On Documentation

I don’t have a snapchat. I barely use my instagram anymore. I primarily reblog posts on tumblr. I only watch videos on youtube. My output on the internet is far less than what I am consuming, and I think I’m okay with that.

Nowadays, we are pressured to show every bit of ourselves and be as revealing as possible of our personal miseries and daily conflicts. Pictures of awesome sunsets are often shared with even the most distant of colleagues, and beautiful moments of our families or alternately intimate moments are just content to be shared. Everything in our lives is not copyrighted and we have the duty of stealing it to find followers, friends, and subscribers.

This is definitely an exaggeration. People on the internet are generally understanding, and if you don’t want to share the details of your lunch: fine, enjoy it yourself. But that takes self-discipline, which many of us don’t have these days. And so we fine tune the details of the dust on our lunch tables and clear up blemishes on our skin with photoshop all for the sake of a few comments from our closest friends (that would see you that day anyway), and then we move on.

I felt this pressure when I was first starting out on the internet, primarily on instagram. It didn’t feel right to take the contents of others so that I had a coherent aesthetic, so I constantly took pictures. I took pictures of my calendar, I took pictures of my cousins and my brother and my hands and the world. Then, I edited them with my app of choice and posted them.

However, one day, the truth of it actually struck me in the form of light. I was walking to school and when I turned the corner, and I saw a magnificent sunrise. (Before that, I had only seen peeps of beautifully colored clouds above the roofs.) Naturally, I felt the urge to translate this feeling into words, or at least to pixels, but my phone was at home and my paper was in my backpack, so I didn’t. I continued to walk and admire the sunset, and when I got to school I wrote about it. As I was writing, and this happens frequently, my brain shifted. I thought about my lack of materials, my lack of energy to get them, and I wrote about that instead.

To this day, that sunrise stays in my heart as one of the most beautiful in my short life, because I realized that I didn’t need to share those moments. I could collect them in this brain of mine and relish them without accessing anything.

There’s a certain comfort in not giving too much of yourself away, of keeping little pieces of your personality tucked away so that only the people that bother to look for it will find it.

(I apologize for the cliché post, but I just had to write something about this.)

A Fire-less Fireside Talk on Materialism

Before winter break, after an event at our high school, my friends and I started talking. After a while, a poster on the wall brought up a new topic. “Did you hear that Dominic started dating Meagan? Yeah, I know, how can one fall so low?” (Hypothetical names, so my classmates don’t sue me.) At the time, I didn’t think anything about it, and laughed along uneasily, as usual. But now, I am saddened and a little bit disgusted. (I don’t blame my friends, let’s make that clear. It’s obviously a product of the society that they’ve been born into, and they haven’t met the circumstances yet to overcome it. They will eventually).

Now, as my fingers are adjusting to the heat of my house, I come with a renewed opinion on the topic. I just came back from the mall, and I am struck by how much our opinions are based on looks and how much effort people put into their appearance. I am wearing a completely black hoodie and completely black pants without much texture, so you can imagine the fashion disaster I am right now. But I’m actually not a disaster- I’m a focused girl with white earbuds and a solid idea in my head.

Psychology tells us that first impressions are formed within a matter of seconds, or even nanoseconds. Because of this, people are constantly obsessed with how they look. What if you meet someone that could be your soulmate, but you are underdressed and he or she disregards you? It’s sad to think about, but this is how we are hardwired. Getting rid of this type of thinking would require an intense change in thinking, which many people aren’t up to.

So, while this was supposed to be a rant about how materialistic our society is, instead, I find myself praising something else- the Internet.

I know, I know, how biased of me, a resident of the internet, of course I’ll admire it. But listen- the internet is a place where we don’t have to share how we look. You could, and many people do, but you don’t have to, and people can judge you based on your content, your words. Which is what you’re doing right now. Judging me based on my words.

So, even though the internet has its faults, this is one of its good parts. I’m not suggesting that you spend all of your time on the internet, but instead, maybe adapt an internet-type perspective when dealing with real life. For people like me. Thanks.

(Sorry for a rambling post, I had an unproductive winter break.)

(Also, happy new year!)