Unbeknownst to many people, I run a relatively popular Instagram account with the help of my friend called @padreshumor. The account has 14.5k followers at the time I am writing this and consists of content (mostly humorous/meme stuff) related to the San Diego Padres, a Major League Baseball team. We've been running it since 2015 and have, to our knowledge, built the largest Padres fan account on the Instagram platform. 14.5k followers may not seem like a lot to many other larger communities on Instagram, but for the small niche of Padres/baseball, it is a great accomplishment, in our eyes. With that background information out of the way, there has been a certain topic that I have wanted to discuss for a while in regard to ones identity when running a social media account. How one could potentially create an identity that is entirely separate from their own and have a personality that is unlike the one they have in reality. For me, I feel as if I partially fall under this category of artificially creating a personality that is not true to who I am in order to appeal to a wider audience.
To give examples of how I have shifted my personality, the most egregious one is my use of emojis when posting regular posts, stories, or even just talking with followers in messages. I purposely use emojis that are more "normie," which is just another way of saying that many people my age see them in a negative or cringeworthy way, usually because older people use them frequently. The specific emojis I am talking about are the crying laughing emoji and the "XD" emoji. The main reason I use them is so I can appeal to many of the older Padres fans that follow the account. I have noticed that the older followers are also the ones that most frequently use those emojis. Although I would never use these emojis in normal circumstances (perhaps messaging friends, family, partners, etc.), I do it for the @padreshumor personality; to appeal to a wide range of Padres fans so the account can grow larger. Another example is changing my language. Specifically, I utilize the slang or lingo frequently used in sports communities on social media. Lingo like "W" (win/winner) or "L" (lose/loser) or putting the letter W in front a word if its a good thing or L if its bad (example: "Holy Wost" where "Wost" means "W Post"). This, however, is in contrast to why I use "normie" emojis. I use this internet slang in order to be more like people around my age and younger. Now, this is less egregious than my use of the emojis because I do message like this with friends sometimes but for @padreshumor I do it all the time, making my personality on the account more exaggerated than my real-life one. To wrap things up, my thoughts on this are a bit mixed. I do not believe my shifted personality on @padreshumor effects me in a negative way in reality and I don't even feel like the way I change my personality is that dramatic. While my experience may not be problematic as I am able to separate the personalities very easily, there are others where personality shifts due to social media could be a very negative thing. Especially if you are posting about yourself and your life. I have the luxury of never needing to show my face or personal information while for others, it could be a totally different story. I suppose I will leave off on a few questions to open up the discussion on this topic. Is personality shifting on Instagram (or other social media platforms) mostly a negative thing? Or, can it be properly mitigated and managed like I, somehow, have been able to do? Is it essential in order to grow in popularity? And lastly, do any of us truly portray a 100% accurate version of ourselves on social media? - Nathan Whitworth
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