Fake Newsfeed — Failure In The Age of Social Media
“I’m terrible, thanks for asking!”
When people ask me why I left law school, I give a lot of different answers. “It just wasn’t for me” “I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer” “I wanted to pursue my creative interests”. None of these are lies, but it’s also not really the truth. I started law school right after college, moving 1600 miles from my Colorado college town to New York — where I’d always wanted to be. I was so sure that I was going to leave behind my difficult relationship with academia and thrive in a new, more rigorous environment. I was so excited to be at a school with other people looking to use the law to change the world.
So why did I leave law school? Because I failed. I struggled through the semester with mixed success. I stayed in the library for hours before finals week, but when the results came in I was told in no uncertain terms that my GPA was not good enough to continue, and if I wanted to try again in the fall, I was welcome to redo my semester. I was devastated. And relieved.
I immediately felt pressure to do something with my failure, to frame it to others in a way that made me look free-spirited and put together. It’s the lie that Instagram has made us perform — only showing the world the filtered versions of our lives. Looking through my social media is like seeing my life through my living room window; my bedroom window, after all, is where the depression pit shows a better indication of how my life is actually going and thus isn’t on display.
Quarantine has put this into even harsher perspective — the life people present even going through a pandemic is rose colored and beautiful. It’s artisanal loaves of bread and DIY home decor. Everyone seems to have a side hustle or hobby that they’re cultivating during their down time. The thing is, we all know it’s a lie. We all know that everyone’s lives are not as beautiful as they make it out to be online, but they’re expected to be. When so much of our lives has shifted to a digital presence — work, hobbies, even dating, the narrative we push about ourselves online has become all consuming. So why is it so hard to talk about failure?
I don’t want to paint myself as being anti-social media. I actually love it. I think it’s an amazing way for people to stay connected. As a military brat who moved around every year of my life, social media has allowed me to stay in touch with people I never thought I would see again. But in the past decade, social media has transformed from a place of privacy, where you would largely interact with your friends and family or total strangers who knew little about you, to an intensely public forum. The ways in which you would keep in contact with your friends in high school are now visible for employers to see, and navigating this is incredibly difficult.
Our lives are more on display than they ever have before, and you can’t opt out. We are all expected to cultivate our lives as a brand for everyone to view and judge- so there is no room for failure, so there’s no room to be vulnerable and seek help.
The pressure I feel as a transgender person trying to portray my life in public is exhausting. Trans folks and other marginalized groups have the added burden of acting as examples of their communities, educators, and role models for the people in their lives. It can feel as if I have to make up for being trans by looking happy and successful all the time, regardless of what’s actually happening in my life.
As we move into a future where more and more of our lives are public knowledge, we need to shift our attitudes about failure and what we do with it. Failure shouldn’t be something you don’t talk about unless something comes of it. We need to talk about our failures as a part of success and not something to overcome in search of success. Maybe one day some great success will come out of my semester in law school, and maybe it will always just be a waste of 4 months and several thousand dollars.
It’s now two years later and I don’t have an ending to this story yet. I haven’t found great success pursuing a passion project and I haven’t become a motivational speaker making millions telling people to follow their dreams. My story is incomplete, but I still think it’s important to tell.
