William Munny, Unforgiven, and the making of the narratives we tell ourselves, Part 3…

Continued from Part 2…

The emphasis on the real vs the fake is something we are beset with every day as our ability to construct what we would like people to know about us through the internet and especially social media platforms.

These platforms showcase the curated portions of people’s lives with which they use to project who they want to be perceived to the world.

The narratives with which people try to portray themselves often conflict with who they are or how they behave in reality.

I came from an industry that is ripe with this sort of double living on social media, where the people who claimed to be doing the most work in reality were simply the ones posting the most on social media.

I came to social media usage later in life when I was basically forced to get on it to help with marketing and recruiting in my door-to-door company.

We wanted to showcase how much money we were earning so that people would be drawn to us and want to work with us, but as is often said, all that glitters isn’t gold.

Having been avoidant of social media for so long, it was an interesting phenomena to see what some people were posting.

The idea of the “thirst trap,” which I had never heard of before, began to really dominate my thinking around social media.

It is easy to point out the thirst trap of someone else, those social media posts of half-naked men and women that just scream “I need attention” or someone to compliment me.

But as we expand outward from those highly attention seeking posts, you can see the things that people post are things they wish to convey about themselves, the things they are seeking attention in, the thirst traps by other names.

How often have I seen friends of mine post workout and lifting videos, and you expect that the next time you see them they’ll have put on 30 pounds of muscle and they are the same size as always.

It is this facade that is constructed outside of oneself to get the things we seek in everyday life.

For some it’s clearly the attention of the sexual marketplace, but for others it is the muscles they’ve always wanted, the achievements they crave, the experiences and artifacts of a material wealth they’ve never had before, but always in some way it is the consciously chosen image or narrative which reveals their values at that moment, the thing they desperately need filled.

It is the fabrication often as deceptive as English Bob or The Schofield Kid which doesn’t line up with reality at all, the catfishing which I believe we are all guilty of to a certain extent, I know at least I am.

It is the construction of an identity outside of oneself to make up for or fill a perceived lack inside of oneself at that moment.

It is the conspicuous consumption of a reality drained of the real.

As we see in the movie everyone is trying to either embellish or conceal what they truly are.

The moments of conflict in the movie are the moments when the truth about reality confronts the facade of the narrative.

It is in these moments that the characters either gain or lose, English Bob’s loss of the biographer is Little Bill’s gain.

Reality and the conflicting narratives become a zero-sum game for the characters.

Is social media then a zero-sum game for us and our relation to the real?

I have been frequently confronted recently with these seemingly violent clashes between the facade of narratives people construct and the reality that lives in people’s hearts.

We are capable of profound evil in the name of Good as a species, and, while my life events are not as dramatic as what is currently going on in some war-torn places, nonetheless this ability to fabricate a narrative in the real world can corrode our own perceptions and motives of our actions.

I’ve definitely been through the business and financial wringer recently, and take on 100% responsibility of what has happened in my life, but these events made me think of some of my past decisions.

Where I thought I was being the good guy, but was really just out for self, the narrative that I told myself to justify my actions always preserved how I thought of myself.

That is what is so fascinating with truth and reality in the social media age, where a lot of us can see collectively what the user is seeking by posting an image or narrative, but the user tells themselves, justifies something else.

Just like the characters in Unforgiven, we too are searching for this authenticity, whether in ourselves or in the reality we inhabit.

We are drawn to those who, perhaps not really having it, create the facade of the real or authentic, and so we simultaneously seek to hold it within ourselves.

In reality, we might be little more than myth-makers, the builders of the facade of the narrative we all perpetuate, because we cannot bear the real even if we find it.

• Heidegger, Fallenness, and Social Media’s Viral Manipulation
• William Munny, Unforgiven, and the making of the narratives we tell ourselves, Part 1…
• The Death of Deep Thought: How Poetry Saves Meditative Thinking
• What was read this week: Mar 9-15
• The Illusion of Growth: Why We Must Return to Ourselves In Little Gidding

If this strikes a chord in you—the hunger to sharpen, to evolve—explore Poetics of Self-Mastery. It’s for those done with distraction, ready to confront the quiet disciplines that forge identity. No hacks. No hype. Just the art of becoming who you were meant to be. Read Poetics of Self-Mastery (Why You’re Still Stuck)

Ready to burn your default thinking? Download Dangerous by Design. Discover the 10 books that fracture, interrupt, and rewire the creative mind. Get the guide & read dangerously.