Social Media Dos

A sorta manifesto?

Photo by diana kereselidze on Unsplash

In full disclosure, I have in my drafts a take on social media that I’ve been working on forever, based on Naomi Klein’s amazing book Dopplegänger. I highly recommend the book. It’s huge and dense and took me a long to read, not least because I would need to put it down for a bit here and there because it feels like she’s drowning you in reality. In a good way, but still…drowning. I loved the book so much and Klein puts her finger directly on so many things that bother me about social media, as if she’s doing all the hard work to allow me to tie up my own thoughts into a neat bow. I wanted to share my take on the book and maybe I will, or maybe it will continue to elude me because it’s too much to put in a newsletter post.

But in the meantime I still have this burning question: what to do with my fucking Instagram. It’s the last social media I have and I hate Meta (for lots of reasons) and I hate that I’m told I have to use social media and I hate how quickly I lapse into negative self-talk and fomo when I use it. But I also miss seeing friends’ stuff. And I miss the artists I follow. And I miss the ideas I see (although I think the commodification of ideas that social media encourages is super cult-ey).

I was planning on blowing it up, honestly. Severing my last cord. But do I need to?

I think part of the problem is I know what I don’t like about my own use of social media. When I scroll through my feed, I see myself performing. Especially the further back I get. I see someone curating and narrating, and that’s fine, but WHAT am I curating and narrating? Whose story? With what values? Are they even my values?

So I’m going to make a list, or a sort-of manifesto, of everything I see when I scroll through my feed, and my current reactions. TRIGGER WARNING: you may do some of these things, too, and you might think I’m picking you. I’m not! I’m looking at my feed, and I’m thinking about why *I* do certain things. You might do them for totally different reasons that resonate deeply with you, and fulfill you. But, if you too feel the tug of the void in some of these behaviors, I see you. I feel it too.

So here is my sorta manifesto, from what I see myself doing in my own feed:

1. I never again want to purse my lips at a phone I’m craning over my head, trying to convince people that I am fun and sexy. Whatever told me it was my job to be fun and sexy—they’re fired. My real jobs are joy, mischief, ennui, and nachos.

2. I never again want to be at a restaurant, so busy fumbling with my pocket casino that I don’t make eye contact with the server to acknowledge my gratitude that they are feeding me, that most sacred act.

3. I never again want to wonder who is looking at something I posted. Or not looking at something. Or why. Or what that means. I could be Kali, creator and destroyer of worlds, but instead I’m justifying my existence via curated photos of what in reality is a deliciously banal existence. I LIKE TO GO TO BED AT EIGHT PM, SO THAT PART OF ME THAT STILL WANTS TO BE “COOL” CAN GO SUCK AN EGG.

4. On that note, I recognize that I can never take a photo of what truly brings me joy. Today it was getting up a bit early to read a chapter of this book on the creation of the self that is blowing my mind. It was a shared joke at the gym. It was getting a text and feeling loved. It is anticipating the asparagus omelette I’m making for lunch. It is suddenly thinking (as I stretched after my workout) about how I have a skeleton inside of me (how fucking weird is that???) and saying “c’mon skeleton, move it” when my skeleton felt kinda stuck in childs pose. And then feeling like I was very clever and funny for talking to my skeleton, and then feeling silly that I thought I was clever and funny, and then telling myself that the voice telling me I was silly was dumb and it’s fun to be silly, and then recognizing all of this was progress and then feeling good about making progress (if you understand why that is progress I see you, too, sweet pea). It’s the purple and white petunias on my porch that are blooming like crazy and are gorgeous. It’s feeling grateful that I’m healthy and I’m alive, and reminding myself it won’t be forever (I’m very morbid). How could I put any of that in a picture? Maybe the petunias. But can I put into a picture how the word petunia is SO WEIRD and delightful (say it with me…petunia).

Anyway, I haven’t helped myself out any by writing this. But it was fun. What would you put in your own manifesto?