational quotes.
That’s why I keep saying not everything online is what it seems. Most of the time, the people loudly teaching success are still desperately trying to survive. The confidence you admire is just performance and the luxury is rented. Sometimes too, the happiness is edited and the motivation, coming from someone equally confused about life.
Now that realization has made me softer toward myself. Because social media has a way of making ordinary people feel behind in life when in reality, many of the people they admire are also just trying to hold things together quietly behind the scenes.
The internet is a stage and a lot of people are performing their way through survival.
my response to the freewriters daily prompt
