Social Media as Digital Plastic Surgery

Let’s face it…we all have the ability to act as our own public relations agent online, and because of that, there is a lot of time spent crafting our digital selves. Even those of us that are young and naive are starting to understand that youthful public bliss could leave deep scars down the road. As digital communications advance, the stakes are now much higher…and by higher I mean digital Lipoplasty or Abdominoplasty…not just a shot of Botox or a little nip off the ankles.

Everything we say out in the strata of zeros and ones can be searched, indexed and analyzed by everyone. Take the insurance industry…they are starting to look at ranking their customers based on ‘social’ conversations. If someone is the Mayor of McDonalds on FourSquare and talking about their favorite cigarettes via Facebook, that is a blow to their health index and their pocketbook. You let someone know you drive fast or don’t wear a seatbelt – another cash hit and blow to an index. You can see the dilemma we are all slowly starting to face…be yourself or be what everybody looking in wants you to be…it’s similar to famous personalities that live a lot of their lives in the spotlight and are often forced into public personas the audience dictates.

If the Mayor of McDonalds hears that insurance companies are rewarding healthy social ‘chatter’, you can imagine the major plastic pixel surgery that Mayor will go through. And with that (this is the sad part) comes the death of social media as we know it. As we all become clones of what society is looking for, the chatter becomes calculated and boring…no longer real and spontaneous.

The allure of the big stage and bright lights we all have had access to…that taste of experiencing 140 characters of fame…it’s all fading quickly as we learn how exposed we all are. Our digital socializing is going to move behind ‘invite only’ doors and become blind to the world that searches for our every word…stay tuned.