Insta, Rinsta, Finsta

If you, like me, thought you were on top of tween and teen things because you knew what Instagram was, I have one thing to say to you ...

Get over yourself.

Unless, of course, you happen to also know what rinstagram and finstagram are. Then, I will gladly bow to you and concede that you are way hipper than I am.

I just found out about them this week.

According to Urban Dictionary (one of my favorite, if often eye-popping, places to hang out online):

Finstagram, finsta for short, is a mixture of Fake & Instagram. People, usually girls, get a second Instagram account along with their real Instagrams, rinstagrams, to post any pictures or videos they desire. The photos or videos posted are usually funny or embarrassing. Only your closest friends follow this account.

 

Then, in case you just landed a contract writing scripts for The CW or FreeForm (formerly) ABC Family, Urban Dictionary offers some simple, sample usage:

 

"Hey that picture you posted on your finstagram was so funny."

"That picture is so funny you should finsta it."

"Finsta that sh*t nowwwww!"

"Oh let's take a picture for my finstagram."

A rinstagram, meanwhile, is the "real" account, probably the one your daughter set up at first. This is her public persona, the face she shows the world. And, probably more to the point, this is the Instagram account that her parents know about.

 

Being perfect and popular is paramount on Instagram. This can lead to endless editing in a neverending quest for followers. 

What's interesting though, is that (despite the naming convention going on here) for a lot of girls, their finsta is realer than their rinsta.

Are you following?

 

Pretty pictures? Rinsta. Not so pretty? Finsta.

 

Happy thoughts about life? Rinsta. Darker thoughts about ... well ... the dark stuff? Finsta.

 

If you've had a particularly horrible week, you don't elaborate on it on your rinsta. You bare your soul (not to mention your zits) on your finsta. That's all good. But, maintaining two accounts can be time-consuming. And, we all complain that our kids are overcommitted already. 

 

Still, it's probably worth it. Tweens and teens, especially girls, are under so much pressure to look good. And, social media is all about revisionism and retouching. A finsta is a chance to stand up and say "I know the rest of it is bull. Here's my real life."

So the question of the day ... Should you ask to see your daughter's finsta?

 

C'mon. Get real.

If you've enjoyed this post, I invite you to order the book Lovin' the Alien here.      

 

Fame: Fleeting, Fake and In Your Face

Before today, had you ever heard of Essena O'Neill?

Me neither.

Well, apparently we're a little behind the times. 

Essena, a 19-year old Australian model and social media personality, has hundreds of thousands of followers on the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr. (She also seems to have a number of Facebook pages, but since the 'book of face' is quickly becoming more of a midlife community, her numbers there aren't quite as staggering.)

For the past few years, Essena has spent countless hours posing and posting. Blonde with a preternaturally tiny waist, she's perfected the swimsuit selfie. You know, that pose that says "Just puttin' myself out there because I'm so hot. So hot. You know I'm so hot. But yo, if you don't know, well now you know."

Her online popularity has led to a modeling contract with a major ("the biggest") agency down under, as well as advertising revenue and product endorsements.

By her own account, she is a product of — and addicted to — social media. When she was 12, she began posting and thought she was worthless because she had no likes or followers. For years, she perfected her pretty pouts, sometimes shooting an image 100 times before it was deemed attractive enough to get the reaction she was looking for. Now, at the wise old age of 18 (and after 3 years of pretty much living online), she knows better. "Validation from numbers? It means nothing," she insists.

Recently, Essena stunned the interwebcyberdigisphere by publicly resigning. She explained why she's not going to post anymore in a video (that she posted, of course). "I don't agree with social media as it currently is. It's so detrimental to human health and human abilities."

Wow. Profoundy.

To add cred to her cause, she made the video without makeup ("Gasp!"), a fancy blow-out ("Oh my!") or even a bikini ("Say it ain't so!"). 

She's challenging her fans to swear off social media for a week. If they do, she promises they can have life-altering (she really uses that phrase) experiences just like she has. For example, she's spent her newfound offline time "Looking at trees." And, "Listening to people."

