Something that has been on my mind a lot recently is the ‘living for likes’ mentality. The kind of mentality that has us checking out instagram every 5 minutes, has us travelling to perfect locations and has us obsessing over that little number you see next to the heart icon.
In this day and age we are so obsessed with social media. And, yes, I saw ‘we’. Because I myself am addicted. I couldn’t even tell you the amount of times I open my bloody instagram app a day and hey, I will also admit to being guilty of going somewhere just because it fits with my theme. We are hungry for likes. Hungry to feel accepted and hungry to feel popular.
So are we living for likes?
Ask yourself this- if a post doesn’t get as many likes as you hoped, do you take it down? Do you promote it on your stories? Do you open and re-open the app 5 more times just to see if anyone else has seen it?
I wont lie, this post is really hard because I am equally guilty of the above. It gives me a huge rush of adrenaline when I pos to instagram and an even bigger sense of pride when a post does well. I am forever refreshing my notifications to see how many more people have liked my posts and seen what I have been up to.
Its kind of addictive isnt it.
A quote that I hit home with me recently is
A million likes isn’t enough if you don’t like yourself
And wow. That hit me.
Who cares if you have 50,000 followers if you are a dick? Who cares if 3,000 people liked your post if it made you miserable to shoot? Who bloody cares.
What I am trying to say is, in this social media obsessed world, its so important to take ourselves out just for a little while. Not focus on the number of likes the post got, but instead on the journey it took you to get the shot. The joy you have in snapping pics, or engaging with other, likeminded people.
Let’s stop living for likes, and start living for ourselves.
Photography by Ami Ford
