Familiar Faces

Social media is a strange beast. And having been a lover of social media for a long time, I can’t help but feel deeply disappointed in the ways in which it has evolved, and the directions it seems to be going.

But I’m not writing about this complicated evolution this time. Instead, I want to think a bit more about how weird social media really is.

For instance, out of nothing but pure curiosity, I can search and find personal details about someone I went to elementary school with. And there I can see all that they have accomplished and done with their life.

The name of their firstborn, their wife’s favourite colour, and their grief splayed out with a shared obituary.

We really do expose ourselves online. There are accounts, blogs, posts and videos chock full of inner secrets and confessions; all available for everyone to see and consume for entertainment value.

How strange and interconnected we are.

And commodified too.

You who only exist in my life in memories and now in screen form.

I can’t help but feel like I am somehow invisible or behind. Like because I am not hitting the stereotypical goals, I am not really living. And yet those goals or life plans make me feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want to be a mother or a wife or an inspiration to others.

I know myself well enough now, to know that what society wants of me is not what I want of myself. I’m far too independent and critically minded to want such a cookie-cutter life.

In truth, I just want to exist in my own skin, proud and unashamed.

But social media stands in front of me, showing me and everyone else, everything we are not and everything we can never be. It’s the carrot dangling on the string fully embodied, and we actively choose to dangle it in front of ourselves.

Talk about social masochism.

It bothers me that these things get under my skin. That seeing a familiar face on my phone screen makes me recoil in horror and morbid curiosity.

I wonder how many people do the same to me? And how the growing distance of time makes me even more of a stranger in these strange social media lands.