It’s All Reality TV Now: How Social Media Encourages False Charisma and Self-Exploitation —And Its Remedy

In an era where the line between private and public has often disappeared, social media transform intimate moments into global spectacles… rewarding the self-exploitation of influencers with a form of “digital charisma.” But it’s a false kind of charisma, as I explain below. The solution to a world obsessed with being seen can only be found in authenticity.

• A teenager posed next to the graffiti he just sprayed on the wall of a local shop, proudly holding up the spray can.
• A woman posing next to the funeral casket of a friend who died from a drug overdose, a fact she details herself.
• Someone’s fully-recorded pregnancy discovery and abortion process.
• A spouse publicly sharing a video of their partner unconscious on a hospital bed for throat cancer surgery, wired and tubed.

Is anything private anymore?

Reports worldwide find a steady increase in the intimacy of content shared on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. A study by the Pew Research Center found that 55% of teens have shared a moment online they later regretted, while a survey by Digital Awareness UK revealed that 70% of respondents felt more comfortable sharing personal and intimate details online than they did five years ago.

Before, it used to be just “special” events or milestones that people considered share-worthy. Today, people document and share virtually everything on social media, particularly in video form. Everything is now fair game, from births to funerals, including marital disputes, visits to the bathroom, and mental breakdowns.

Sharing events and thoughts with others isn’t new. We’re social animals. The self is fragile, unstable, and a primarily tribal construct, needing constant affirmation by others (the basis of many friendships, marriages, work titles, sports cars, and hair implants).

But prior forms of affirmation required some degree of physical interaction and dealing with the logistics of “real” life — having guests over for dinner, leaving the house to meet with others at the local diner, or dialing up people to exchange the latest gossip. We didn’t have phone cameras to record it all, nor websites where millions of people could see you… and instantly reward you with clicks.

This level of exhibitionism is unprecedented

In the past, sharing could be unhealthy when overdone or carried out entirely for the sake of other people. Being overly dependent on external validation — even if we all engage in it in some way or another — has always been discouraged, and rightfully so, since it goes against the development of moral character: the capacity to do what is right even when it’s unpopular.

Even at its most extreme, sharing as validation-seeking behavior lacked the professional guile and competitiveness that characterizes social media users today, particularly those aspiring to be “influencers.”

People now record or, just as often, script and stage everything in their lives for the consumption of complete strangers. Everything in one’s life is fair game, and, in fact, the feeling that “if you didn’t post something to social media, it didn’t really happen” is now at least anecdotally widespread. The sharing behavior of the past was quaint and almost naïve compared to today’s social media posting addiction.

Even when something spontaneous or unscripted happens in the life of many social media users — like childbirth or the un-self-aware antics of that same child later on —it is exploited to the bone, making even the tenderest, most genuine moments a parody of themselves.

It’s like self-produced Reality TV. Or an always-on “candid camera” show.

Are self-exploitation and prostitution so different?

German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han states that our capitalist age is characterized by professional self-exploitation and self-surveillance, which we now call “freedom” simply because we do it to ourselves.

In this regard, we may judge people for merchandising their bodies on OnlyFans in contrast to those who “only” upload their children’s lives on TikTok. But it’s becoming more and more similar to the story of someone who is willing to prostitute themselves for $1 million but not for $100, only to realize that they have turned themselves into a prostitute on principle, and the exact amount they would do it for is just a matter of negotiation.

We dream of becoming influencers. Meanwhile, social media makes us miserable

A staggering 86% of young people aspire to become social media influencers — whether it’s “YouTubers,” “TikTokkers,” or “Twitchers”— according to a report by Morning Consult. Yet, the American Psychological Association highlights that over 60% of adults attribute social media as a significant factor in their unhappiness. Social media consumption is potentially hurting the mental health of children and teenagers just as much, if not more.

