JUNE | 2019 FRONT PAGE

SOCIAL STATUS

Social media has become an essential part of our day to day lives. It influences almost everything we do, from who we sleep with, to what we eat, and it can even influence our mood. Social media has definitely become the world’s cafeteria table and many of us are vying for to sit with the cool kids. Yeah, many of us won’t ever admit it, but it's true. We want everyone to know what we’re doing and with whom we’re doing it with. Social media gives us the opportunity to keep up with the going ons of our family and friends, creates space for us to cyber stalk our ex and his new Beaux, and can be used to spy on a coworker or potential employee. It can also cause depression, anxiety, FOMO (fear of missing out), and sometimes make us prey to the predator of unrealistic expectations.

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It's almost hard to believe the extent to which social media has changed our lives within the past decade, as we’ve gone from having to actually have physical access to a computer to check our blackplanet.com account (don’t act like you didn’t have one) to feverishly checking our Men 4 Now to see who was trying to pick up whatever it was we were putting down. Social media has defined a generation and an era, but how has it defined us as SGL men of color? Has it changed the ways we communicate with each other, and how heavily are relying on it to increase or maintain our social status?

From Blackplanet to Friendster to Myspace to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, social media has aided us in creating and maintaining our online identities. Al Gore’s internet has been very good in giving us the chance to showcase our qualities, vocalize our beliefs and to express our personalities. It has given those on the outside a chance to peek inside our culture and our individual selves. Social media, if nothing else, has given those of us who are interested in doing so, the space to live out loud. But how does that define us?

At the bare minimum we define ourselves based on our blackness or of colorness, gender, and sexual orientation. Each of these comes with a lot, and we’re not about to go in depth because that would take forever. The most important thing to understand is that our presence on social media gives us the opportunity to express ourselves within the realms of our race, gender and sexuality as we see fit. It's the way we use our social voices to talk about issues that impact us as SGL gentlemen of color, the way our style and mannerisms set us apart from others, the networks we’re involved in, and the way we remain consistent in these areas.

We may not always be what we eat, but we are what we post, and our posts define us.This is especially important for us, as SGL gentlemen of color as we strive to increase our visibility and representation. Failure to set and adhere to our own definitions of us leaves room for others to do it for us. If you’re curious as to what allowing others to define us looks like, consider the ways that those outside of the community assume us all to be the yaaaaas bish, werk, two snaps and a dip, queen. Our continued social media presence helps to regulate and negate these kinds of assumptions, and furthers our cause of defining us as we truly are. Same gender loving men of color need a nuanced narrative to serve as a reminder that we are individuals and not types. Social media gives us the chance to present these narratives on our terms and to spit in the face of the assumptions others make about us.

The answer to the question of whether or not social media has made us better or worse  at communicating with one another depends on the person you ask. Those who are of a particular age who will probably say its made us worse, while those who’ve lived their whole lives with it wouldn’t be able to give a credible answer because it’s all they’ve ever known. It has, without a doubt, increased our superficial connections with others, so whether we’re friending someone because we think they’re cute, or working to establish a genuine connection with someone, social media provides us with the perfect medium to do so.

Outside of making new connections, sites like Facebook and Instagram present us with the opportunity to share our experiences as SGL men of color with other SGL men of color on a global level. Its being in Houston and being able to connect with a brother in Paris to hear about what it's like on his side of the pond, being able to exchange ideas and ideals with him, and either introducing or being introduced to something we never knew existed. This is the part of social media that makes us better, as it expands our world view by exposing us to those who would normally be out of our reach.

The sloppier side of this coin is that social media has damn near killed our ability to interact with people on a personal basis. There were no DMs for us to slide into 30 years ago, but in 2019 we can slip, slide and slither our way into anyone’s DM. Sure, its convenient, but convenience comes at a cost. Rejection has always been a part of life, but the way we deal with it has changed. Its less personal now. There’s no way in hell anyone of us who were of age in 1993 would dream of approaching a potential Beaux without knowing whether or not he was on our team. We can easily solve that problem now as we compare mutual friends, scroll through his Twitter likes, or survey the posts he’s been double tapping on Instagram.

A lot of us have gone from texting in complete sentences to acronyms and emojis. Long gone are the days when we’d actually ask someone for the D, because now we just hit them with 👀👀 😈🍆🍆🍆. Like, can you think of the last time you approached someone in person to ask them for a date, or struck up a general conversation with a complete stranger without social media? When was the last time you went to a party or a bar and didn’t see people on their phones?

When was the last time that you walked over to him slowly, said “ I know you don’t know me”, but this might be my only shot at a tenderoni? Some of you will get that reference while others will continue being born after 1998. Hell, how many of us have heard stories about people going to the gym and being approached by someone on Jack’d? Don’t act brand new. We know. We know, know. Yes, social media made it easier to shoot someone a message without suffering the personal sting of rejection, but it’s taken us away from face to face interactions, platonic or otherwise. The jury may be out on whether social media has made us better or worse with communicating, but if nothing else we can say for certain that things sure aren’t the way they used to be. And yes, that should make some of us feel old.  

Regardless of how we use social media to define us or whether or not our in person communication skills have devolved because of it, we all rely on it. Heavily. It’s where a lot of us get our news, are reminded about birthdays we would have otherwise forgotten about, and where we can be whomever we’d like to be. It’s the world at our fingertips, where any question can be answered and where any opinion can be posted. While we’d probably get a lot more done if it were to suddenly vanish, there’d be nobody to tell how much we actually managed to get done in its absence. It feeds our self-esteem, allows us to be anywhere we want to be, and is the medium that has kept many businesses afloat.

Our reliance on social media isn’t anything to be ashamed of. From brand engagement to connecting us with others abroad, to exposing the barbeque Becky’s of the world, social media has proven its usefulness time and time again. It is filled with absurdities? Hell yes! But is it the worst thing known to man? Nope. The reasons we rely so heavily on social media is because it gives us a platform from which we can share ourselves from. It helps the most vulnerable of us to find communities that are willing and waiting to accept us and gives us a sense of normality that the real world isn’t always ready to give.

Our lives have long been affected by the negative perceptions of others. Sure, we’re held in esteem by the media when it comes to our ability to slay a face, lay a lash or a wig, and we’re praised for catty comebacks and wit- but none of this is all of us. We can doctor, lawyer and scientist with the best of them, and that’s why our presence on social media carries so much weight. The ways we’re portrayed by the media have the greatest impact on the perceptions of those with the least amount of real-world experiences with us. This is why those who’ve never interacted with us are shooketh when we present differently than they expected us to.

Derogatory portrayals of us are demoralizing and impact our self esteem. We internalize, reinforce and even internalize the assumptions others make about us. Once upon a time there wasn’t too much we could do to combat any of this, but social media has given us a way.  With it we can show the world who we are through our posts, and give them something else to consider, we can influence their perceptions of us. There’s a whole world out there, and we are in it. A lot of the people we encounter on social media might not ever meet us in person, but at best they’ll know that we’re not a monolith and that our social status, as it relates to our importance in relation to them, is not to be taken lightly.