We don’t usually post anything political on this blog but we thought this “New Rule” by Bill Maher about avatars isn’t really political and points out an essential truth about most of us on social media.

The segment about everyone is inauthentic because we hide behind avatars starts at 1:58 in the video but please note: Some of the language and part of the video is NSFW. But the essential point starts at 3:58:

Everyone’s social media persona now is like a candidate running for office, holding babies, doing photo ops, making sure every statement is carefully sanded down so as not to upset anybody. Facebook should be called twoFacebook. 

His point: avatars are less interesting, less authentic than the real person. We thought it worth sharing because we’ve all done the photo op thing, the liking of something to show we’re good people if what we actually do is limited to what we “like” or don’t like (i.e., the anger emoji) on Facebook.

Not saying we should go out and seek to offend others. Trolling seems like a strange, ineffective waste of time (it never persuades people with opposing views). But we think it’s worth looking at how some of us present ourselves over social media because most of us need to find a more effective way to be authentic on social media.

And that includes blog writers who hide behind the “editorial we” such as in this post.