Social media=Life

A few years ago, I downloaded instagram in the influence of my friends who were the “cool” kids of eighth grade.

I learned in no time that it was a world of hashtags ans like for like. I started posting pictures, stories and captions; started scheduling them, making sure the right emojis were in the right place, making sure the pictures were “aesthetic” enough. “br0”, “d@mn”, “sl@y” etc. mads it permanently into my vocabulary and clipboard. Everything I did, Everyplace I visited, everything I ate and everything I bought would begin after I had documented it and made a post out of. Things continued like this for a while, and eventually things turned around. I began with documenting things that I did, but with time, I started doing things only so I could post about it.

Social Media made me obnoxious and superficial. I started getting agitated if something was not “insta good.” I started getting rude to my parents, my elders and everyone that wasn’t the social media personality that I interacted with the likes of. Every person I spoke to, my first concern was if they have an instagram and if I could gollow them. Increasing my followers was my prime goal.

This carried on for about a year or so, but then I posted a picture wit my face and received n number of backlash about my looks. How I was not good looking.

I fell into complete silence and denial. It was not that I believed I was extremely beautiful or attractive. It was that the validity that I seeked was denied to me by that one place that I literally lived for. I was so shaken to my core that for a long period I started to dress up and tried to click a picture that would win me back that approval. But no matter how good the lighting was, how cool my clothes were or how much makeup I had on, I saw myself as ugly in every picture. This grew into more self scrutiny, insecurity and ultimately into self loathe. My weight, my hair, my face, my nose, my eyes, hands, nails, cheeks, wrist, even tiniest of things like my piercing, looked doomed to me. I measured then against a standard that was not real. Even if I had read Baudrillard back then, I don’t think I would be more the wiser because thats what hyperreality does to an individual.

I stopped posting. I stopped socialising and my confidence dropped tremendously. I started wearing masks long before corona kicked in and started hiding behind shadows.

My posts went to Zero. And so did my self worth in my eyes.

I stopped documenting things too. Because now I did not find anything upto the standards of social media. Everything was a disappointment.

With time, the disappointment that was the cause of this lack of capturing eventually became not needing to. I realised that you can have a pizza without photograhing it and have a vacation without announcing each stop. It did not make your visit or experience waste. Infact it makes it better. You live for yourself- ans thats the beat kind of living.