Blog Post #4 - Essena O'Neill

All is not what it seems

Essena O’Neill’s popularity on instagram was based on a superficial and fabricated lifestyle. Many other famous instagrammers utilize social media platforms to promote and share their “fabulous” lives, when in reality they are like everyone else. We have probably all instagram-stalked these girls or guys who post pictures of their perfect lives and have wondered, “How can they have it all?” Well, Essena O’Neill recently took to social media to debunk these fabricated lifestyles by posting a tell-all YouTube video.

Essena continuously felt pressure to construct a perfect life via social media, as she had thousands of followers following her every move, expecting flawless content on her pages. This related to Jose Van Dijck’s idea that “connectivity derives from a continuous pressure- form both peers and technology- to expand through competition and gain power through strategic alliances”(21). In the increasing culture of connectivity seen in contemporary social media, there is a sense of pressure to keep up a certain image online, regardless of the reality of your life. Although I agree that Essena’s choice to expose the nature of her social media fame correlates with Van Dijck’s idea of “neoliberal economic principals”, I also believe that Essena’s desire to become popular on social media further propelled her manipulated lifestyle. Through the desire to become popular and admired, Essena created a fabricated representation of herself online that can be understood through analyzing Van Dijck’s ideas on the popularity principal and ranking mechanisms.

Essentially, Essena O’Neill’s recent actions further demonstrate what Van Dijck calls the “neoliberal economic principals”. Even though her popularity was a direct result of what Van Dijck proposes, by exposing the truth we can see that the neoliberal economic principal directly affects the nature of competition within social media. However, the tactics used to expose the truth contradict her message in the first place. By using social media to spread the “exposed truth” of social media, it comes across as insincere as she now has even more fame online, but for a different reason than before. Essena’s main message directly supports what Van Dijck has suggested, yet her actions and method to spread her thoughts contradicts her very argument. If being famous was Essena’s goal, she achieved it through her fabricated representation on social media, and even expanded her fame through exposing the truth behind her success by utilizing the platform she had created.

On a side note: There has been a trend in the YouTube world, where well-known YouTubers began to post videos called “The Striped Down Challenge”. This challenge was created in response to Essena’s actions and is basically a challenge to make a video where the individual must talk about their views on social media and online representations for 10 minutes without editing or cutting their content. This aims at showing a more real side to well known Internet stars and demonstrates that people are more than their representations online.