Pretense or Facts

Image is an important component of today's world. Many organizations and people devote a lot of time and resources to perfect their image and project with it the type of message to the world that they believe works better for their goals. It's kind of funny, when you think that the actions of whatever you want to be recognize, and the fruits of your effort should be the ones naturally creating that image. You want to reflect a certain attitude-likeability-level of success, you want to look like you have achieved something important. However, it happens today that everything needs to be aggrandized, hyped and exaggerated in order to get the message through and make it look worthy. Modest achievement - no matter the level of effort behind it - is not attention worthy.

If you look at influencers, they seem to have these ever-moving milestones that soon balloon into insane statistics and challenges and accumulation of whatevers that... can be faked. Amount of subscriptors can be faked, views can be faked, tricks can be used to get unaware or curious audience pulled to watch something that's not what it claims to be, and content can also be produced to take advantage of trends and build an image of being trendy.

Source: Property of
Stormberry

The thing that drives me to the keyboard today is bullet journaling. I hope I don't need to explain what bullet journaling is, but just in case, it's using a regular notebook as a planner/notebook, where you write down for yourself, in whatever shape and form it fits you, all your to dos, appointments, ideas and such. It's an all in one, and you make it as you need it. Kind of like a no-rules kind of planner.

Bullet journaling has become trendy and has dripped out of the planner communities and soon was in the messenger bag of any influencer that whishes to look independent, enterpreneuring, creative and what-not. Yes, it can be a great tool for just about anyone, but it's not for all. And it's great when you see more and more people showing the idea - specially one that, for once, actually doesn't cost much - but then there are risks too.

A bullet journal is supposed to keep you organized, to remain on top of your priorities. The bullet journal, as a thing of trend, is a tool used for enhancing your social network image. It's beautified or perched up in this or that way to reflect the type of lifestyle you want your audience to imagine. Instead of a tool for organization, it becomed a bulleting board of art and a display of a particular kind of life. Does it work as a tool of organization? Well, I can't be the judge of that. I would certainly miss my tasks amid the collage of barista coffee pictures, tea tabs and washi tape displays. That's me, though. I like tight and cramped (and colorful, so I can spot by color the topics amid the tight blocks of text). Surely, minds are different and some might like putting together foreplanning with notes of the day. A sort of planner+journal, which surely makes the bujo they keep a better record of their lives. But then again, often what we see is a notebook carefully curated to be IG-postable.

Is that wrong? Not at all, as long as people looking at it know it is an artistic rendering. See, the problem with the augmented images of today is precisely that: the audience loses touch with reality, and fall into an empty image, place their trust and their believe into something that's not real. I have known of influencers who recommend twenty books and have read none. People who advise others on this or that life practice that they themselves do not follow. The most recent: people who go big on bullet journals, recommed the system up and down, and yet do not keep their appointments, make promises they don't deliver on, rope others into projects that never go past the proposal, are constantly late or rescheduling (often because they reschedule an appointment that has been agreed on in advance, but they prefer to take a meeting that just came up), and use the bullet journal and the task lists in it to justify (excuse) how busy they are.

This thing I recently knew of about someone, made me realize that this is also something a lot of people do. There are people who like to create the image of success or efficiency or cosmopolitan life that does not really fit with who they are and how they live. They are always troubled with something, but constantly tell others how blessed they are, and whenever they have to actually answer for the image their have created - show those amazing skills at organizing a trip, pull those contacts to create an event, put together the plan for that class in that topic they are the best at - there's always something that alas, keeps them from showing their greatness.

The dangers of this is the effect of the disappointment. The system of believes of the audience take a blow, and suddenly cloaks in the light of fakery other people that might actually be doing things honestly. The effect of the disappointment can even taint the system, the book, the skill sets and anything related to the offered or promoted image, making people walk away from something that might actually be good for them. Specially in the cases of novelties, where the amount of third hand experience might be limited.

With so many aggrandized images of everything bombarding us, where there is a strong perception gap created between "regular people" and known people, between audience and infuencers, these hyped constructions set a large peopulation in the road for disappointment. Here, as a witch, I advise everybody to take everything with a grain of salt, think things through, don't believe all you hear and wait to have as much information as you can gather before you pass judgment on some topics.