Anytime I went to the beach in Florida, if there was a Hispanic family near us, the kids would be running around shouting “Mira! Mira!” incessantly. I never needed this translated because it was obvious what they were saying. They wanted their parents, siblings, cousins and anyone around to “Look at me! Watch me!”
They were no different than the kids at the pool when I was a lifeguard or my stepson when he played Nintendo video games.
So last night, bored with the book I was reading, I went down an internet rathole of news, forums, social media sites and videos. It was quite unsatisfying looking at videos of poorly acted “pranks” & trick shots. It was creepy to find photos of people I knew long ago that were heavily photoshopped, filtered, staged and shot from odd angles.
I read many notes from posters who thanked their “followers” for the likes, hearts, and comments. They genuinely seemed to appreciate this feedback from random strangers.
So this morning I was asking myself Why are people so enamored with this?
The majority of us are not influencers (or even wannabes) who make money based on their online following. A few dozen, hundred or thousand “likes” isn’t going to make them a dime from advertising.
So why would someone care how many internet strangers approve of their post?
I think it comes down to “Mira! Mira!”
Even adults want to be seen. Social media gives a semblance of that through likes, hearts and comments.
It’s more than a little bit sad to realize how much people use filters, clickbait, pandering, copycatting, SEO and other techniques to game the algorithms and increase their “hit rate.” It all seems silly to me. We’re chasing made-up targets to achieve an ethereal objective that was intentionally designed to keep us all clicking, watching ads and buying.
I’m not immune to this. Early on, when I began blogging, I felt a little jolt when I got positive feedback from a reader. I liked when my “total hits” increased week after week.
But you know what? I started blogging to generate consulting business. After an initial surge of 3 projects, I never got another client from my blogging, regardless of the number of likes, hits or comments I received.
So after I had written 100 posts during my first year, I turned off the likes, stopped promoting my newsletter, disabled the Google optimization/SEO and stopped religiously checking the reports.
That was 4 years ago. Since then, I’ve written more than 800 additional posts because I write for reasons other than making money or “Mira! Mira!”.
Someday, I’ll probably take this all offline. But for now, what I’m doing is working for me and perhaps helping (or amusing) a handful of strangers on the internet.