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Sorry to hear you weren’t feeling well on New Year’s, hope you are doing better! I can understand where you are coming from–things like #winewednesday might make me more inclined to open an interesting bottle mid-week than I usually would! But I’ve also seen how the community that is formed online can support one’s goals. For instance, a group of us last summer focused on “eating local” tweeted with #eatlocalwob to connect around what we were doing with summer’s bounty.
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Great post and I completely, completely agree with it. I was just talking to some friends from work about this. I definitely can get sucked into the everyone is having fun and I’m not cycle and I think it’s really important to always remember that people chose what they are going to say/put out in social media and no one can be having a great day all the time and people are probably often more private about hard days/situations. Interestingly, I had the opposite experience from you on New Years. I was in Miami and as we were coming home from dinner and settling in to watch fireworks on my parents balcony, many people in my hotel were dressed up and heading out for a big night. I started to think, oh man- am I crazy? should I be dressing up and heading to a bar instead of putting on my pajamas? But then when I started to check twitter, I realized that most of my “friends” were having a quiet night in and some people weren’t even staying up til 12 because they had big runs in the morning or young children or just didn’t really care 🙂 This actually made me feel better haha. However, I probably follow very different people than you since Twitter for me is 100% personal.
I’ve also had the experience where I do go out and do something just so I can blog about it, and it ends up being so awesome and I am glad I didn’t sit on my bum instead of doing it. So I guess, in the end, social media has it’s ups and downs but I do think it’s important to be aware of the effects it has on us.
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I sometimes feel pressure to go out to eat more or cook more fabulous things because I worry that people will get bored if I just post salads on my blog. But it’s my mission to eat healthier this year, so hopefully people will like the healthy meals I post in addition to the fabulous desserts. I also want to spend much less on groceries so that will take a toll on which recipes I end up making and sharing too. I need to be a little more me-focused and care a little less about what everyone else wants.
But as Kelly mentions above there are also great things about the pressure too. There are certain events I’ve almost passed up only to be thrilled that I actually went.
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Great post. I’ve been thinking a lot about this in recent months, and doing some (light) reading on the topic – Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. Also great article in the NYTimes yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Anyway, I haven’t drawn any conclusions from all this, but am very interested to see how social media (or the way in which we interact with it) changes in the next few years.
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It’s not just you. If we are all living lives on display in this age of social media, there’s very little middle ground between “I did this” and “I did this and it was AWESOME and you should do it too!” or even “I did this and what’s wrong with you that you’re not doing this too?”
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So, so true! I sometimes think my life is quite boring since I’m not always rambling about my goings-on on Twitter. But when I do get out and about, I have a great time and love writing about it. But I try not to feel the pressure to ALWAYS be doing something, every single night.
Hope you feel better! Looking forward to our Salty Pig outing! 😛
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Great post!! It really got me thinking about what stares me in the face on a daily basis in a deeper way. Social media is such a HUGE part of my everyday life. I don’t think I put serious pressure on myself to eat, drink, or do a certain thing, at least, not in an overwhelming way. sometimes the pressure might be a fleeting moment, but in general I’m pretty content if I’m having an average day and someone else is kicking ass and doing something cooler than me 😉
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I definitely feel obligated to tweet, Facebook, etc. a certain amount of times per day/week, even when I don’t feel like it. There have also been nights that I don’t want to make dinner or open a bottle of beer, but I see people on Twitter talking about their meals/what they’re drinking – and then I get inspired! It kind of depends on the day and my mood…because there are other nights I just don’t have the desire to be on the computer. 😉
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Oh, I definitely agree with this and it’s the reason why I don’t read many health blogs anymore. I don’t think most of them set a good example and would find myself feeling bad about my exercise habits, thinking I didn’t exercise enough. For me, keeping my Facebook separate from my blog has helped. I’m only friends on Facebook with a few bloggers and I don’t talk about my blog and try not to get into blog discussions on Facebook. I don’t feel pressure to eat food, go to restaurants or anything like that, but that’s probably because I’m lazy and old.
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Really interesting post! I’ve never quite thought about it as a keeping up with the Joneses but you’re totally right! As with most positive things, there are definitely downsides to social media. I often just have to step back and keep in mind what I need – and sometimes that involves staying home from blogger events or making a simple dinner. Certainly easier said than done!
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Social media has totally changed things. There are times when I’m going out and I wonder if I should bring my camera, because maybe I’ll see something that catches my eye. Then I can take a picture and it will be something interesting to blog about. Or I need to make sure to take a picture of what I’m drinking or eating or whatever and upload it to Facebook or Twitter…because other people are always doing it. It’s definitely a lot like keeping up with the Joneses, I think.
Lately I’ve realized that while I should bring my camera with me, I should also live my life, take pictures of things that catch my eye, and not necessarily feel the need to blog/Tweet/Facebook about it.
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