Life Is Not A Stock Photo

I see it all over: perfectly filtered Instagram accounts, thousands of stylish stock photo sites, and an endless train of lifestyle blogs showing “real” life.

And it’s all bullshit.

Let me explain. With the advent of the internet and particularly social media, we all began curating our lives like art exhibits in museums. We can edit, crop, erase, filter, even shorten the amount of time someone can see something. It’s crazy, and we eat it up.

Now, I am not against social media. I believe it is a powerful tool for messaging and promotion and creativity. But it lacks true authenticity, because authenticity isn’t adding some personality to a tweet or a sarcastic caption to a perfectly edited Instagram image. For a lot of people, that is considered authenticity. I am not one of these people.

Sure, I appreciate the craft and look of stylized stock photos and color coordinated accounts, but I’m not blindly believing it’s authentic anymore.

Life and authenticity are gritty, grotesque, and dark sometimes. It’s blindingly bright and colorful as well. We shouldn’t cut the former to highlight the latter.

Life isn’t what’s in the perfectly styled and photo shopped image, it’s what is behind it. It’s the desk covered in papers, it’s the chair with a pile of clothes in it, it’s eating that fourth slice of pizza in your sweatpants, it’s that busy crosswalk you walk through every morning, it’s what we don’t post online more than what we do.

We need to recognize the mess around the styled and edited and appreciate it and show it off. That is what is really, truly authentic.