LIKE MANY OTHERS, I have something of a love-hate relationship with social media. I enjoy the benefits, but am concerned about the downsides (which I see more easily in other people’s lives than my own).

Mostly, I use Facebook and Instagram to keep in touch with friends and keep an eye on what’s happening in the work-world circles of those I know. I post the occasional selfie/personal update and share my blog, but I give more time to passing along favorite humorous memes, usually of the pun variety. It’s nice to think you can give someone a momentary smile in their day.

Staying with the upside, social media has also allowed Marcia and I to add “pebbling” to our love languages—“pebbling” being the term used for sharing favorite reels and snippets with your significant other or close friends, which comes from penguins supposedly sharing their favorite small stones with their besties. 

I don’t tend to rely on social media platforms for serious news, nor do I consider them to be a helpful place for having “conversation” about meaningful issues. It seems to me we’re mostly preaching to the choir. I’m also a bit sniffy when it comes to “influencers,” which is really just a fancy name for salespeople, isn’t it?

And then I was made more aware of the seductive lure of online status.

This especially hot summer has prevented us from taking Millie out for many of her walks, because the sidewalks are simply too much for her delicate paws. So we bought our doodle a set of outdoor shoes to wear. We thought it might be fun to film her trying them on for the first time, and posted a 12-second snippet online for our friends to see. It was pretty cute, showing her high-stepping around in a goofy and gallumpy fashion.

Within a couple of days, we were surprised to find that it had been shared by friends and friends of friends and so on. That little clip had racked up 2,000 views—probably 10 times more than anything I have ever posted. It felt pretty fun.

And then Millie’s awkward catwalk—OK, dogwalk—just kept going viral. At the time of this writing, that clip has been viewed more than 850,000 times…crazy! But what’s particularly interesting to me has been my reaction. First, “Wow, I’m famous!” (as if I had anything to do with Millie’s cuteness). It felt strangely validating, in a way. And then I went from pride to entitlement. “Dang, what if I we’d gotten 10 cents on every view? How might I monetize this? We could be Millie-ionaires!”

All this vanity and grasping wasn’t helped by platform-host updates telling me how well  the clip was doing and asking, “What are you going to post next?” I have to admit, I spent more time checking in on the latest stats than a grown man with work to do should waste. “Going viral” is well-named; it’s an infection that can be bad for your psychological and spiritual health.