Caroline Flack, social media - and you

One of my favourite songs is REM’s Everybody Hurts.  

“Everybody hurts.

Don't throw your hand.

If you feel like you're alone.

No, no, no, you're not alone.”

The highly publicised tragic suicide of TV presenter Caroline Flack serves as a powerful reminder that just as the thinnest sheet of paper has two sides, so social media has two-faces.

I never met Caroline, yet, like millions of others, I was sketchily aware of her recent battles (Mostly, I am uncomfortable to admit, based on social media tittle-tattle).

One of the many problems of having a high-profile social media presence is that certain people who you are never likely to meet, assume they know the real you – including onerous issues you are privately fighting. They fail to separate the persona from the person.  

They feel entitled to make sweeping judgements.  After all they (the social media melange of online reviewers) helped make a person or brand famous in the first place.

Play the game

Whilst social media builds personal brands, at what cost?  Especially for entertainment celebrities whose personal lives become fodder for click-bate advertising.  For them, even the pithiest incident risks creating the longest tail.

We all show a face to the world.   Often it is one of confidence.  However equally often, many suffer inside to keep a mask from slipping. 

From CEOs to sales professionals, waiters and Uber drivers, to social media digital content producers – reassuring smiles and pithy postings – can sometimes be veneers designed to either self-protect or win confidence and so business.

They know – we know it.

It's all part of the game.

And so it is, that what is published on LinkedIn or other social media sites and who the people that post actually are, can be very different.

LinkedIn for example, can be likened to a village-market of hawkers telling you how ‘awesome’ it is to be part of the community and why you can trust ‘experts’ to build your social media presence, improve leadership skills, land a ‘killer’ job, design brands, close sales … in fact, a carnival of snake-oil remedies concocted for an ‘always-on’ world where we live together – yet increasingly apart.

According to Business Insider, a typical ‘independent’ LinkedIn influencer charges around $1,000 per sponsored post or article on LinkedIn.

To drum up engagement numbers, Twitter indirectly encourages onlookers to add snappy sarcastic asides to posts – proving quick-wittedness and acuity to peers.   

Often, whilst voracious ‘Twitter-Twats’ are nippy at leaving caustic comments, they invariably fail to recognise that at the other end of the original posts is a person who may not live in similar houses or drive similar cars as they do, still share similar neuroses, fears, wants, guilt-trips, insecurities and failings as everybody else.

Point – not person

In my view, unless the person at the centre of the posts is fundamentally repugnant –homophobic, antisemitic, racist, sexist or propagates hate crime… ‘taking a pop’ personally is not only counterproductive, it reveals more about the critic’s lack of character than the person being targeted. 

By all means, argue a viewpoint. 

Go for it!  

However, that doesn’t automatically sanction a direct attack on the person.  

Do that and the wider implications influenced by the sheer spread of social media, tend to lead to a broader tollerance of populism and worse.

Being unkind becomes the norm – including, being unkind to ourselves

Foul play

I have direct experience of rabid bullying on Twitter. It happened some years ago.  My response was not to instantly block trolls but answer and engage.

In some cases, I could reason with people.  In other cases, the trolls were so hell-bent on impressing their peers (football fans) they ranted, swore and hurled personal abuse with glee.

In seeking peer respect, they couldn’t recognise the effects their petty nastiness had – not just on me personally but wider.

Facebook – what’s not to like?

A Harvard Business Review published a piece about two-year research of over 5,000 people on Facebook. It suggested that whilst real-world social networks were positively linked with wellbeing, Facebook had a marked negative mental health association.

Constantly ‘liking’ other’s content and clicking links, led to less self-reported physical health, mental health and life satisfaction.

Force for good and ugly

In terms of mental health, managed and produced wisely, social media provides reassurance.  Sites can help with creativity, self-expression, sense of belonging and civic engagement.  Instagram in particular can be a great source of apt apophthegms providing an instant hit of succour.

Yet, even though many feel they can instinctively separate the ‘good’, ‘bad’ ‘ugly’ of social media, conclusive evidence suggests otherwise.

In February 2020, Nature magazine reported that many researchers approach social media as if it were sugar: safe in small to moderate quantities, harmful only if consumed in large quantities (especially by teenagers).  However, unlike sugar, social media doesn’t just act on those who consume it. Toxic posts can wreck wide and deep. 

Devil in the details

In becoming part and parcel of life (for LinkedIn – work) social media has become the ‘devil you know and reluctantly put up with.) 

Online and offline, people are more attuned to the dangers of casually treating others like commodities or objects to deflect issues they can neither face nor manage.  

A recent poll from the US indicates that 54% of teens think they spend too much time on smartphones.  Recognising the adverse impact of social media, about half are cutting back. 

Mirror, mirror on my smartphone...

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry comes across The Mirror of Erised.  It reflected Harry's desires.  It showed the most frantic craving of a person's heart; a vision known to drive men mad.

Similarly, social media can be a reflection of stories people and organisations tell themselves and desire others to imagine. 

Often in reaching out, a person subconsciously reaches into themselves.  Asking questions…probing possibilities… providing advice they want others to provide or to realise for themselves.

More than an open-diary, social media becomes that Mirror of Erised (Desire) which we peer at in the hope that one day we will step through, towards a place where superficiality and duplicity at work…in personal lives… on social media…  are replaced by kindness and humility.  

Cut off

Following an assault charge in December 2019, Caroline Flack was advised to stay away from social media. (Despite all charges being dropped by the accuser (her boyfriend) the British legal system persisted in wanting the case to go to court – which in turn, stirred-up even further hostile social media commentary against Flack).

“Bedroom Bloodbath” was one of the headlines that followed her arrest.

Flack was constantly depicted as a caricature monster.

 Where the media goes, social media inevitably follows.

Venomous anxiety

One of the many devious ways in which anxiety works is it to convince the sufferer they are at fault for something, undeserving, worthless; ultimately a failure.

Anxiety finds triggers to confirm any of the above.  Having done so, like a boa constrictor snake, it wraps itself around and around the sufferer, first sending them into a dizzying spiral of self-hate, then suffocating them with a warped barbed wire of depression. 

Just before Christmas, Flack encouraged the lonely to seek help.  She posted on Instagram:

“This kind of scrutiny and speculation is a lot for one person to take on their own... I’m a human being at the end of the day and I’m not going to be silenced when I have a story to tell and a life to keep going with...

“I’m taking some time out to get feeling better and learn some lessons from situations I’ve got myself into to. I have nothing but love to give and best wishes for everyone.”

All of us hurt at times.  

Sadly, whilst the ‘love’ shown to Flack on social media after her suicide was widespread, it came too late.

For those suffering: “No, no, no.  You’re not alone”.  

Speak to a friend or call: Samaritans UK:  116 123    [email protected]

Jonathan Gabay

Brand Psychologist