External Validation and the Online World, the means for oversharing – afternoon musings…

Rather than considering ourselves beautiful because we ‘feel’ beautiful (internal), we require external validation of our beauty. This usually consists of seeing ourselves in a mirror, a photograph, or hearing that we are beautiful as stated by someone external from us. In fact, the closer a person is to us the less weight this statement carries. This not because it is not as true as a more external person’s statement, but because we tend to meld the ideas of those closest to us into our internal dialog and thus they fail to pass the external requirement for validity.

This is the same for possessions, and ideas. All your friends may possess an item or hold to an idea, but the item or idea is only validated when it is also possessed or held to by someone external from your circle.

In contrast are the non-conformist who only hold to feelings, possessions, and ideas when others do not. What they fail to realize though is that external non-validation caries as much weight for them as external validation does for everyone else. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, many non-conformist ideals are eventually conformed to through such external validation. This is not necessarily because these people want to conform to these non-conformist ideals, but that they have to due to the simple fact that these ideals exist. This is turn causes the non-conformist to seek out new ideals even though they are in fact dooming their non-conformity to conformity by this very act.

The ad works for the possessors more than for those that do not yet possess the product as it is an external validation of their purchase. It does the same for those who purposely do NOT possess the product (not those who do not possess it ‘yet’ but those who never want to possess it) as it externally validates their reasons to not possess it. Think of the ‘Mac’ ads for example.

The trick to all of this is that it is entirely turned upside down in the online world. If you can think of it, there is a site for it (rule 34) – thus everything is externally validated in one way or another however it is all done so anonymously now requiring us consider whether that is a true external validation or just an internal one as we sought it out ourselves by the act of being online where it exists for everyone instead of it being voluntarily given to us in the real world where it may or may not exist for us.

Everyone is simultaneous beautiful and ugly as the continuity of the world is displayed before us electronically. And, even though we are alone behind our computer we seek out companionship online in one form or another. The to/with continuum determines whether or not you’ve found an audience or a cohort and in some cases the same people travel up and down this line without a second thought of whether they are being pandered to or communicated with.

Often times we find we are our own audience as we reveal things about ourselves that even we did not know thus becoming our own external validators, something that could not be done in context of the real world. Adding to this is the public external validation of an internal validator online that, because it is public, makes it external where it were private it would be internal. So then we take the word of someone close to us as truer were it spoken in an online environment where other external validators can validate it than we would the same utterance in an internal and personal context even tough it is the same person saying it.

What the online world has done is cause us all require an audience now, if only to validate ourselves in ways we cannot be validated offline. This is why we share things online we would never share in public or even in some cases in private.

I may pick this up again later…

In the meantime – read what oversharing means for a blogger who was paid to blog.

ETA:

“To the young today, however, the dream experience is its own reality, a separate reality: it doesn’t need to be validated by translation into the historical world of sensory experience. It validates itself.

Similarly, they regard media as self-contained environments, having little correspondence with other realities or environments. TV is its own reality, radio its reality, film still another reality.

[…]

The young in particular regard media environments as designs, patterns – what William Blake called “sculptures” – states that have no separate physical existence. We pass temporarily into one or another & when in any one, it seems overpoweringly real & all other states shadowy. We imagine, of course, that any state we are in is physically real. This makes it splendidly attractive. It doesn’t occur to us that only our spirits can enter these realms, and that events experienced there can never be tested against observed reality.

I think this is one reason the young find nothing incongruous about conflicting reports in the press, radio, TV, etc. ” – Edmund Carpenter 1972

So nice when you read something that falls inline with your current thought (hah! external validation!).

Interesting though how the Internet provides a place where this self-contained environment can be observed by an outsider as it is a participatory form of media rather than a passive one such as radio, tv, or film.