All of us have witnessed the phenomenal changes internet has brought into our lives. In the past decade, the number of internet users has jumped almost fourfold to 2.5 billion. In simple, the magnificent rise of the internet cannot be denied. I presume that all of us are very familiar about the economic and social changes the internet has created so far, therefore I do not wish to shed any more light on it. What I wish to do is to point out the implications of the virtual world on the real world, which are often not perceived. The implication I plan on elaborating is the importance of self-narration in this age for one to be recognized by our techsavy society as a success.
Never in human history has it been so important for one to be able to tell one’s own story. I mean look around we have snapchat stories and Facebook timeline stories. Moreover, the outlay of all social networks is such that it displays the input information, given by user, in the form of a log of events. Job sites or professional networks such as linked ( Thank you Dr Rec for accepting my request) expects you to write a brief story about your professional or out of the norm experiences, while, on the other hand, snapchats wants you to make a story about what you did today, what you ate and all things which were once regarded as not so important.
In today’s world everyone has the physical equipment (eg Iphone) and software (Instagram, Snapchat) required to create an online story, and the people around are very interested in personal lives of others. The result is that we end up creating a society where one is judged by his online story and one with the best story wins the game. Let me explain this empirically, If you have a good story on snap chat then you will possibly have more friends for you are valued more in your cultural. If you have a good story on linked in then you have a good paying job which translates into more friends and hence a better life. If you have a cool story on Facebook again you are valued as a popular figure in your social construct, and this gets you the attention . We should keep in mind that a good story means a story which appeals more to the cultural setting the person is in. We need to understand the concept, which is how these social networks define what is cool and what is not and the person who follows this culture efficiently and is able to display to others his ability to follow achieves “success” in the society.
The sad part about this is that we are entering a time frame where people who are equipped with the sufficient skills or knowledge but lack self-narrating skills are not getting the required attention. There has been a recent surge in demand for professionals who redo your online profile. What we can conclude is that as we become more and more digitalized the importance of self-narration will only increase. My advice to the readers for this “Success” is to make their presence felt on all social media platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin , Facebook and Youtube through which they should highlight their professional skills and market themselves interms of the traits which are desirable in your cultural and professional setting.
