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Tyler Musselwhite

Professor Allmand

ENC 2135

7 November 2019

The Community of Social Media Fame

The community of social media fame is a relatively new one. The people in this

community are known as a few things, social influencers, internet personalities and more. Over

the past few years, social media usage among everyone has skyrocketed. There are many people

on all social media platforms, but the most famous ones being Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This new world of social media means that you can follow people that you want to see on your

feed. Your feed or “timeline” is all the posts from users you follow from most recent to oldest.

You can see things that people retweet and like as well. Whether it is because they are a celebrity

or they are funny, or have a special talent, these people have a much bigger following than your

average person. My friend started a Twitter account dedicated to beans, yes, beans, just for fun.

It was basically a satire account and all of his tweets had to do with beans. He slowly grew and

grew. Over the next four months he had gained over 30,000 followers. His tweets over that time

kept getting more attention and gradually reached a broader audience. He ended up getting a

little tired of tweeting just about beans, so he made an alternative account where he could tweet

anything he wanted, any joke or idea that came to his head, he could tweet from this account. He

started doing this and before he knew it, he was blowing up. He had one of the most popular

musical artists of the year, Lil Nas X, the singer behind statistically the most streamed song of

all-time, Direct Messaging him, telling him how funny he was. At the time, that was a huge deal
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to him. Now his alternate account is pushing 300,000 followers and conversations with actual

celebrities are a regular occurrence for him.

Running a famous social media account is not all glam though. There are so many more

eyes on you than you had before. He has had tweets reach 900 thousand likes, which means that

tweet has probably been seen by millions of people. Wolfram Bublitz, a respected professor of

English Linguistics at the University of Augsburg, Germany, says that when a user sends out a

‘tweet’ it is addressed to the Twitter community as a whole, and that because of that, it can be

viewed by as many people on Twitter as possible. Having that many eyes on you and the

occasional hate and criticism is a lot to take in. It can play a role in your mental and emotional

health. Having the ability for one of your thoughts to reach and possibly influence so many

people is a lot of power to have for someone. So, the question comes up to all the social media

famous people, “What are the consequences of running a popular social media account? And

how does it affect your mental and emotional health, if at all?” Through much research I have

found out that having all eyes on you can be stressful, and influence your emotional state, but it

can also be fun and beneficial in getting you experience for a future job.

Twitter is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world with 335 million

Monthly Active Users (MAU). Twitter is known for being a quick and easy way to get real time

information. But in today’s world, many people use it to express themselves. A common way

that they do this is through humor. There are now accounts dedicated to posting funny content

around the clock and that is how they gain followers and end up becoming “Twitter celebrities”.

In her article, Laura Fitton argues, “Twitter networks are based on trust and reputation, and one

of the first metrics people tend to use when deciding whether to follow someone is how many

followers that user already has, and the ratio of followers to following” (Fitton n.p.). Believe it
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or not, this is a rhetorical situation. This is ethos working to gain you more followers. When

people see that you have many followers, they tend to believe that your account is worth a follow

for one reason or another. The number of followers you have given you a type of authority and

verification that your account is worth the follow. Twitter users are looking for accounts that

they can relate too and connect with. As your followers increase your tweets start reaching a

larger audience on twitter because of their retweet system (McMahon n.p.).

When a user retweets a post, it goes to everyone they are following, and that cycle can

go on and on. That is the cool thing about twitter, a post can reach audiences you didn’t think it

could reach. So, popular accounts with thousands of followers have the chance to reach a huge

audience. This comes in to play when they are thinking about posting something because, their

post is going to reach thousands, possibly millions of people and you must be careful when you

are in front of that many eyes. “You have a certain image to uphold and one tweet could cause

that to change very easily”, says Michael Macy, a professor of Science at Cornell University.

“Like other public genres of social media, Twitter requires celebrity practitioners to negotiate a

complicated social environment where fans, famous people, and intermediaries such as gossip

columnists co-exist" (Warwick n.p.). Knowing that you are being followed by so many people

can cause you to stress out and could potentially affect your emotions and mindset.

