Blog Post #4: Essena O'Neill

Essena O’Neill was a 19-year-old Australian who wanted to live a more authentic life so decided to “expose social media”. She made a YouTube video explaining her choices and how social was not actually real life. She was promoting many products on her social media pages to her over half a million followers. She talked about in the video how she allowed herself to get caught up in the money and the popularity and it caused her to forget who she really was. She claims how it is not as glamorous as everyone claims. The video titled “Love Gets Likes” Essena talks about how a famous male supermodel approached her and wanted to be in a relationship. This relationship was based on how much money and free travel they could get if they dated. The relationship was more like a business deal instead of two people in love. Essena found it shocking that someone was only pursuing her because of her following (Parkinson).  

            After deciding to expose the fakeness of social media Essena re-captioned a lot of her photo on Instagram. Her photos were the only thing that gave her validation in life. The only way for her to feel pretty or wanted was based on how many likes a picture got. So went she decided to expose social media she deleted a majority of her photos and the ones she kept had captions that explained what was really happening in the photo. 

Van Dijck explains connectivity as it “derives from a continuous pressure—both from peers and technologies--to expand through competition and gain power through strategic alliances” (Van Dijck, 21).  The pressure Van Dijck is explaining is exactly what Essena was feeling. She had a certain image on social media and when people started following her because of the image she portrayed she feel a pressure to keep the image up. It consumed every part of her like including her friends. Family, hobbies and even her mental health. She explains that it is all a competition and that caused her to become extremely unhappy. Essena’s actions does not show signs of neoliberal economic principles because there is a shift for her to become more of her own individual and become more private. Her Instagram now only has two photos on it and neither of them are her face which is quite a shift from what it was before. But her message was spread using the exact thing she wanted to expose and boycott. She still created a website for this movement that she encourages people to visit and asked for donations from her followers beucase without Instagram she can’t pay rent.

Parkinson, H. J. (2015).  Instagram star Essena O'Neill calls out fake social media couples. The Guardian

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.