Blog #4 - Van Dijck applied to Essena O'Neil

Many people around the world knew about Essena O’Neil due to her user-generated content. Essena recently produced a story where she called social media nothing but a staged and dishonest presentation of people. She made comments generalizing social media users into one category, and voiced her opinion about how these users were depressed and had issues with their own appearances. In my opinion, achieving star like power on social media would have a reverse effect for these people increasing their confidence and self esteem, and this is exactly what Essena tried to do. Essena’s argument and story can be related to Van Dijck’s model of neoliberal economic principles and this is how.

There was definite pressure from external factors and people pushing for the stardom that can be potentially reached through these social media outputs. Van Dijck’s model insists that connectivity is a derivative that comes from pressure that is put on people from peers and technology. This pressure is put on in order for the person to expand and gain power through making connections strategically. The model supports Essena because of the pressure that was also involved in her life from the technology she was using as well as her peers who were also her followers and constantly were supporting this content she was producing and continued to want more.

The contrasting part of Van Dijck’s framework in comparisons to Essena was simply because there were other pressures to that did not derive from technology or her peers. She applied pressure to her life herself, in order to achieve the social media heights that other users has reached by putting themselves out there for the world to see. She was definitely self-made, and also self-driven in terms of making her own choices and decisions, and also presenting herself the way she waned in order to have people like her and for her to build her following. She had strong messages and opinions that she wanted people to hear and view and this was conclusively one of the things she would miss most. This was also one of the ways Essena applied pressure to herself because she was always expecting her self to keep creating content and messages that supported who she was and that people would support too.

After all social media is used by many different users and for many different reasons. Essena’s claim lacks any concrete support and evidence, and is an overgeneralized statement towards users of social media that are or may be like her but not all users in general, and even this comment lacks evidence.