“Who do you fancy?” I answered this question on a Bebo quiz when I was in year eight, broadcasting my schoolgirl crush and baring my anguished pre-teen soul to everyone who was interested in the profile of xXxXHell13xXxX. I designed my Bebo domain, had a Tumblr which was basically a study in teen angst. I vomited a mixture of glitter gifs, bad poetry, crushes, hopes and dreams out of my little emo heart into the interwebs. It was a place for me to write to a sympathetic audience about when I was annoyed with my Mum/homework/sister ruining my Kate Moss poster. The internet was basically our diary. Social media invited us to be ourselves, or a cooler, more Emo version, a sort of alter-ego, an outlet for our hot hormonal teen tears. It was a real extension of ourselves. Generation Y literally grew up on the internet.
The other day, a job application asked me for my Twitter handle. I had to delete tweets about crying over exams, but to be honest if I had to delete everything embarrassing I’ve ever tweeted since 6th form when I got the damn thing, I would be there for hours. Our social media is being sterilized, we have been lied to. What was our space to be creative, to broadcast our dirty laundry and sordid half-secrets on has now become a corporate tool.
One day, my Twitter bio will read something like: “Marketing executive. Tea lover. Avid Dr Who fan and enjoyer of life. All views my own lol” because we have to be both personal enough to have followers, and professional enough to use it as a platform for our job. I don’t know about you, but an embarrassing life event can be turned from something excruciating into something successful with three or four retweets. I don’t want to lose that.
My teen angst is being cruelly scrubbed away by a corporate brush – I won’t stand for it any more. So I’m going to casually, passive-aggressively mock the whole industry by writing an ironic Twitter bio about my ‘synergy’. Join me, comrades. Let’s fight the power together, by writing heinous things about our private lives on our social media platforms. Stand with me when I say “Let’s take our social media back!”. We are not corporate tools! Alternatively, we could just all get Myspace again, no one will find us there.
