Most of us don’t look the same on social media as we do in real life and that is for a very simple reason: we are trying

Point 1: The books we read, the movies we watch, the family we are born in, the people we frequent, the experiences we make in life, (the accounts we follow on Instagram..sadly..) etc., all serve to build our personality, our dreams, an image of our self looking forward (i.e. our self-projection). Once I have elaborated my self-projection I will act in order to match it with reality, performing actions in order to achieve that image, convinced that is where happiness resides.

We buy a Ferrari or a fancy classic car because we like the feeling that we get when driving it. We like when people turn to look at us. If all of a sudden all the human beings except you would go extinct (think Will Smith in the movie I Am Legend) you wouldn’t care about what car to drive.

“Why is it, for instance, that an orator who knows that he has written a good speech, and has fixed it in his memory, and is bringing an attractive voice to the task, still feels anxious nonetheless? Because he is not content merely to practice his art. What else does he want, then? To receive praise from his audience” — Discourse 2.16, Discourses, Epictetus

All else equal, we choose company X over company Y if company X has a more prestigious brand, because it makes us feel more important to work for company X, it elevates our status.

Some people are in a relationship only because of the feeling of importance they get from it: all of a sudden that banker or NBA player looks more attractive because of his status and in turn the feeling of importance someone may derive from being exposed to their circle.

Because after all, this is all we seek in life: a feeling of importance. Our ego doesn’t just want to build a self-projection; it wants to build a self-projection in which the main character of the story (i.e. you!) is admired, desired, and fawned upon — ideally, on a mass scale. We don’t envision ourselves as being disliked or ignored. We want to be relevant to people, we want to feel important.

When friends or couples clash that is many times as a consequence of the fact that one of the two is giving less attention to the other, and what is attention if not making someone feel important?

This topic was vastly popularised by Daniel Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People. Nevertheless, an array of philosophers before him elaborated on the topic. A few examples:

‘‘Believe me, Socrates. You have only to look at humankind’s love of honour and you will be surprised at your absurdity regarding the matters I have just mentioned, unless you think about it and reflect how strongly people are affected by the desire to become famous and to lay up immortal glory for all time. For the sake of this they are prepared to run risks even more than for their children — spend their money, endure any kind of suffering, even die in the cause. [..] I think that it is for the sake of immortal fame and this kind of glorious reputation that everyone strives to the utmost, and the better they are the more they strive: for they desire what is immortal” — Discourse of Diotima to Socrates, Symposium, Plato

What society has to realise, especially those we consider Black communities, is that the term Black has changed over time and it is not a monolith. Blackness is fluid and it brings me to ask questions about the Multiracial identity of the Caribbean, an identity that goes back to enslavement. That in the Caribbean, there is an African presence; moreover, there is a European presence in the descendants of slaveowners, but also white Creoles that have lived on those islands for generations. It brings me to question the American presence as well. By American I don’t mean white Americans, I mean Indigenous American, including the descendants of Tainos and Arawaks (for example).

What about Jewish, Chinese, Indian and Lebanese people? Jewish and Lebanese communities came to Jamaica (for example) as part of the merchant trading class, and Indian and Chinese people came as indentured labourers after the end of enslavement in 1838 in order to fill the new labour market made in hindsight of abolition. And so, these immigrant settlers had interracial relationships with the locals and created Multiracial communities.

Club privies, VIP areas, backstage passes are popular because they allow people to feel more important than those standing in general admission or crammed on the dance floor.

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r to types that have not been defined yet (forward references) do not work — and must be expressed as strings. We would need to write 'int' rather than int (although this is only the case for custom, not built-in/pre-defined types).

We post photos on Instagram because we like the feeling of importance we get when people hit that like button. If Instagram was to shut down tomorrow many influencers would rapidly sink into depression, as their main source of importance would disappear (also that’s the reason why Facebook first and Instagram later have become so popular…they give people a chance to feel…important!)

As it turns out, our ego doesn’t only want to build a self-projection of who we want to become. Given our optimistic nature, we are driven to build a positive self-projection, one in which we are depicted as a successful individual, someone who has achieved her passions, dreams, career goals, relationship goals etc.