By:\u00a0Anne T. Donahue<\/p>\n
We\u2019re living in an age of doing everything all the time, and then posting our adventures for everybody (but especially our crushes and enemies) to see. Which is one of my favorite past times. I like to ensure that anyone who\u2019s not in my direct social circle can see just how interesting I am via photos and brief video clips, and when my target audience doesn\u2019t immediately like, react to, or watch the unfolding of my life, I wonder what it\u2019s all for anyway and curse them and their families.<\/p>\n
Which is maybe an exaggeration. But to be fair and completely honest, I like Instagram. I like watching the greatest hits of my friends\u2019 lives, and I love public displays of \u201clook at my cool outfit.\u201d I treat my stories like a glorified Tumblr, peppered with snippets form real life and screencaps from Heathers<\/em>. Scrolling through the feed is a welcome break from working alone, at home, with only plastic flamingos on my balcony to entertain me, and while I will always skip over somebody\u2019s workout content (I\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t, don\u2019t hate me), I will find time for cat content and accounts dedicated solely to the 1998 zeitgeist.<\/p>\n But this strange, obsessive-albeit-not-toxic relationship only rose out of hitting a point where I got too tired to care. I got too tired to ensure my feed looked a particular way. I got too tired to post the idea of my life instead of the actual thing. (I mean, I\u2019m not going to post myself having a power-cry in my car because I\u2019m tired and took on too much work, but I will post the abundance of Cheetos I purchased for me, a hero and beacon of clean eating.) Ultimately, I got too tired to do anything outside of what I wanted to do. Because it\u2019s exhausting to think about curating anything to appease a bunch of people you might never even meet. Or, who literally do not care.<\/p>\n One of the most dangerous social media (particularly Instagram) myths is that it in any way depicts the reality faced by any person. We know that people are messy and falling apart and flawed and weird (bless them). We know that nobody looks perfect, ever, and that exciting adventures are often fraught with \u201cShit, but can I afford the gas for that spur-of-the-moment road trip?\u201d The year is 2019, and we know that nobody\u2019s life is perfect. And that\u2019s why I\u2019ve stuck around Instagram: it\u2019s finally starting to reflect that.<\/p>\n Not everywhere, obviously. But amongst actual people who don\u2019t have 13 million followers, it\u2019s the high school locker equivalent of adult life. It\u2019s the amalgamation of things that matter to somebody, or make them laugh, or make them happy. It\u2019s the evolution from \u201ccome see my room!\u201d in middle school to surpassing the art of perfectly outfitting one\u2019s office desk and\/or shared workspace. And honestly, considering I\u2019ll probably never quit Twitter and am becoming increasingly aware of how dire and scary our day-to-day living is, I need a place where I can hang out and get to know my friends and people I admire in the same way I\u2019d hang out in the school hallway marveling over their Tiger Beat<\/em>collage. So I bask in their DIY spaces, and I create mine in the same way. Some of it will look cool and nice and put-together, and other times I will share astrology memes to access. Some days are for scenery, others are for photos of horrifying vanity license plates. No days are for posting for any reason other than \u201cI LIKE THIS AND NOW YOU BETTER, TOO.\u201d (Preferably screamed in an Anjelica-from-Rugrats<\/em>-voice.)<\/p>\n Which is what I think authenticity on the internet is. Posting your damn shit in your own way and saying, \u201cAnd if you\u2019ve got a problem with that, you can go to the devil!\u201d to anybody and everybody, should you feel particularly combative. Social media is an extension of ourselves, and to adopt a persona on top of having to actually function as a person is a task that requires too much bandwidth with too little payoff. I will accept your likes and comments always, but should a photo not do particularly \u201cwell\u201d? No. I won\u2019t. I can\u2019t do it. I\u2019m so tired I\u2019ve started drinking Instant Breakfasts because deciding on actual food before lunch is too much work.<\/p>\n I just want to see the cool things you love (or the stuff that makes you mad) and observe accordingly. I just want to like the shit out of your shit. And if that\u2019s a photoshopped selfie, bless you. (Lord knows I will reduce my under-eye bags via app until I am long dead.) Or if it\u2019s a picture of your infant son holding up a sign that says, \u201cInstagram is the devil,\u201d I\u2019m here for it, too. Give me the joy of knowing we\u2019re all just putting our posters up in our teen rooms or decorating our lockers in a way that screams, \u201cYEAH I LIKE LFO, SO WHAT?\u201d Give me the feelings that come with seeing a great Mad Men<\/em>quote.<\/p>\n Dazzle me with your true selves. Or at least your capacity to find terrific memes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By:\u00a0Anne T. Donahue We\u2019re living in an age of doing everything all the time, and then posting our adventures for everybody (but especially our crushes and enemies) to see. Which is one of my favorite past times. I like to ensure that anyone who\u2019s not in my direct social circle can see just how interesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67426,"featured_media":117463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81718],"tags":[83613,64891,83292,81720],"class_list":["post-117462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-anne-t-donahue-musings","tag-social-media","tag-top-story","tag-topstory"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n