If You Don’t Exist on Social Media, Do You Exist at All?

How social media created an existential crisis, questioning what means to be alive in the world.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This classic philosophical thought experiment challenges the relationship between observation, perception, and existence.

I removed myself from social media for a year because I was tired. I’d had enough and needed a break. For over a year I didn’t post a single piece of content or make public comment on other people’s content.

I didn’t intend for it to be an experiment or create an existential crisis, but that’s where it led. It seemed, at least to some, that I was dead for a time.

If a person thinks a thought but doesn’t express it, does the thought exist in the world?

What makes a thought? Is it the inner conceptualisation of the idea or the manifested expression of it?

Copyright doesn’t protect ideas. It can only protect the expression of an idea. Without evidence of an idea’s expression, it is less tangible than air. Air can at least be measured by its contents (oxygen, nitrogen, etc.).

Last night, as I drifted off to sleep, my mind raced with a bunch of creative thoughts. I remember laying there willing myself to get up and write them down, knowing that if I didn’t they risked being lost.

Exhausted, I denied the wisdom of my experience.

Upon waking up, all that was left was a memory of having thought of something. The thought itself; gone.

I trusted that if I could think of it last night, I could think of it again. I certainly hope the thought returns, but it will return with new shape and form.

If you don’t exist on social media, do you exist at all?

In my yearlong fast from social media, I became invisible to many people in my life.

In human terms (as a breathing entity) I existed throughout that time. I had experiences and have memories, albeit few images I can point to as evidence.

But to those who rely on social media to shape or prove their existence in the world, I was out of sight, out of mind.

Upon posting my first content in a year, people started to respond, “You’re alive!”

Sure, there may have been humour to some of these comments. But to others, it seemed like there was a real perception that my presence on social media wasn’t a reflection of my existence, but my existence itself.

If you don’t show up in the office, are you really still employed?

During my social-media hiatus, I started to apply for jobs. Over the past two decades, every bit of work I got somehow came through someone I was connected to.

Visibility is crucial to career success and gaining opportunities. In not posting online, I wasn’t in front of people. I relied to old-school techniques like sending resumes. Yet jobs I was infinitely qualified for didn’t even get an interview.

Then, as soon as I broke my drought and posted on LinkedIn, I started to get meetings.

This is a real concern for those who work from home. So many professional opportunities come through spontaneous conversations in the lunchroom, or those “I was just in a meeting and thought of you” moments. You need to be visible to be thought of.

Working from home decreases your visibility.

I’ve always found self-promotion distasteful and struggled with the how LinkedIn is used as a forum for mutual masturbation. But the thing is, it works.

People use LinkedIn because one’s existence requires being seen to exist. Cynical? Maybe. All the same, it’s true.

I have long wondered how I can be invisible. I find anonymity alluring. The epitome of this is Banksy — someone who balances a very public notoriety with total anonymity.

A therapist suggested my “hiding behind a pen name” is an expression of my low self-esteem. Part of me struggles with the idea of putting myself out into the world and prefer the idea of being anonymous.

But my goals as a writer require me to be in the world. I like working for myself, so that necessitates being visible to attract readers and work.

I wish there was a way to live without social media, but that is hopeless nostalgia.

In contrast with our highly local pre-internet lives, social media has made the world small er— about two-by-three inches to be exact.

It seems evident that to exist in the world at all these days, one must exist virtually. Social-media existence no longer simply recreational, but somehow crucial to life as a human.

I despair. I now question why I even wrote this idea down. Perhaps if I ignored it and not expressed it, the idea would have evaporated.

If someone drafts an existential crisis on Medium but doesn’t press publish, does that crisis even exist? I guess this is not the time to know.