A friend of mine recently told me she had been ‘verified’ on Twitter. If you’re not familiar with the social media platform, being verified is when Twitter classifies a person’s account to be both authentic and of public interest, resulting in a tell-tale blue tick being added to their account name. While it’s not directly linked to the number of followers a person has, or how famous they are, there tends to be something of a correlation. In a very superficial way, people in the public eye sometimes joke that you have ‘made it’ once you achieve this verification.
There is no doubt that Twitter’s blue tick is an extremely important feature of the platform. It is most useful when differentiating between the genuine account of a public figure and other accounts with a similar name, either by coincidence or because they are parodies. But when it comes down to it, the feature can be used as the ultimate popularity contest between those who use Twitter in a work capacity. Those wishing to influence others consider verification a goal to be achieved, and I have more than once heard of grown adults behaving in a hostile manner towards others over jealousy caused by that small blue tick.
When my friend, I’ll call her Emily, was verified on Twitter, it caused her to re-evaluate her attitude towards the site. She needs to use it for work, but in the past has been very careful to resist the temptation to check her feed in the evenings and weekends. A good trick for her was to only ever log in on her work computer. However, through working at home during lockdown, she found the lines between work and home becoming blurred, and began checking for updates on the site more regularly. Then her work arranged for all its employees to be evaluated for Twitter verification, and she got her blue tick. Not everyone did though, and Emily was intensely relieved that she had not been left off the list while colleagues who she is in competition with were. She told me she found herself searching for the names of former colleagues and current competitors, and feeling pleased to see that many of them did not yet have a blue tick. It gave Emily a small sense of joy every time she saw a tweet from other people who were still not verified – some of them with hundreds of thousands of followers, and high-profile careers, books or TV shows to their name.
It probably won’t surprise any of you to know that these petty comparisons did not make Emily happy. After several weeks she decided to take a break from the social media site in order to reset, as she can do her job in the short term without it. She told me she had always been proud of her good habits around social media, but the fact that she was drawn into unhealthy behaviours so quickly shows how important it is to continuously evaluate and maintain good habits. In my sessions I often speak about the difference between the intense but brief pleasure of external validation and the longer-lasting steady trickle of self validation. External validation is sometimes compared to a drug – a hit of it feels great but quickly fades, so you find yourself seeking more and more, but no matter how much you get, it is never enough. Emily has now managed to break the bad habit she fell in to, and while in no doubt that her Twitter verification is a useful tool, she recognises that her work, and that of her competitors, has value regardless of whether or not it comes with a small blue symbol attached.