My wife is intent on becoming a social media star – I just want a quiet life
I know plenty choose social media to keep in touch with loved ones and give a snapshot of family life. Accounts of day trips or cute pictures of children fill the Facebook and Instagram feeds the algorithm chooses to show me.
But my wife has taken things another step further. She has always been keener than me to upload pics and videos to social media – in our younger days, holidays and fancy meals and the odd cocktail would be snapped, filtered and uploaded – but now this minor habit has turned into a full-blown obsession. And our young family is the focus.
Every outing is filmed – then sometimes re-filmed – ready for the ‘gram. There’s nothing that isn’t documented. The wet mornings beside football pitches; our car getting a flat tyre; mixing a birthday cake; our young daughter in her high chair. To me this stuff is mundane, but we apparently need to chronicle and share it all.
I must admit that she has worked hard, and spent endless hours, to build it up into something that now has lots of followers. Although it still remains bizarre to me why anyone would be interested in watching my wife load a car ahead of a family holiday.
There’s a part of me that thinks ‘who cares?’ – although I am aware this attitude about social media makes me seem prehistoric to some. I daren’t vocalise how I feel, however my wife is dead set on making her influencing work a viable income and is always trying to work out the next angle to attract more followers. It’s her dream to entice a brand or two. If I so much as raise an eyebrow about this it prompts a row, so now I don’t scoff when she starts mulling over what time of day will deliver the best engagement.
Her social media content comes from our family life. Nothing is sacred: a child losing a tooth; our toddler getting her first pair of shoes; one of the kids feeling ill under a blanket on the sofa. My wife argues this makes her relatable but I don’t like how our kids in their most vulnerable moments are fodder for the ‘gram.
Occasionally – now her following has grown a bit – we might get invited somewhere but this is way more trouble than it’s worth. My wife will pitch this to me in an offhand way, saying she’s been given free tickets and we can have a lovely, low-key family day out.
The reality is often very different: there’s obviously no such thing as a free lunch so loads of time is spent waiting as my wife hastily tries to upload content, including the hash tags and links these businesses have demanded, and panics about her phone running out of power.
Whatever the event might be – from ice skating to a farm visit – my wife insists on filming every second, from multiple angles, so there’s no family enjoyment to take from it.
No one sees this side of social media: my wife getting flustered, the kids getting fed up and whingy, everyone getting progressively more hungry and the awkwardness of feeling lots of pairs of eyes watching us as my wife re-positions the children and frets about lighting. Often, it’s me behind the camera or the smartphone where I receive barked directions – it’s almost as cringe worthy as being part of the content.
Our evenings are spent with my wife keeping one eye on whichever box set we’re trying to watch and fretting over engagement or how her latest post has been received. I miss having a genuine connection with her that doesn’t hinge on likes or emojis.
