Joel and Carrie: Desperately Seeking Validation With Social Media PDA... An Analysis
Let's begin. People who post on social media about how incredibly, impossibly, wonderful their partner is fall under the wide, fascinating umbrella of oversharing. Excessive relationship displays are used to cope with feelings of inferiority, compensate for that which is lacking and look to the world for outside validation.
We all know that Carrie has always struggled with emotional tone on the internet. We’ve seen this in the passive aggressive, ‘XXX’ era and it has now developed into recent comments made by her like “God forbid anyone dance along to the music”.
Similarly, it is clear from Joel's Facebook posts that he is also unaware of emotional tone on the internet. Long Facebook rants that meander meaninglessly is synonymous with an older user of social media that has limited understanding of the nuances of the platform.
One key reason for Carrie and Joel’s social media PDA is a shared lack of understanding for emotional tone on social media. Grandiose and nauseating displays of love and affection serve to try and boost general perception of themselves. The reverse is actually true. We are unable to look away in horror, not jealousy. The Twelve Days of Joel, the up close videos of kissing, the excessive couples holiday photos, the strong, never-ending statements of LOVE and PRIDE.
The excessive use of adjectives across all posts from the couple are also of interest. Texts that bulge with adjectives tend to weaken a piece of writing. Yet their posts positively drip with adjectives such as “incredible”, “genuine”, “luckiest”, “the best”, “kindest”, “caring”, “absolute world” and “jackpot”. The couple doth protest too much?
Both Carrie and Joel value emotional displays on social media and, in a toxic way, it seems to have become a kind of love language between them. By posting about the other, egos are stroked, validations are received through likes and comments and an impression of emotional depth is created. There is no reason your entire relationship has to play out via social media unless you’re really lacking something in yourself or in your relationship.