Do Petrolheads Have Much of an Ugly Truth Behind Social Media?

http://time.com/4096988/teen-instagram-star-essena-oneill-quitting-social-media/?xid=time_socialflow_facebook

So I was in my dorm, browsing through my Facebook news feed while I should have been writing a research paper, and I came across this article.  To fill you in quickly, some 18 year old girl from down under has decided to basically kangaroo kick crash her social media accounts and highlight the truth behind everything that goes on.  For example, in one of her photos on Instagram, she changed the description to include the sacrifices made earlier in the day, the lack of food she ate, and the yelling at her little sister to get the (what turned out to be 100 attempts) photo right.  There are a bunch more different scenarios, but I wasn't about to read through them all.  Not while I have a load of car videos under "Save for Later" on YouTube.  Anyway, I read the article, and I had a few different thoughts.

1) There's a lot of fronting on social media.  It's rather true, to be honest.  Many of us always like to show our good side and make everything seem like 'the good life.'  And it's understandable.  Do you really want to make yourself look weak and vulnerable?  I don't.

Now I read the article more, and a term that was thrown around quite often was "self-promotion."  That's pretty much what Essena O'Neill deemed much of what she used to do.  She felt great breaking away from that lifestyle and trying to show more of a 'truth' side of things.  And that lead me to my second thought, or more of a question.

Do we car people have that issue?

In a way, partially yes.  Yeah, yeah, we don't show our day jobs on our car Instagram profiles or our YouTube channels.  Maybe we'll share that on our Facebook profiles (which you readers should go follow me!).  I digress.  The 'partially yes' is something I could probably see with some of the car photographers and their photo shoots.  They probably get frustrated.  As far as self-promotion?  Well, we don't mind growing out our Instagram profiles and gaining more YouTube subscribers.  But here's the easiest way to answer that:

If social media were somewhat drop dead, would we ditch our car-related activities?

Nope.  So we may not be as concerned about camera lighting or making sure there's no copyrighted music in the background.  But the truth is, we love what we do.  It's genuinely a passion for us.  There's a reason why we have trouble waking up at 08:00 for work/classes, but waking up at 05:00 for a car event is a total breeze! (That's unless we were up until 01:00 getting camera equipment ready, etc.  Even then it's relatively easy!)  Cars are pretty much a passion for us, and that won't be changing anytime soon.

So Essena, why don't you become one of us?  We know you love cars! We know that you know what Porsche Doppelkupplung is and what the abbreviation of it is!  We know you'd like to learn more car facts, such as how many bodies fit in the trunk of a 1967 Lincoln Continental!

Seriously though  Essena, try and find a passion.  You'll be fine on the internet doing that instead of what you used to do.