Do I Exist if I Don’t Post About it?
Korush L. Casillas
12 years ago, Instagram was a novel tool our millennial elders used to express the uniqueness of their mason jar coffees and fairylit shrines to Tyler Oakley and Zoella. There was not a slither of thought in their minds that the generation next would be memefying their wholesome approach to social media.
But now, how do we use our social networks? Profoundly, of course! Deep thought behind every post, a profile feed no longer serving as a digital scrapbook but as a series of interconnected social profiles designed to inform the fibers of the world around us. Society has always obliged us to public life, and we have lived like this for milleniums. To be public is to be identifed, and therefore, to have an identity. But now, to exist publicly and to be identifiable, is to exist online.
Our digital sphere has blurred the internal and external identities — the public sphere, once only entered actively, by leaving the front door, is now sewn to the inseams of our pockets and pop-sockets.
Existing online makes your identity a constant. All eyes, always capable of assessing you, making judgements about not only your digital self but your real self (if there is any remaining difference) makes your identity permanent and inescapable. Though we may more readily achieve horizontal growth in the form of wider networks, we face restricted vertical capability - taller ladders, higher standards.
It is impossible to keep up to date with social norms of conduct unless you know where to socialise and how to ‘connect’. LinkedIn is both symptomatic and causative of this complex, hierarchal issue. Either exist online or get left behind in the annals of anonymity.
I. Identity Formation
As social theorist Uger Gunduz puts it, “individuals need others to establish themselves”. Society is a cyclical confirmation that we are doing things the way other people want them to be done, so that we know we are useful, enjoyable and wanted. Identity is inherently social — if you never knew another human you would not be able to think of yourself like a human; you would not be able to picture yourself as a relative being.
If you lived in solitude from birth, away from other individuals, you would think of your own conduct no more than you thought about your physical appearance. When you bring someone into society, you are putting a mirror of conduct up to their face; you become conscious of your behaviour because you know that if you want everyone else to behave how you would like them to behave, you will have to behave like that too. I draw this concept from Adam Smith’s 18th century work, the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Now, the digital sphere is our primary mirror of conduct in which we are socialised into, that allows us to metricise our social value, our social purpose, or social position.
In 2009, only 28% of smart-phone users were online. By 2022, that number had increased to 86%. In 2024, it was surveyed that 27% of four year olds own a phone (genuinely). Naturally, that number increases to 98% when looking at 16-17 year olds. If you went off-grid for two weeks without telling anyone, how many of your friends would think you were dead? Finding work is significantly more difficult if your achievements aren’t made laudable by a public, comprehensive CV on LinkedIn. You couldn't have gone to school during the Covid-19 pandemic because it was all online.
“Our world”, I say sipping an Americano in a café surrounded by other metropolitanites, does not exist uncoupled from the digital sphere. Social media, as Gunduz puts it, is a “way to escape reality… it’s a virtual reality” and, “it is sometimes more important than the real reality”.
Social media is our new reality and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Everything that involves social connection… school, work, events, trips, politics… is now dependent on existing digitally.
With 71% of news in the UK consumed digitally, the print and televised media industry is in decline. Every single seated party in the UK uses social media - aggressively - to campaign and spread ideology. All of our information flows are now online and we can all contribute, spread and formulate public opinion and judgement — fitting ourselves tidily into covert world-views. You cannot develop cultural and moral beliefs contingent on what is relevant to society if you are not engaged with digital discourse.
Even those that may not necessarily utilise social networks to the fullest are obliged to engage with the tone set by the foundations set online.
In the UK, the average TikTok and Instagram user spends 49 and 9 hours per month on each platform, respectively. How many of us become blinded by the toxic gossip trains of cancel culture that we feel we must make judgments on? Stamped as ‘acceptable’ by altruistic infographic posts created by AI, or evil for not posting them? The development of identity as primarily digital is an unavoidable facet of modern-life. BLM, he/him, MAGA become obligatory name-tags — to be public obliges you to make your beliefs public, and if we are all public, all the time, because of our digital spheres, our political and moral signposts become integral to our identities.
Pew Research Center offers four reliable buzzwords that explain this magnetisation and reliance on the digital: to “connect”, to “engage”, to “share” and to “entertain”. Our social networks - once a sandbox of millennial creativity - are no longer novel but constitutive of what public discourse is and can be.
Our identities, moral, cultural and political, are how we connect, engage and entertain; and how we are entertained, engaged and connected is how our identity is developed.
II. Reconciling Digital Identity with Physical Reality
The public was once the space outside your front door. You wandered it, worked in it, promenaded in it, ate in it, partied in it, learned in it, gossiped in it. Now it is all of that permanently attached to your hip. Once a novelty, the digital sphere is now the very entity omniscient to our social connectivity and mobility. What room does physical socialisation have for the development of our identities uncoupled from our digital realities?
Existing digitally is a binary thing — you are obliged to make statements, to hold yourself to almost impossible moral standards. How do we reconcile this with our very physical social existences? Obviously, if we don’t post ourselves on social media, we do not tangibly disintegrate. However, to what extent can we exist publically if we are not ready to subject ourselves to a digital identity; and, to what extent does our presence online inform the opinions of those closest to us in the real-world?
