It's not a stretch that Jay Gatz, nee Gatsby, lived an invented life. From rather humble origins a stately pleasure palace he did decree, all the for the sake of the love of Daisy Buchanan. Historian Chris Mathews writes, "It's the classic story of the fresh start, the second chance." Fitzgerald, of course, famously wrote, "There are no second acts in American lives." Gatsby tried, of course. He most certainly tried. The fact that he ultimately failed was of course an accident, an accident which most certainly was not Gatsby's fault. No, he was not who he pretended to be. But in this age of social media and invented lives, who is, anyway?
“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired," Fitzgerald wrote. In a later era Fitzgerald might have been writing about social media, the ever-consuming avocation in which we all invent ourselves and quite literally chase the facts and opinions of the persons and organizations we have come to trust. We invent ourselves and we pursue the knowledge and approval of others--in many ways, that's what social media is all about. Gatsby became (at least for a time) who he claimed to be, and the same can be said of those of us who rely on social media for our professional reputations.
"No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart,” Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby. But like Jay Gatsby, frauds and poseurs will ultimately be exposed through social media. We police social media ourselves, and we have no tolerance whatsoever for excessive self-promotion and outright misrepresentation. Remember that when creating content for social media.
"I was within and without," Fitzgerald wrote, "simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” Remember that when creating your content. And remember the Tom Buchanans lurking in the shadows of your words.
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