AIBU to believe frequent SM posters are massively unhappy?

[Ncbo]

I don't use social media much, more of just a watcher than poster.

It's become painfully obvious to me that the "perfect happy couples" are in actual fact miserable and playing out their life on an app that actually nobody gives a crap about.

Same with the parents who overshare their kids and show every detail of their day.

Just got me thinking as the neighbours argue every other day, on their kiss and make up days it prompts a post on SM declaring their undying love for each other 🙃

Not necessarily, I post more when I'm in a good place. When I'm in a state of overwhelm and I'm struggling I go very quiet

I don’t agree with that at all. I think some people can find it hard when they see happy couples being portrayed online over social media etc, and that it is easier for them to believe it is fake/unhealthy rather than consider that there are couples out there who are genuinely just happy and perhaps getting the validation they wish they could have. Not the case for everyone, I know that.

The two things aren't mutually exclusive though, are they? He's not happy with her but possibly does a good job of hiding it and/or treats her well, hence = happy days for her.

Not necessarily “massively unhappy” but when I was posting regular Look At Me updates they were kind of a FU for the benefit of people in my life who I felt were judging and criticising my situation at the time. As I have got older and stopped caring what others think I have stopped posting so much and hardly ever do now. So there was certainly negativity and conflict around being on social media so much but I wouldn’t say I was massively unhappy.

Nope. I don't believe this. This assumption that it's all a facade, maybe for a few, not most. I only post a bit but what I post is real. And I just don't think this insistence that all fake, can be substantiated.

I don’t agree with that at all. I think some people can find it hard when they see happy couples being portrayed online over social media etc, and that it is easier for them to believe it is fake/unhealthy rather than consider that there are couples out there who are genuinely just happy and perhaps getting the validation they wish they could have. Not the case for everyone, I know that.

I agree: I think the assumption anyone who posts pictures of their spouse must automatically be in an unhappy relationship doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny at all and says more about the self esteem of the person who holds this theory than it does about the people posting pictures.

Of course there are individual cases where that happens. But to draw some sweeping conclusion to the whole of humanity is daft.

I find it hard when happy couples are portrayed on social media but one half is on the phone to me mulling a split.

Depends what they're posting, I think, generally.

However, during a time when I was housebound for a few months, I ended up adminning a mental health support group on facebook, and let me tell you, that was an exhaustive education in the fact that what people post on their social media page is MASSIVELY misleading. People would post on their main, public feed pictures of them with their family, beaming around a dinner table, looking radiant in each other's company, with a cheesy/heartfelt post about family time and appreciating how lucky they are etc., then come into the MH support group with the most horrendous tales of family discontent, toxicity, drama, issues, the whole gamut. Same for posts about relationships, then would come into the group posting all about what their partner had said and done and how much they were struggling.

I already knew theoretically that people post the highlights of their life publicly on social media, and to take it all with a pinch of salt, but it really was illuminating and quite shocking the disparity between what people were publicly posting vs what they were revealing in the MH group. I obviously never said anything to them or anything else about this observation, and I didn't judge them for it, but it was just ordinary people; not social media "influencers" posting perfect lives, but normal people just making normal, "wholesome" posts about their lives, only to reveal the true horrors of it all in the MH group. It was a definitive lesson for me in never, ever taking ANYTHING seriously on social media.

I don't think ALL social media posters (who post very frequently,) are really unhappy @Ncbo BUT I do think SOME of them are - and SOME of them are clearly trying to prove something. (And that is that they're really happy, and having an amazing life, and everything is wonderful and perfect.) It's never true, as NO-ONE has a perfect amazing life, (with no problems,) and couples DO fall out, and extended family members fall out with each other too. Also, even the 'best behaved' kids are little shits sometimes!!!

One woman I know (40-ish) is a SAHM with 2 kids aged 10 and 8, and she is CONSTANTLY posting photos of her kids, and her and her DH, and blathering about how amazing her kids are, how loved up she is with her 'hubster' (yep that's what she calls him!) and there's not a day goes by when she doesn't post something.

