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Social Media Portrays Fake Lives
I don’t think it is a surprise to anyone that Social Media does not give an accurate representation of someone’s real life.
Everyone always show the best, most exciting, especially fabulous moments. Which I love.
It is very important to celebrate our victories and I don’t think there is one issue in posting about it and doing so.
It is just hard to remember that.. That those celebratory posts are just a small fraction of our friend’s lives.
Time to Squash the Misconceptions
This past Sunday the President of my Church, urged all of the youth (and anyone else who would like to!) to take a 7 day break from Social Media.
“Give yourself a 7 day break from fake!”, he proclaimed and it hit me hard. Since my work requires time on social media, I figured writing this post, being honest and RAW with everyone could be how I can make a small difference in the social media world.
The content I put out on my website, facebook and Instagram are what hundreds of thousands of people see of my life each and every month.
Because of the perfectly posed food pictures I post, I came to the realization that most people probably have a pretty picture of my life painted in their mind. My house (spoiler alert: I live in a run down 4-plex apartment!), my family, my day to day life etc.
I try to always be real in the text I write, especially over on Instagram. But today, I’d like to give you REAL LIFE.
I Present To You: Real Life
In-between all of the perfectly posed pictures is a lot of crazy. I have bad days, I am not even close to perfect. Frankly, I am usually bra-less and in my pajamas.
If you could actually hear the audio of the video’s I make, you’d hear a lot of music, kids playing (occasionally fighting) and I have to edit out a child’s hand or head in the middle of my video at least once every time.
Part of my job writing recipes and photographing food is to make it look appealing. What is going on around the pictures though is usually quite the circus.
I have young kids, they are at home with me all day every day. We bake, cook and recipe test together during the day which is sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, always messy. ?
Toys are generally everywhere.
I don’t have a marble countertop (Maybe one day? I can dream, right?).
Lastly, I hear ALL the time ‘I want to come to your house for dinner! Whenever you post anything I just want to invite myself over for dinner!’
Most nights when dinner rolls around, I’ve been cooking, baking and cleaning all day. We usually end up eating reheated food or we have scrambled eggs and toast.
Real Life vs Actual Photos
This is pretty much how most pictures are taken. On my coffee table with my $6 marble looking linoleum tiles from Home Depot.
Or on really cloudy days, my daughter’s changing table is the only place that gets enough light to take decent pictures.
Fun fact: The blender that is holding up that back tile still had some Oreo crumbs in it and it totally tipped over from the weight of the tile. Oreo crumbs were EVERYWHERE. ?
This is my super awesome, high tech video set up. ?
I hope that whoever reads this will remember that YOU are normal and so is everyone else regardless of the fun and awesome things they showcase on their social media.
No mater how perfect someone’s life seems, I assure you it is not.
I strive to be real, honest and raw with my reader I appreciate all of the support I have received from everyone this far in my blogging journey and can’t wait for the years to come! ?
This post made us chuckle. Very good:)
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I took the 7-day “fast” from social media challenge. I’ll put them back on my phone on Tuesday, although I haven’t really missed them. I appreciate your reality photos and I enjoy reading your blog. I’ve tried a few of your recipes and they’re great! Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Allison! I am over here trying to figure out how I can do my own social media fast, but I kind of have to be on it daily. ? I am glad you’ve enjoyed the recipes you’ve tried! So glad you are here- keep being awesome! ❤️
Karli, You are so talented—and real. Thanks for giving us a peek behind the scenes. 🙂 We bloggers should get together and help clean one another’s houses. 🙂 Then again, we’d much rather blog.
Hi Kerry!! Maybe someone would clean my house for trade if I let them eat all my extra food? Haha as of now, my neighbors are really well fed. ?
This is so great, Karli! My desk that in pictures appears to be a marble desktop with brass hairpin legs is actually a DIY made of a super cheap door from Home Depot covered with marble contact paper and steel hairpin legs that I spray painted gold. Hahaha. It’s so true that the perfect stuff we see on social media is fake! But at the same time it’s hard when you’re trying to do a job that requires perfectly styled pictures. I’m gonna be looking for those laminate marble tiles next time I’m at Home Depot because I need something I can move around easier and that is genius!
Haha! I love it! Yes, exactly right, it is so hard when part of the job is to make things appealing to the eye and styled. The laminate tiles are a life saver!! Love them! ?
Really enjoyed reading this. I know that it’s all cultivated, crafted, cleaned and pressed in all the online images, but it’s easy to feel lesser than when viewing them, especially late at night 🙂
I also feel like you need to share that setup that’s holding your camera – PVC pipe and ? It looks like what I’m trying to make in my mind but just can’t connect the pieces.
This is so incredibly awesome, I might cry from relief. For years I lived with other people in their crowded, sometimes bordering-on-hoarder homes in a small bedroom with no space to take photos or too dark and nowhere to go but outside. I tried all kinds of backgrounds, “branding” and “styling” as much as I could but the reality was ridiculous and I always felt like I could never be consistent. It’s nice to see some reality and truth. Brilliant! Thank you.