Coming to terms with the existence of my online identity
I want to talk about all the things I learned when I went off social media but doing so means admitting that I had a problem with social media and I don’t want to be that person. I believe, like everybody does, that I am different. That I am above other people’s crippling dependence on social media. That I am a passive user and that none of my life’s outcomes come from choices like — “Is it Instagram friendly?” But that is a lie. I am lying to myself. And that is how we live with ourselves. We live our lies, others’ lies, and our Instagram lies. Anti-curation is as much of a lie as curation is. The very fact that I don’t care about my Instagram is as much a dependency on Instagram as caring about it is. This might be hard to hear, hard to read. But it’s been quite a journey to get to this place. I am not looking for validating this shallow need of rejecting validation — I am here trying to accept it. Even if I don’t yearn for likes and keep my account intensely private, allowing only a handful number of people to follow it — it’s still keeping me using.
When I went offline, a few weeks ago — it was for the purely selfish and outward reason of not catching Game of Thrones spoilers due to the time difference. And then, on a whim, I decided to take out all the apps that brought me any kind of feeds. Reddit, Twitter went into the bin along with Instagram. On Monday morning, as I waited in line at the grocery store, I took out my phone and stared at it. I opened various folders but there was nothing that interested me or distracted me. I was staring at my phone, and actually seeing it not the inside of it. I noticed how the screen guard had a gentle crack stretching from my clock app to all the way three rows down like a waterfall. I noticed the tips of my fingers pressed against the black case. And I noticed, uneasily, the all too familiar need to move my thumb in the familiar scroll motion; it had become muscle memory. I put it back inside and continued to wait, suddenly aware of where I was — not mindlessly elsewhere but here, now, and present.
Over the next few days, I noted how often I picked up my phone and unlocked it, finding nothing and put it back down. For a week and a half, I struggled with this. The sharper my addiction came into view, the more it broke me. At some point two weeks later, I had started looking at LinkedIn in an attempt to look away from who I was but nothing really happens on LinkedIn. It’s just a different kind of terrible — a social media feed that allows you to brag about the mundane. I had now successfully replaced my Instagram/Reddit/Twitter scrolling with the lackluster and stuffy LinkedIn.
Around this time, I went to see the tulips — biking nearly 20 odd kilometers on an unexpectedly hot day. I came home with my face burning and limbs feeling sore and a heart feeling healthy. I edited my pictures — cropping and moving the color curves, changing nature to fit what it was supposed to look like. And then, I dumped it into a folder titled, “For Instagram”. An album I had made every time the urge to return swelled up in me and I wanted to ride the wave. Would you look at that?
Even offline, my photos and memories are curated to fit an imagined social media universe. Even offline, I behaved as if I was going to return. I was privately Instagramming my vacation away from Instagram inside my phone. If that isn’t the stuff of nightmares, I don’t know what is. However, you should know how I feel about publicly recording this at this moment: it feels very awkward and vulnerable to talk about this. I am thoroughly ashamed and that is the most interesting emotion revealed by this exercise.
By nature, I do not discuss my failures. I do not enjoy being in any kind of debt or dependency. I was raised early on by an introverted feminist whose many ideals I have absurdly incorporated into the way I conduct my life. As a result, when people message me saying that my writing holds vulnerability and beauty simultaneously, I am deeply grateful but also mildly confused. I did not feel vulnerable writing those pieces. Those were MY stories I chose to share — stories that make up the fabric of my personality. They are stories, that live in the past, that I have come to terms with, that have my complete acceptance, assimilation and feel authentic to me. Unlike Instagram, which is an ongoing narrative that I am still coming to terms with.
You might read this and think this doesn’t apply to you-you're not like me or anybody else that is on Instagram, that you’re different — you never behave like those influencers you follow (you still follow through, don't you?) and I want to say to you — that is exactly how I feel. Let’s think about that. Every time I post a story, I think it is better than everybody else’s. Everybody else thinks that too — and there are studies that point to this. There is no bigger internet joke. (When I share this post on my story, I already know I will think it is better than the other stories as well. If only I can give myself an eye-roll).
Anyway, this story doesn’t have any grand redemption arc. It is not one of my more poetic explorations of being. It is jagged and stops and starts ungracefully. It is but a documentation of the ongoing subtext of my life. Sure, I did have that brilliant moment in the sun where I put my phone away and just stood and did nothing. I embraced being, watching and living quite presently. A few weeks ago, I heard, for the very first time, two woodpeckers having a conversation. I could locate the two different places the rapid drilling came from and the back and forth jugalbandhi. I looked up but couldn’t find them and instead saw parrots — which was lovely too since it was after a very long time. It was an extraordinarily beautiful evening that I remember — only because I didn’t use technology to document it. It’s preserved with me, and with me alone. But that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tie up the loose ends.
A few days ago I returned to Instagram and of course, I enjoyed it. Nothing much had changed in my absence. People’s vacations, brunches, and pretty photographs swam in my feed and I knew, for a fact, that social media wasn’t a monster. It’s a mirror. It’s a very interesting mirror if you look too closely. It’s on us on how we use what it reflects and our degree of self-awareness. It is in some ways, ‘meta’. For now, I will sit with this feeling of being honest and see where it leads me.