Some days there are 5 or 6 posts a day, always with photos. And her kids are the cleverest, prettiest, most amazingly academically gifted children in the world. Much cleverer than others their age. She believes they should be in a school for super brainy children, as normal schools are not good enough. 🙄

I have had to unfollow (not unfriend) her, because I am sick of her inane and tedious posts coming up on the top of my timeline every time I go on facebook!

But yeah for sure, the more I see someone blathering on and on and ON about their amazing relationship, and their perfect life, the more I think 'nah... not buying it mate!' 😆

I don't know what research has been done into this phenomena but I wonder if these people portray what they would like it to be rather than what it is and then they can pretend the FB life is their real life. Or a bit of a fake it until you make it scenario that if they keep posting all the lovely bits that's how it will be.

There was a very sad case where a woman was murdered by her boyfriend. Her FB was specifically mentioned in court as it portrayed a loving, lovely relationship. One specific incident was pointed out when they'd gone to Rome and her FB was all photos of the lovely flowers he'd bought her and the lovely meals and wasn't she lucky to have a BF like him. What it didn't say was that on that holiday he beat her up really badly and she flew home early. She stayed with him and she continued posting all these 'look what my lovely BF has bought me aren't I lucky posts?' Maybe she was trying to convince everyone who was telling her to leave him that they were wrong?

No, but I think SM brings an awful amount of bitterness and jealousy.

A beautiful mum posting with her lovely home as background? Of course she must be miserable and neglect her children. You can't be a lovely happy mum unless you live in squalor apparently.

Inspiring shots of amazing holiday destination? They must be miserable and drowning in debt, they will be living under a bridge very soon, just wait and see.

Enthusiastic shots and accounts of sporting events? Only from someone struggling with low self esteem, obviously has no private life and some sort of eating disorder.

Happy and beautiful photos of a wedding? One is obviously cheating and they'll be divorced within the year.

So yes, I believe people who posts about how unhappy anyone else must be are very unhappy and bitter themselves, are not genuine friends and need to get a hobby 😂

Yanbu to think this. My cousin post pics and little stories about her kids constantly, like “aww child did/said this cute thing, I’m such a lucky mum, love th so much”. Her kids live with their grandparents and she rarely sees them because she’s a very low functioning alcoholic. Firm her SM you’d never guess this though!

People like to believe this, but in my experience the opposite has been true.

I don't think you can generalise based on frequency of post, because people use SM for different things. Most people probably choose to present their best or most interesting side, and that's fine. I don't think I would enjoy having my feed filled up with moans, gripes and mishaps.

But people do all this in real life. SM is just an extension of the self PR you do in your own life, surely?

No one would walk into work on a Monday and say: "My husband is a drunk, I'm thinking of leaving him and I hate my life". Social convention dictates that you keep this sort of thing back for close friends and appropriate circumstances.

There certainly are some people who overshare about their marriages etc (I've had friends who do this) but it's no worse than what they say to their friends offline.

People tend to to put an acceptably upbeat gloss on their lives for public consumption and also tend to celebrate little "wins". So if you've spent six months dealing with a baby who won't sleep and you have PND your friends might know you're struggling but no one would blame you for posting a happy snap of you and the baby in the back garden.

Also people can't win; there are always posters (understandably) slagging off the drama seekers who post "In A&E again" or "Why is my life so shit?". or "Now I know who my real friends are" etc etc.

This mindset that SM is all a lie is just silly projection. Some of it is bullshit, some of it isn't. It's like any other public facet of life.

But why @Thepeopleversuswork ??? Why do people (for example) gush and rant on about how wonderful their relationship is when some people who know them know that person's partner is a cheating twat? Or that they argue and shout at each other all the time, and do fuck-all together and don't seem to even like each other? And why do people go on and on (on facebook,) about their iccle pwincess and pwince as if they're gifts from God, and then scream and shout at them half the time in real life - and dump them on anyone who will have them whenever they can?

It's utter bollocks - and some people can see it too. It's cringe! Some of social media IS a lie. Much of it is embellished and exaggerated for sure. And yeah some of it is a lie.

Puts me of mind of a woman I know who had a baby last year. She was with a man for several months and 'accidentally' fell pregnant. She did her second bedroom up in her house with yellow and green, put a wardrobe in, and a chest of drawers, and put a new carpet in, the year before last, and said 'you never know. Wanna make the room nice in case a little 'un comes along.' I was baffled as she was not even dating. And voila, 6 months later she's pregnant by a man she's been with for only a few months. Unsurprisingly he didn't stay with her.

