Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Deborah Carver's avatar

Public congratulations is an expectation only of the extremely online, generally of people who are less established in their careers. Maybe it's because social media wasn't popular until I was out of college, but I've never done this outside of the occasional LinkedIn posts, and I've never expected my friends to publicly celebrate my wins. I don't join into social media requests for post promotion unless it's really related to my core expertise, and the Xennial in me thinks it's a tacky pyramid scheme.

Personally, I use the apps as designed: I look at what the algo surfaces, and if I like the content, I press the like button. that's it. there is no deeper meaning.

Yet I have a successful career doing the internet. Most of the people I know who have successful careers in doing the internet don't spend their days congratulating each other.

The public cycle of congratulations was invented by people (mostly social media managers, god love them) who claim to understand "the algorithms" but it's really only the same, very small percentage of people who believe internet popularity has any correlation to success in real life, feeling like their friendships are transactional, having way too many thoughts about something they could just opt out of and no one would care very much.

Expand full comment
Ryan K. Rigney's avatar

Liking, commenting, and restacking for entirely selfless—laudable, some would say—reasons

Expand full comment
36 more comments...

No posts