Thus, we might find a disconnect between our digital spheres and our tangible spheres. Who I am in the digital sphere might not necessarily reflect who I am in the ‘real’ sphere. The person I present myself as on Instagram might be a character that informs how I want to be perceived publicly. But, to what extent can we reasonably draw a line between the digital and the ‘real’ in our modern, first world? Can you exist, functionally, in the public, if you are not public online?
Humans are multi-faceted, social creatures and for every single different layer of social communication we formulate, we have to create new identities. I’m deeply sarcastic with friendship group A, deeply pleasant to friendship group B, and a complete cunt to friendship group C. And, I suppose I’m not pretending to be anyone that I'm not in any of the different groups. But, what is crystal clear is that the person I am in group C would not exist if group C did not exist.
With increasingly public identities however, it becomes increasingly difficult to compartmentalise yourself into the multi-faceted, unique individual you most certainly are! When I post on Instagram, am I trying to portray an individual that already exists or one that I would like to exist; if it is the latter, must I then conform in how I act to live up to those self-professed standards? Or, when I create a post on LinkedIn, I must surely conform to my weird punctual etiquettes, like I have a stick up my arse, when I’m interacting with anyone that might see me as a ‘connect’?
Those that do engage with social media in this way are creating social standards that apply to everyone, and thus, coupled with the extremely wide reach possessed by our digital spheres, unmovable echo chambers of social standing are created — all eyes having always been on you makes your identity permanent and inescapable.
Reconciling the digital with the physical is not possible — at least not yet. And it is no surprise that there are multiple studies that report a correlative increase in psychiatric issues relative to digital network consumption.
III. Hierarchy and LinkedIn
My mother didn’t lie when she told me my digital footprint would never die. You can only exist if you post about it online, and what you post never dies - it will remain as a part of your identity forever.
In some ways, the digital sphere might make social mobility more accessible; wider access to information, jobs, inclusive programs. In other ways, digital spheres, in double-fold, reinforce the hierarchies that make sure there are those with their necks turned up, reaching for more.
LinkedIn, that horrible, disgusting, soul-sucking, validating, rewarding, sickening, beautiful platform. I’m pleased to announce that I do not actually give a single shit if you just graduated with a First, got an 88 on your stupid dissertation or just started a job at Deloitte doing Auditing. Quite frankly, I’m jealous. Quite frankly, fuck off - but don’t forget to like my post, share it and comment something vaguely complimentary and entirely out of character!
My slightly over-the-top, on-the-nose point here is to segway my argument onto a brief analysis of LinkedIn and the overarching theme that you cannot exist publicly if you do not ingratiate yourself into a specific sphere’s mode of behaviour - and, most importantly, the unavoidable notion that many simply do not know how to.
While LinkedIn, in some ways, makes professional connection more ‘accessible’, it also has created a sphere that values specific ways of highlighting your professional experience that are mostly taught environmentally. By this, I mean you don’t and can’t know shit unless you went to a good university that spells out the intricacies; the way to format your experiences, the fact that you actually need to start applying for internships early to give your profile some substance, where to start. No, you can’t exist if you don’t post about it, and even if you do, your existence is limited to the ways in which you know how to exist.
Your connections may be wider, your knowledge even larger - but this may well only be horizontal growth if you are unable to access the extremely gate-kept vertical ladder you have to be handed or socialised into.
Though LinkedIn is a more overt example, the same issues exist holistically. To be perceived a certain way on Instagram you must know the niche and specific rules to posting - the right way to communicate, the right way to have an identity. And, often, this is trend based and constantly changing. If you are not able to designate a certain amount of time to navigating identity you will be left behind.
While many issues that I might note in our digital sphere are symptomatic of wider class issues and inequality, our digital spheres further cement, seal and reinforce these standards by gluing us all to permanent identities and algorithmically bound ways of thinking that reflect them. This is done by making our public identity reliant on digital spheres that make these perpetuations.
You can’t exist, fully, if you do not exist online - not any more. And this is so very relevant to the overarching understanding of The Haggard. You cannot learn as much if you are not online. You cannot understand your peers if you are not online; and, you cannot climb the social ladder if you are not taught, by our digital spheres, how to climb the digital (now real) social ladder.
The Haggard’s goal is to construct healthier digital spheres, more fluid and accessible in allowing individuals to understand and question our increasingly interconnected realities.
“The Haggard’s goal is to construct healthier digital spheres, more fluid and accessible in allowing individuals to understand and question our increasingly interconnected realities. ”
Credit Rosa Crossley (@cantcreateathing)
“The public was once the space outside your front door. You wandered it, worked in it, promenaded in it, ate in it, partied in it, learned in it, gossiped in it. Now it is all of that permanently attached to your hip”
“In the UK, the average user of TikTok and Instagram spends 49 and 9 hours per month on each platform, respectively....”
“Reconciling the digital with the physical is not possible - at least not yet. And it is no surprise that there are multiple studies that report a correlative increase in phyciatric issues relative to digital network consumption. ”