You may not immediately recognize the name Essena O’Neill, but you’ve probably seen her face. The 19-year-old Australian and her story have gone viral on the Internet, and her pretty face has been all over the web.
It has only been (approximately) a week since O’Neill removed herself from social media, including Youtube, Snapchat, Tumblr, and Instagram—all of which individually had thousands of followers/subscribers. Since then, she has taken the Internet by storm, with her name bringing up pages and pages of Google results.
Most of us aren’t social media stars. Our lives look nothing like Alexis Ren’s Instagram feed, and we don’t have Jay Alvarez’s photography skills. Instagram has never made me a cent, and I’ve never even won a giveaway by reposting a specified picture. For us, social media is only a means to connect with each other, to share our lives, and to creatively portray our personalities.
For a few days, the Internet collectively rooted for O’Neill and her bravery and her vision. For a short time before it was deleted, O’Neill’s Instagram account was reduced to a mere portion of the photos originally posted, and each caption was edited to reveal a vulnerable, softer, and perhaps realer side of herself.
It didn’t take long for the backlash to arrive. As suddenly as the Internet latched onto her ideals, it spurned opposition against her. People accused her of being a fake. She was marketing herself all over again, albeit in a different way! It was self-promotion all over again!
This is a letter to those people. This is, essentially, a letter to the haters.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is promotion, all over again. This time, though, I like to think that O’Neill is promoting not her own self, but the ideals she preaches. It takes an incredible amount of bravery to step forward so boldly online, no matter what message you are coming forward with. I felt self-conscious after even posting a Facebook status about which universities I was accepted into!
She is a girl. She is 19. I don’t pretend to know O’Neill at all, but I do know myself, and I am a 19-year-old girl who debates what to post on social media as well—and I don’t even have so many people looking at what I post.
Taking a stance publicly is a decision. I would argue that it is an even more intimidating one now, with the ever-important struggle of being politically correct. I like to think that even the most cynical of critics can recognize that this was not easy for O’Neill. Admittedly, I am one of the more naive ones; I am the optimist, the idealist, and the hopeful one. But don’t you agree that it is far better to be happy than to be sour-faced and angry?
There are some who believe that O’Neill is arguing for a complete disaffiliation from social media. And those people are right: Social media is not necessarily a bad thing. Like most technology, it stems from a desire to progress, which is (I like to think) good. Facebook and Instagram and Twitter brings people over long distances together in a personal way. I’ve relied on social media for many years to keep up with friends I moved away from in the middle of high school. I love social media! I love technology, I love advancement, and I love all the opportunities they bring.
It’s true that social media is not intrinsically harmful, but O’Neill does not attack social media. Keep in mind that social media had consumed her life for years. It brought her money, recognition, and the beginnings of a career. In the Western world, we tend to define ourselves by what we do. O’Neill was a social media model; social media was what she did.
She chose to cut it out of her life after such close proximity to it, but she did not frame it as the Big Bad Villain in our society. In fact, O’Neill has instead redirected her focus on social media platforms. She uploads videos approximately once a week to share her thoughts and connect with the online world. She has a website. She once “used it to let a number define [her],” but now she uses it to share her message.
It seems that O’Neill is only dissatisfied with the nature of social media platforms, and not social media itself. She writes in one of her blog posts, “BUT PLEASE CAN SOMEONE MAKE A SOCIAL SHARING PLATFORM NOT BASED ON VALIDATION IN VIEWS/FOLLOWERS/LIKES BUT SHARED FOR REAL VALUE AND LOVE. THANK YOU. PLEASE HURRY UP. “
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. In fact, I’d sign up for one of those platforms myself.
So haters, please, stop looking for a reason to hate. You just might find that there aren’t very many in the first place.
