How Australia’s Essena O’Neill managed to become more of an uber social media star after explaining she was tired of being pseudo famous.
Here’s a trick that might work for some of you looking to build your social media clout.
Loudly announce that you are quitting social media, show some skin and watch magically your following sharply spike upwards. Don’t believe me?
Observe Australia’s Essena O’Neill who this weekend explained she is done being an internet star cause naturally ’it’s all hollow and fake, and stuff that like makes me feel insincere.’ You suppose?
It all began when the dailymail ran a story Monday morning announcing the decision of one Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australian teen girl, Essena O’Neill who had decided to announce to her over 574 000 Instagram followers, more than 250,000 subscribers on YouTube and around 60,000 dedicated Snapchat contacts that she was done being a ‘social media celebrity.’
I think the views of Essena O'Neill have solidified my stance on the people that have purely become rental billboards.
— Chris Millington (@ChrisJohnMilly) November 3, 2015
The announcement comes after the 19 year old ‘carefully constructed’ an image of idyllic youth, of a happy and carefree blonde beckoning to be the vixen and your pseudo best friend.
Something that O’Neill decided would no longer do after telling on her profile that she had grown weary of fabricating an illusion.
In reality, our collective ray of sunshine explained that the lucrative ‘modeling’ work left her empty and unfulfilled.
Fine, I can accept that. So why then didn’t Essence just simply close down her social media profiles?
But that of course would be depriving oneself of one another vital opportunity to use the heft of social media and tabloid land to self promote oneself to saturation. Something it seems one is wanton to do if they are to be offered ongoing modeling contracts or other well paid promotional work. A fact of life that the Kardashian clan can barely bother nodding their collective heads at.
Naturally after Essena’s tale of woes got picked up and went viral, so did the Australian teens’s following. Something that naturally ought not surprise anyone with half an eyelid on the manic behavior of social media followers.
A brief regard of Essena’s instagram profile as of 9pm EST, NYC time shows the teen now raking 639K followers, which is 65K more than when the dailymail’s piece came out this morning.
A regard of her youtube channel shows her drawing 263K subscribers. You get the drift.
While Essena did draw attention to the facetiousness of previous instagram posts and even pulling off up to 2000 images (her words), and her ardent claim she is now done being a social media star, something funny has happened. She is now set on becoming a vlogging star which one imagines is probably considerably more lucrative than simply only being an instagram star.
What do you think? Shouldn’t you be manufacturing your own ruse in order to build your social media clout even if we can all agree as Essena explains, ‘social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. It’s contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated self absorbed judgement.’
Perfectly orchestrated indeed …
And then there was this comment on the web that brought a rueful smile to this author’s face. See what you think?
please don’t be offended by my thoughts, i’m not very good at this ;). to me it seems like you didn’t really quit social media or the “online world”. instead of being defined and valued by numbers and looks, you’re now defined by comments and opinions about your personal decisions, thoughts, intellect etc. why do you have the need to share everything about yourself with thousands of people? i don’t think it’s for the “truth”, because everybody sees the world with different eyes. there is no truth. there is your perception of the world and your idea of the human race. of course it would be great if you realized that this concept of society is made by mankind and consists of ideas, actually our whole society does. therefore we have to find out what the prejudices are which form our mind. (for example inequality between ethnicities, genders, creatures..) we’re human, there is no reality! there is only an interpretation of what we think we see, are, what is right and wrong bla bla 🙂 i think this whole “problem” of social media is ridiculous because everything is fake about society! every fuck* thing! if you wanna get rid of the “power” of social media, avoid the idea of capitalism, avoid the idea of money, superficiality. fighting for animal rights is great but what about the human beings who are killed everyday in wars? there are so much more important things than social media in life. and yes, your website is also social media. I’m sorry essena, but your problem is nothing more than a first world problem. to me, it seems like a narcissistic monologue but that’s just how I see it.
Awful awful article!