When I was riding the subway today I found myself looking at all of the ads lining the inside of the train. I don't normally read the ads so when I found myself doing just that I realized that maybe advertising isn't what influences our population today. Maybe, just maybe it is us / each other that have the greatest influence on how we portray ourselves.
We are our biggest critic. We live in a society where we constantly scrutinize and compare ourselves to others. It seems to me that we are not fully content with being ourselves. This got me thinking of social media/ social networking (however you wish to put it). This cyber world that we have created allows us to represent ourselves any which way we please. We are able to publish our life online through a selective process - a process where we pick and choose what the public eye, our peers/ followers/ friends get to see. This allows us to create an idealistic representation of ourself.
Everyone is trying to be perfect, yet the reality is that nobody is perfect. The great thing about social media is that it is a platform that allows us to view/ represent ourselves however we please. The negative side of this is that we are now comparing ourselves to each other more than ever. This is why I say that we as a culture have the greatest influence on each other.
(I guess you could say that advertising and how we represent ourselves online are very similar. They are both idealistic and persuasive representations that have the intent to send a message to it's target market or friends/followers/peers.)
