According to Marshall’s article, he said many celebrities nowadays are influencing teenagers and becoming role model for them through social media and at the same time they encourage us to involve culture together with social media (2010). In the end, celebrities have taken the power of social media culture and they are a product of the self specifically dependent. Many people nowadays are expressing themselves through social media and being influenced by celebrities.
Not a single person that I know doesn’t have any social media, the main 3 basic social media that everyone would have would be Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and it just depends on where you would be expressing yourself identity more. not everyone would choose the same social media to express themselves due to privacy. I think the majority of people choose to express themselves through Instagram more than Twitter and Facebook because they think these 2 should contain some privacy and only friends and family could access and see their profile. In this case, I picked to express my own identity throughout Instagram for the public and Twitter but its more private compared to Instagram.
How “maeemayyy” started
If you have a look at my social media user names, the majority of my user name is called “maeemayyy”. It does have a meaning behind it and it shows my own online identity. The reason why I chose it is because my mum wanted to call me “May” since I was born in May but she wanted me to be unique from other people so she changed it to “Mae” and that’s how I started my user name “maeemayyy”.
The way that I usually express my online identity, would be the majority on Instagram rather than twitter. On Instagram, words are not limited and what I think is that it could reach to people more through hashtags and the number of followers you got. For my Instagram, I have changed my account from “personal account” to “public figure” account and categorised it under “personal blog”. By doing this, I can promote my posts and more people can see my account.
Instagram.
From time to time, I’d be promoting products on Instagram but only on my story for people to view them but it’s only available for 24 hours and also doing a review for products. On my profile, I have added some highlights based on the story posts that I have posted and wanted to keep for everyone to see. For examples; I have a highlight about travelling for others to see where I went, another one is based on outfits that might have given them some ideas of what to wear.
Promoting.
I’m a fan of festivals, especially Electro Dance Music (EDM) festivals. Which allowed me to meet famous and talented people. I became part of the promoters for some festivals and able to promote it thru my Instagram page. Not only being a promoter but at the same time, I do take pictures. I’m a fan of a film photograph. I find them very unique from digital photography because don’t know what will come out. I have started my hashtag called “mtssnap”, nowadays I hardly have the time to take the picture and post it but will post more in the future when I have more time.
Twitter.
On my twitter, it’s more private compared to Instagram. I tent to express my emotions with quotes and words more than the picture. usually, people that follow me are my friends, I wouldn’t consider it public because I don’t promote it and at the same time I wouldn’t consider it private, would be called it in between. Even though I tweet a lot but most of the time it’s me expressing my feelings and thoughts. In the tweet below, it was just expressing how I miss my parents because now I live far away from them and only get to see them once a year during a festive time like Christmas. Always have to spend the Christmas holiday together no matter how far we’re all are, we will always come back home and spend it together. One of the reasons why I love Christmas. I always share my an appreciation post about my family online because I feel like they should be admired.
Major throwback to 2017, I have downloaded this game called, “cat vs dog”. This is one of the childhood games I have played but at that time it was only available on the computer not on mobile and once I found out that I could download it on my phone, I immediately downloaded and played it. I tweeted this because I wanted people that’s my age to play this and bring back childhood. I was very happy.
In the meantime, I will continue to develop my Instagram page and wishing to collaborate with more and also promote more festivals that are unique in my home countries. Definitely, want to get to know more people and work with them!
References:
Marshall, PD 2010, ‘The promotion and presentation of the self: celebrity as marker of presentational media’, Celebrity Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 35-48
maeemayyy 