When people can hide behind a screen and say whatever they want with no

consequences, it tends to make people say things that they normally wouldn’t. This causes some

people to be rude to others on platforms. Especially if you have a large following, you are more

susceptible to hate or social uncivility because your posts reach more people: “In 2017 we

witnessed a heightened time of incivility online. Civility in America survey said that 84 percent

of us had experienced some form of cruelty – 69 percent of us blamed the Internet and social
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media” (Scheff n.p.). According to this data, 84 percent of internet users had reported that they

have been a victim of internet cruelty. If you add this onto the fact that you have thousands of

followers and even more people seeing all your posts, it would seem that there is a lot of cruelty

going around on these famous social media accounts. It can play with your mind if you end up

seeing posts and comments that are bashing you. Hanna Russell, an Instagram model and a

model for several well-known clothing companies weighed in on the pressure of social media

when all eyes are on her. “I used to love the feedback I would get from people and the comments

that they would leave on my photos... it was a type of validation to who I was as a person,"

Russell said. "With wanting to have the perfect Instagram picture and account comes so much

stress and pressure to maintain that” (Migdol n.p.). In this quote, a famous Instagrammer

expresses that, sure, at first having all the eyes on you and all those comments are nice, but after

a while it becomes difficult to keep giving them the always perfect content that they expect. But

the hard work and dealing with the large following is part of the job. If you can learn how to

handle the followers and understand that not everyone is going to be happy with everything you

do, you are well on your way to succeeding in the social media world.

Having the skills to run a large account is very desirable in today’s world. Many

companies are looking for social media managers, or marketing employees that can help get their

business to reach a broader audience: “With data collected by social networking sites (SNS),

marketers can tailor campaigns to consumers based on their interests and web browsing habits”

(Thomas Riggs n.p.). This is where a large account can come in handy. If you run a large social

media account and have a platform, you can create connections and reach out to either executives

or companies much easier than your average person.

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Social media presence among businesses has become a very important thing to have. This

is how they communicate and appeal to the younger generation. Nowadays there are

advertisements on Instagram and Twitter for companies, in meme format so it can get the

attention of the youth on these apps. It is a very smart marketing tactic because the people who it

appeals to, see this and follow causing them to keep up with that specific company. Holly

Paquette, a professor at Rhode Island, wrote about how social media has expanded into a

marketing tool in today's world. She says, “Social media has advanced from simply providing a

platform for individuals to stay in touch with their family and friends. Now it is a place where

consumers can learn more about their favorite companies and the products they sell. Marketers

and retailers are utilizing these sites as another way to reach consumers and provide a new way

to shop” (Paquette n.p.). In order for companies to do this, they need people who understand

social media well. This is where being familiar with addressing many people over social media

comes in handy. A social media personality will understand what will grab people's attention and

with the trends always changing they will know which strategy will get consumers attention at

the time. This is important in this community because it shows how a seemingly meaningless

social media account can set you up with companies and put you at an advantage.

My good friend, Harrison McNeill is the owner of @goodbeanalt on Twitter. His account

has 250,000 followers and is gaining followers at an impressive rate. Let me explain how this all

started. In 2018, he went on a school trip to Japan with some other students. As a joke, one of the

students told him to make a twitter account dedicated to bean jokes. At first, you would think

“who would follow an account about bean jokes?” The answer: more than you would think.

After a few months his follower count was at 30 thousand, then a month later 50 thousand. He

was gaining followers but running out of bean jokes (there are only so many bean jokes someone
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can make). Over the past year, he has learned how to use his account to his advantage. His

content is seen by a lot of people, and sometimes it makes its way to celebrities and companies.

From this, he has connected with multiple higher-ups in companies. When I asked him if he had

received any job offers, he responded, “Yes, I got a job at an advertising company as a

copywriter, writing copy for different companies and brands that they have as clients.” He has

made many connections solely through his Twitter account that can help set him up for the future

now. This is one of the ways that being social media savvy can help you. You don’t only have to

post the content your followers want; you can network and communicate with people that can

help you get you a job or put you in touch with people who can. Social media is so much more

than just for being “social” and posting updates for your friends now. The possibilities of what

you can do are endless, and we are going to continue to see more and more ways that it can be

used.

After much research I think it’s safe to say that being social media famous is a lot of

work. Whether you run a meme page or are an actual celebrity, the fact that there is so much

attention on you and so many people see what you post, it’s a lot to absorb. Some people can

handle it and some people can’t. As McNeill said, “I don’t really feel pressure when I tweet,

because that means I’m taking it more seriously than it needs to be taken, because at the end of

the day it’s all just jokes and it’s all for fun.” I think that is a great way to look at it especially if

you run a meme account or a non-serious account. But there are definitely some positives that

come with running a popular account, like making connections with celebrities. Probably the

most important thing to come out of having knowledge of social media and knowing the ins and

outs is in the professional world, because in today’s society social media is becoming one of the

most popular methods of getting information out into the world and communicating and this is
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the new way companies try to communicate with consumers. Overall, there is a lot of

information that say having a popular social media account isn’t all it’s made up to be, but I

believe that if you do it right and know what you're getting into when you start, if you can handle

it, it can be a really fun and possibly helpful thing to do.

Works Cited
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