I remember my first tweet from about five years ago. I got a Twitter, uploaded my profile picture, and started following people I knew. I filled my bio with an inspirational quote like any 15-year-old thinking I sounded sophisticated and like I understood life. In fact I remember searching “inspirational quotes” and typing into my Twitter bio, “Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Keep in mind 15-year-old me advertising about how we complicate our lives ourselves, and I mean yes, I agree with that statement now, but there I was not knowing how much more I had to learn and experience before I could somewhat be able to justify that quote after typing it out in my bio.15-year old me thought my bio had to be fulfilling just like all teenage girls who were finding their voice, having a crush they didn’t just see on album or magazine covers, and going through their “It’s not a phase, Mom” high school stage (which, in fact, it was).
And just as we go through phases, so do our social media bios but there still is pressure of how we “present about ourselves” in 150 characters or less. There is sort of a trend in our generation of what you see on social media bios. You learn a lot about a person with what they choose to put in their bios, and what they choose to leave out.
I had an inspirational quote in my bio when I was in high school, then like every high school senior it changed to my university and year after decision day. Group chats blew up about where to put the apostrophe in the year because everyone our age was doing it.
Then, summer of senior year came and bios had started having their state added to it since you don’t label yourself by which high school you went to anymore once you graduate but by where you are from. I got to see a lot of new people I followed before even getting on campus at Elon that were also from New Jersey.
Then rush happened, and the majority of college girls who rushed integrated their sorority name or Greek letters into their 150 characters. And now we have a lot of information. We know where people are from, where they go to school, and organizations they are a part of. And from this we make assumptions or draw conclusions based off of how someone presents themselves in characters, in a way a headline sort of about their life.
Little did 15-year-old me that 20-year-old me would not spend an hour searching google for the “perfect quote” about “my opinion on life”. Little did she know, my Instagram bio would become a Michael Scott quote that highlighted how bad with words I am and then change at age 20 to read “I am a conspiracy theory, just like over-the-counter medicine.”
Yeah, I don’t quite understand it much either, and that’s okay. Sort of a joke with my friends about how I don’t believe in the accuracy of drug store medicine and how much of a placebo effect believer I am. Again, 15-year-old me who thought social media bios completely defined a person definitely would not believe I would be advertising my belief of placebo effects in my social media bio instead of promoting my “solution for happiness and/or a quote about life.” That’s okay because 20-year-old me is content with that.