Beware the “false” charisma sought by influencers

Becoming “influential” on social media is our time’s “charisma.” A charismatic individual receives the attention, approval, and support of large masses of people, whether the sphere is religion, politics, work, or the consumer market. However, what is first experienced as one individual’s hold over others, ends with that individual having to sway to people’s preferences — the tail wagging the dog — to maintain their relevance and approval by their followers. The “leader” becomes subordinate to their acolytes, lest their charisma vanishes.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Historically, charisma has been seen less as something the person achieves than as a “grace” that is bestowed or that someone accidentally falls into. The term charisma first appears in the New Testament writings of Paul to describe figures like Jesus and Moses, both of whom were imbued with God’s power or grace. It seems that Paul borrowed the term from the Ancient Greek word charis, which means grace, gift, or power granted by the gods — and just as quickly taken away (which, in mythology, gods often do.)

According to Olivia Fox Cabane in The Charisma Myth, a charismatic individual possesses all three of the following traits:

• Power, which can also be a widely recognized moral or technical authority that confers high social worth or status;
• Warmth or relatability, that is, they are someone with whom we share characteristics or can identify somehow;
• Presence, meaning that the person is tangible, close to us, and fully present, granting us their full attention for at least a moment or, perhaps, the seconds that the signing of their autograph takes them.

Influencers appear to match this definition. They have high status, at least in the online world; they feel relatable to our own lives; and, through their 24/7 video content, they seem nearly always available.

However, they only exhibit these components of charisma in a superficial way.

First, influencers’ power or status depends on having a large mass of followers and is not usually due to competence or expertise of actual value in the world. Much like the Kardashian sisters, influencers are tautologically famous for simply being notorious. Their “power” stands on a house of cards.

Secondly, influencers’ relatability is based on their sharing of everyday situations that their followers either experience themselves — the vicissitudes of daily living, as in Reality TV — or strongly aspire to experience, unreachable as they may be: sipping cocktails on a yacht on the shores of Ibiza or strutting on the red carpet of an awards show. However, even when they post videos of themselves having cereal in their pajamas, the curated, self-aware nature of such content — involving the “spontaneous” use of a donut lamp, phone cam, and editing software — gives it a hopelessly gimmicky quality.

Finally, influencers make themselves present in their followers’ lives through their daily content and the exchange of messages and comments with their viewership. However, how much real presence this entails is debatable. An influencer might be “there with you” through their videos but is mainly unaware of you as a person, like a narcissistic parent who “sees” their children but whose glance is hollow.

To boot, how present can influencers even be among the people they live and interact with daily when they’re recording every other interaction?

For all these reasons, influencers are imbued with, at best, “false” charisma, lacking real-world status, genuine warmth, and a rewarding form of presence. However, like its real counterpart, false charisma is also ultimately brittle and dependent on the whims of the masses.

Both types of charisma eventually, inevitably, turn the tables on their masters, who then have to dance to the tune of what followers deem desirable or else risk becoming irrelevant.

False charisma is empty and leaves everyone worse off

I have no data evidence for what follows, but I strongly suspect that unless they’re completely disconnected from their emotions, influencers experience a nagging sense of self-debasement as they dig deeper and deeper into their lives for postable material. At some level, they must realize that because their aim is popularity — attaining, keeping, and increasing it — they have mostly surrendered control over what they publish. This is no source of self-esteem.

On the other hand, routine users unfailingly report feeling bad about themselves after spending time on social media due to the unrealistic lifestyle comparisons it encourages and the ultimately stupid, vacuous nature of most available content.

No one wins here except the social media companies and their advertisers.

The solution: sharing from a place of authenticity

In contrast, true authenticity is to be found in content that creators produce for their own satisfaction — to answer a call they feel in their own hearts:

• Writers who write stories and essays they wish to read,
• Video creators who do the same,
• Musicians who craft melodies that genuinely stir them, through which they give vent to their own emotions and journey,
• Painters who paint their souls away on a canvas because they must,
• People who share sincere aspects of their lives, not for fame or a sense of superiority — “come see how beautiful/rich/desirable I am”— but because they sincerely wish to connect with others and share insights and experiences that make the struggle of life and love worthwhile for everyone.

Such endeavors can be untainted by the insincerity and manipulativeness of content created solely to increase followers, likes, claps, or upvotes. They can be genuine, rewarding on both ends, and may even garner a following because their creators honestly express what they feel needs to be shared with the world. It’s quality above quantity.

Doing the opposite, harvesting one’s innermost moments or those of others just to gain followers, is, as Byung-Chul Han would probably agree, the saddest form of self-exploitation.