As a second thought: This hit me really really hard > The gap between public and private personae used to be the exclusive concern of entertainers, but now anybody who wants to can live Martin. I have a few friends who maintain twitter, facebook, youtube, instagram profiles that exactly resemble the profiles of, I don't know how you'd call them, I guess 'amateur social media celebrities'. In a sense, this isn't even surprising; the professional social media celebrities are the cream of this crop. These are normal, everyday people who are really cool in real life, but the second they get behind a screen, they turn into celebrities. It's really disconcerting. It makes it hard to interact with them online as human beings, because even though you know them, and they know you, anything you say to them publicly will get responded to by their persona, not by them. And worse, it's a stark reminder of how the sausage is made, so to speak. You see a person who is totally them in person, but online they become this quazi-celebrity with a manicured image, and all that entails. And then you realize that this isn't them just expressing their raw self. They're doing this intentionally, because it makes more people interested in them. And in most cases, this isn't monetized, it's a pure ego trip. So now you're stuck pondering their motives; who's so vain that they'll do all this for meaningless internet points? And when you realize just how scripted and filtered everything is, you start having odd moments where you realize: "They misrepresented this specific detail, intentionally, because they know it would make them more popular to do so. I wonder what other details I don't know they're shrouding". You start to question the reality of any of your interactions. Taken to its logical extreme, it's as if these people are social media marketing executives, except instead of shilling for a company, they're selling themselves. You realize that every since time you've thought that something marketers do is immoral, your friend did the same thing. It's a really hard thing to deal with