With due respect to Kafka, Essena is clearly going through a metamorphosis. And, she's going to share it with us. In fact, she'll be posting about her life post-posting 3 times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. ("Australia-time.") She'll talk about books she's reading, what she's doing, "game-changing projects and plans." Her focus won't be on how she looks but how she feels "insiiiiiiide." She caresses the word with a sense of wonder, as though she were the first to coin the concept.

So, Essena has launched a new "Game Changers" blog where she is — through the use of social media — encouraging people to turn away from social media. "Let's talk about real stuff!" After a couple of days of jubilant observations and tearful gratitude, she realized that her new venture, as noble as it was, wouldn't pay her rent. So she posted a video asking for donations and added a "Support" tab to the site where you can demonstrate said support with a major credit card. This was picked up by the media and opened her to a veritable hailstorm of cynics and detractors. (The plea has since been taken down.) 

But, crowdsourcing aside, she insists that her new venture is "Not about likes; not about money."

In fact, she boasts in her initial video, "I almost took this off YouTube." 

But ya didn't. Did ya? 
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of my book  Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.

Fickle About Facebook

My husband is one of the last hold-outs when it comes to social media. Never mind that he's in marketing. Never mind that he's a particularly social guy in his analog life. Never mind that he is — and has always been — young-at-heart. Unlike all his friends and family (not to mention 1.4 billion others), he has yet to join Facebook.

He says he never will.

Of course, this makes it a little inconvenient when I see something on Facebook that I think he'd like. Instead of simply hitting "share," I have to click through to pull the content up on a web browser, then cut and paste the URL into an email and send it that way. In other words, what would take a half a second within Facebook ends up taking me three or four seconds.

The horror!

Contrast his attitude with our now-teenaged daughter's. A few years ago, she couldn't wait to join Facebook. I finally said "Yes" when she turned thirteen. We agreed to some guidelines and ground rules, and except for one incident when a camp friend posted some rather off-color birthday wishes (which I immediately made my daughter delete but not before her grandmother saw them, omg), we've never had a problem.

Meanwhile, I have really enjoyed using Facebook myself. Over the last few years, I've reconnected with friends from kindergarten, from summers at my grandmother's house, high school, old jobs, college and the theatre company where I rehearsed every afternoon (plus weekend performances) all through my teens. As a writer (of this blog and also for Women's Voices for Change), Facebook gives me an easy way to share my work and expand my audience. As a marketer, I can share news from my agency and samples of recent work. And, as a mother, I've proudly shared thousands of photos and horse show scores.

Facebook has also been a subtle way to stay on top of my daughter's social life. A number of her BFFs have friended me. ("Really," I explain to her as she rolls her eyes, "They friended me first.") Kids typically post pictures from parties, concerts and other outings. When she was in Spain last summer, I kept track of her comings and goings through her posts and those of her host family.

Recently, I posted a quick video of a talking goat (don't ask) on her wall. I knew she would love it. But, when I asked her about it after school, she hadn't seen it.

You see, Facebook, the very center of her life at thirteen, is now passé. Or, more accurately, Facebook is now where old people hang out. Old people like me, apparently.

Sure, my daughter still goes to Facebook for certain things. The girls in her class have created a page to share prom dresses. Her stable posts lesson and competition schedules (and, this year, snow removal updates). She browses her news feed, casually. But, it isn't the center of attention like it once was. And my daughter isn't alone.

A recent survey of teens found that Facebook has been replaced. Don't get me wrong, it's still in the top three social sites, but its popularity is definitely waning, while other sites are picking up speed. Take a look at some results:

More than 90% of teens use some social media

76% use Instagram

59% use Twitter

45% still use Facebook, BUT that number has dropped 27% in the past 6 months

These statistics are interesting, but don't necessarily spell doom and gloom for Facebook. Although their active members are decreasing, those that are still loyal spend more time and are more fully engaged than users on other sites.  

So don't sell your shares of Facebook quite yet.

After all, they own Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.  

Pretty As A Picture?

