Gifting Post

My last post on Instagram has received 96 likes. Basically this is a post of my brother and I after we played a game against Southwestern University which we won. And I happened to get as many likes as I did because of how I emphasized the relationship I have with my brother along with the fact that we are also college teammates. So in theory, I hustled likes from my followers by playing to their heartstrings.

 This makes me feel accomplished and has filled me with a sense of importance that we all crave when we carefully select a caption that we think will tug at our follower's heartstrings or when we selectively choose a filter that we feel will best compliment our features, smiles, or our best angles. This is a gift in itself to me. It is also a gift to whomever I tag in the post with me. Once this person I have tagged in this photo starts getting attention from my followers who are requesting to follow him he will feel obligated to start posting with me to somewhat return the favor in hopes of maintaining this relationship that results in exchange of attention and followers. This is in theory how we validate our existence or appearance in mainstream media ; by the number of people who acknowledge our existence.


Gifting is a form of bartering that we use to have our presences felt and without a doubt this feeds our egos that so powerfully control our decisions as to why we do things or determine how much effort we put into things like relationships with people that have a platform that can ascend us into another level of the spotlight in our mainstream social media communities.