2 or 3 times a week, she posts pics of her and her baby boy, with 'luv mah lil man' and 'I adore my child so much, he's my life' and posts selfies of her with him and says #mummyvibes #luvmyboy #alwaysamum #babyismylife

In real life, she HATES being a mum. She has stated this many times. Neighbour says she can hear her screaming her lungs out at 2am when the baby won't stop crying, and she does nothing but moan about him ... She said she is furious the dad didn't stay with her, she is struggling alone, her friends have deserted her, her parents rarely babysit, and she has no life now. She says she has not bonded with the baby, even 10 months after his birth, and finds him a burden and an irritant.

Yet on facebook, she claims having this baby is the best thing that has ever happened to her.

Why? It's an absolute utter lie.

Why? It's an absolute utter lie.

to make herself feel better?

Because she's embarrassed, ashamed, and she's trying to cheer herself up by giving a false image?

Because she thinks SM matters somehow?

It's quite sad, but really, why would you actually care? Why does it matter to you if she post a different version on FB?

I don't care, and I never said it mattered to me. You made that bit up @deathbyhayfever

I am merely stating (and I am entitled to my views!) that it's bizarre and ludicrous that people portray this perfect life/perfect image/perfect relationship, when in real life it's not true/it doesn't exist. I'm entitled to post my views and thoughts as much as you or anyone else FFS.

I am not making anything up, you are the one posting about things being an utter lie.

I was merely asking why you care about the lies.

who said you were not entitled? I am entitled to ask a question and wonder why it seems to bother you...

They post about their life or fake life, you post about them posting about their fake like, I post about you posting ....we can go on 😂

I know couples like this too, you'd think everything was perfect from their SM and it really isn't. I don't think it's odd. I'm not a SM poster but I'd expect people that are to share things about their happy times, it's not a stream of consciousness.

If you print your own holiday photo, you will print the beautiful sunset and the smiling child. You won't print the photo of your kid throwing up everywhere.

Why would SM be any different? Selecting the best part is for the poster as much as anyone else. My kid throwing up is not something I want to see again if I can avoid it! It doesn't mean my holiday photos are a lie.

@SweetBirdsong

But why @Thepeopleversuswork??? Why do people (for example) gush and rant on about how wonderful their relationship is when some people who know them know that person's partner is a cheating twat? Or that they argue and shout at each other all the time, and do fuck-all together and don't seem to even like each other? And why do people go on and on (on facebook,) about their iccle pwincess and pwince as if they're gifts from God, and then scream and shout at them half the time in real life - and dump them on anyone who will have them whenever they can?

Because they are ashamed and embarrassed? Because there's this vast pressure on people all the time to present as having the perfect relationship, the perfect children, the perfect home etc etc. Because the gap between what families are like in real life and they way they appear to the outside world is often considerable.

It's not really something specific to social media though is it? If you watch Keeping Up Appearances or many 1970s sitcoms they are full of tropes in which people are desperately trying to present themselves in the best possible light because they worry that admitting how normal life is will bring shame on them. People have been doing this for time immemorial.

Social media has allowed people to adopt a DIY approach to this and you can now share a snapshot of your life on Insta immediately so I suppose the pace and immediacy has changed. But the behaviour is not really that different from the days when people sent cheesy round-robins via the mail with pictures of their kids on holiday. It's the same phenomenon.

If you want to point fingers here point them at the social pressures which make people feel that they are constantly being judged for minor infractions against the acceptable status quo. You can't blame people for wanting to show themselves in the best possible light.

I think you need to remind yourself that SM isn't real life. Look at all these "influencers" - on expensive holidays, dinners, expensive clothes, skincare etc. Lots of it they get for free, it's not real life, and I don't think it should be expected to be considered real life. If someone goes on holiday and posts all over it on their SM, they're going to show the great bits, not the bits where their kids refused to eat dinner and they had an argument with their partner. Frankly, id find it weirder and slightly uncomfortable if people posted about all the bad parts of their life as opposed to the good.

More fool you for expecting SM to be something it's not.