In the past week, President Obama has received a lot of unwelcome press. As you've surely heard, at a recent fundraiser, he jokingly introduced California's Kamal Harris as "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country."

Was this a compliment? Was it an example of sexist marginalization? Or maybe a bit of both? 

You know what I think?

Who cares. Please. Move along.

If you regularly read Lovin' the Alien, you all know that I am a big old feminist with a capital F. And, I'm thoroughly unashamed to admit it. But, this seems a little silly. Isn't there some real news, people?

Harris is attractive. Period. And, Obama was introducing her at a social event, not urging people to vote for her or approve her nomination. I truly don't believe he was belittling her. He could have said the same thing about a good-looking male colleague. In fact, five years ago, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi called Obama himself "young" and "handsome" (and, "suntanned" too, um ... okay ... that's a different story). 

Clearly, the president desperately needs some gender sensitivity training. Not. I think we're taking political correctness a bit too far. Whether you agree with his healthcare reform or his take on taxing the one percent, President Obama is not a male chauvinist. In fact, the irony here is that Obama has appointed a record number of women judges, with two at the Supreme Court level, including my elementary school classmate Elena Kagan.

Truth is, how people look matters. (To many voters, regardless of his policies, Mitt Romney looked like a president should look — whatever that means. Tall, white, and male, I guess.) By and large, better-looking candidates do better. So do better-looking celebrities and better-looking business executives. Not fair, but not not true.

And what's true for people is especially true for female people.

As the mother of a teenage daughter, I am hyper-vigilant when it comes to girls judged by their beauty rather than their brains. But, it's a losing battle. Try to teach teens that appearances can be at worst deceiving and at best irrelevant, and they will look at you like you have two heads. After all, they're not blind. Whether it's a table of perky cheerleaders in the cafeteria or a class clown whose boyish charm helps him get away with disruptive antics in geometry, there are countless examples in high school. Better-looking gets treated ... well ... better.  

And, unfortunately, teen girls can be their own worst enemies. 

I just read a story in The Washington Post about a current social media phenomenon, called "beauty pageants." (I would say a "new" phenomenon, but that would only prove how completely out of touch I am; it's probably been going on for a while. Like most middle-aged moms, I'm hopelessly behind the times when it comes to what's hot and what's not with my fifteen-year old and her cohorts.) 

Basically, an anonymous "pageant host" sets up the contest and girls post self-portraits ("selfies") using the smartphone app Instagram. Then, any of Instagram's estimated 100 million users can give the girl a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down (comments can be a lot more specific and a whole lot more hateful). Enough negative feedback and the girl is — publicly — disqualified.

Nice.

Let's consider for a moment how many levels of wrong we have here ...

Who is this anonymous host: a group of beer-buzzed fraternity brothers, a particularly competitive queen bee, or your average everyday pedophile? 

When sexier photos are rewarded with higher rankings, how are other contestants (many of whom are underage) being encouraged to behave?

How do the nasty comments and insults affect the self-esteem of teen and preteen girls, for whom — let's face it — self-esteem is a tricky business to begin with?

And, what are people (100 million of them, remember) doing with the pictures now that they're out there? 

Here's what worries me most, I think. Where do teenage girls find a safe haven anymore? Back in those rose-colored good ole days, you could compartmentalize and protect yourself. Yes, you might be teased at school because you had braces or acne or a few extra pounds, but you could escape it when you got home. Now, our girls are always connected. All media, all the time. And with their mobile phones virtually grafted to their bodies, they can't get away from it. Ever.

We are also raising our teens in a world of unprecedented exhibitionism. They don't think about the repercussions, they just shoot and post. I would never (never never never never) put a picture of myself up on a "Nifty Fifty" beauty pageant, if I could even find such a thing. But, it's second nature to them. It's beyond second nature. Through a combined force of peer pressure and the itchy fingers urgency of mobile media, girls are compelled to participate. "Look at me," they're saying. "Validate me. Tell me I'm beautiful." Too often, the result is just the opposite.

Because, at the end of the day, these girls are looking for love in all the wrong places.