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Life

11th May 2017

COMMENT: Can we all just quit the social media bullshit

Laura Holland

We have to admit it’s pretty funny that Bow Wow was caught rotten pretending to fly on a private jet, when in reality he was sitting on a regular plane.

In case you missed the story, he posted a picture on social media of a private jet saying, “Travel day”, insinuating that he was about to fly out on the jet. Little did he know, the person behind him on the regular plane was wise to his ways and called him out on the lie.

Naturally, people began to rip the piss out of the situation leaving poor Bow Wow a little red faced.

While social media is having a field day, at Bow Wow’s expense, it shines a light on the pure bullshit that goes on on the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook. People either only show the good parts of their lives, or go out of their way to make their lives and scenarios seem so much better than they are. Nothing is real anymore and the lies online are rampant.

And let’s be honest, we’ve all done it. Those filters are just too tempting to use when you’re not feeling your best and we’ve all been only too happy to tag ourselves in when we’re doing something that will make others envious. Only recently MIC’s Louise Thompson was caught out for hiring a professional photographer to take casual photographs of her when she was on holidays with her boyfriend Ryan.

Her brother Sam outed her on Snapchat, sharing a photo of the set up for one of those ‘casual’ holiday snaps. Whatever happened to a good selfie?

Social media is airbrushing our lives – and it needs to stop. Every second day a new celebrity is caught out for photoshopping an image. Thankfully, more and more people are calling others out in a bid to make it stop. And it’s becoming increasingly easier to call bullshit on certain photos because they aren’t covering their tracks well enough.

Like the time Mariah Carey shared an image on Instagram with a warped mirror beside her right shoulder.

Or when Amanda Holden posted a holiday photo with a wonky horizon and warped decking.

HOW they thought no one would notice is laughable.

It turns out celebrities aren’t alone with all the lies. A recent survey found that 75 percent of people admit to lying on social media and said that their Facebook page was “pretty much my life but without the boring bits”.

That quote perfectly sums up everyone’s social media timelines. From the couples who share vomit inducing tributes to each other, to the girl who posts a different selfie every other day – they only show the good bits. Bad photos or a normal evening at home won’t even make the cut. For fear that someone might actually have a boring side. Perish the thought.

The result of the seemingly perfect posts can be very damaging – both for them and the people viewing their feed. It sets an unrealistic standard of how life should be. Louise, Mariah and Amanda are just some of the celebrities going out of their way to make their social media accounts look too perfect. So perfect, that to us mere mortals, it’s unachievable. Celebrities and influencers are setting the bar so high that we’re destined to fail.

If we had one day without filters and photoshop you can be guaranteed there would be social media silence.

We may laugh and sneer and Bow Wow, but the only difference between him and countless other celebrities is he got caught.