small thoughts part 10
In ‘small thoughts’ posts, I’m posting a collection of short thoughts and opinions that don’t warrant their own post. :) It's been a while!
I have a hard time finding the words, but I am sad that so much of our inventions seem to reinforce shame we already have culturally in real life. I think I feel it the most with the internet - it's like a place you get to have a second life in where you can have a different name, different looks, different gender, different presentation, voice, interests, whatever you want. But commercialization of it all and the need to have a real name presence in some places or industries online destroys it; people wanting to hunt you down or misuse your material destroys it; social media sites linking your profiles together and letting people find you by number, email, or suggestions by default destroys it.
You always have to be afraid of someone linking it back to you, of it costing you your job or career, of someone tracking you down, whatever. I feel like realistically, the internet should have been this place where you can be as you cannot be in real life, but we increasingly did away with that for no good reason. I know some people might say you can still just make an anonymous account, but that misses how there is still metadata like device and location data, stuff in the background of your pictures, recognizable tattoos or jewelry, recognizable writing style, the things you talk about matching your real life in some unavoidable ways and more.
It reminds me of how I would be okay with walking somewhere topless (aside from honking cars and harassment), being naked in saunas or at lakes, or in some more daring or weird outfits. But the ubiquity of cameras anywhere and the need for people to film everything for clout or take pictures secretly has ruined things and made it unsafe to enjoy that. The tech extends the social shame and reinforces it, it covers me up, it dresses me a certain way.
Then at least people should be able to live that online, no? But it's not so; nudity is only okay when it is about earning money or if it's art, and not even then (oftentimes). You always have to be afraid of posing a problem for platforms, worried about minors, worried about opsec and about mixing up the accounts, worried about if you should split certain aspects of yourself around 5 different accounts or not, worried about someone creating content off of it, worried about offending conservative people. Online is not a safe space to be your true self for many and it sucks.
Something good about weirdness is how ephemeral it can be. That you can wear this or expose that or dye your hair this color and technically, there doesn't need to be any proof of that it happened at all aside from someone's memory they can't externalize into proof for millions of people. But now everything needs to be shown off, or people take pictures and videos of others like it's nothing, and there are less and less spaces where it is understood or even mandated that this is a space where we don't record things. Nothing feels intimate anymore, or ephemeral. It's seemingly not okay for things to pass without having proof it happened.
And I think it affects how weird people are willing to be! Both in personality and clothing and hobbies. You might want to engage in weird things, but you don't want to leave a record of it, which is understandable. We live in an era where leaving a record of it all is very easy and normalized and happens against your will even. But not everyone has the skin and stomach to be weird on the record. We have reinforced the steel bars of the cage, and the people who are treating others like a spectacle to consume have been doing the most for it.
“Being invited out but you have to do Pilates and eat clean and do your skincare routine and be in bed by 9pm” isn’t something to brag about. Isolating yourself to participate in trend consumption under the guise of selfcare isn’t desirable.
“She works on herself for herself by herself” isn’t a flex. You shouldn’t have to do it by yourself. No one asked you to. Your self improvement or fitness or education doesn’t have to come at the cost of relationships. You can share recipes together, go to the gym together, hold each other accountable, have study sessions together. You can let new people in and make new friends on the path you’re on.
Telling yourself only you can understand you and only you have your back and you’re all you need is a coping mechanism to profound loneliness. It’s self-obsessed to protect. You don’t have to accept or anticipate being alone for your most transformative and important times and the sooner you see that other people aren’t just a distraction but also offer to transform you and help you, the better.
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