A friend posted on X asking if people felt like they were ignored due to others thinking they had nothing important to say. It’s an interesting question to consider, especially when social validation is on the line. Everyone actively producing content and sharing it on social media is fishing for attention. I argue that this is literally what social media is for. People fish for attention, others provide that attention by engaging with the content, and connections are made.
It’s social.
But what happens when validation is tied to interaction? Now we’re diving into psychology. How worthwhile is it for anyone to initially step out and post content, when the rewards are unclear. The game, after all, is rigged: unless you intimately understand how the algorithm operates, you’re really just shooting into the dark and hoping for the best. And when engagement turns out to be low or zero? How motivated can anyone be to continue posting?
There’s a fuck ton of nuance here. Social validation is no small thing. We require validation on some level to build legitimacy. It’s like a currency that can be accumulated and cashed in for legitimacy, improving one’s standing and garnering higher levels of engagement. But this is true whether we speak of online or offline social networks. Every social network is stratified, where status is procured through one’s perceived legitimacy.
Allow me a momentary digression: I use the term legitimacy here rather loosely. I do not argue that the more one is validated, the more legitimate their messaging; rather, it’s the perception of legitimacy that is raised. After all, few, if any, actually do any real work in deeply understanding the messaging that is being circulated by others across these various social networks. I discuss this in brief as point number two here. The main idea in using this term as I’m using it here is to draw attention to the fact that we largely believe this is what we’re achieving when our posts/content/messaging is validated.
To return to the question at hand: does a lack of engagement equate to a lack of legitimacy? In the socially perceived sense, I argue yes. But does this, in turn, equate to a lack of actual legitimacy? Copernicus was ridiculed when he presented his heliocentric view of the solar system, as was Galileo. It’s ridiculous to consider that something so widely accepted as the planets orbiting around the Sun was ever doubted to begin with, but alas, tis true. They could have rescinded their ideas in favor of the perceived legitimacy they lost over their attempt to redirect the astronomical sciences at the time. However, their convictions in their own work were strong, as must have been their own confidence in themselves to withstand the ridicule of their peers and the accusations of the church.
This brings us to how big of a role confidence plays when determining how much perceived legitimacy is worth across social networks. Which, again, is nuanced. There are innumerable factors at play that can determine one’s strength of character and confidence, which can vary across different social networks. This may, perhaps, be a topic for another day.
Anyway, here’s a poster of @jadestone with an image from her set Happy Accidents:
