august's confessional is off the grid

mysterious in a meta way

to round out my pompous and overall pretentious aura, i deleted Instagram for most of august, with the exception of downloading it for a few days to complete important business matters (self-promotion for the newest article, “Democracy is Dead!”), i have been largely off the grid and unable to reach unless it’s my phone number or email.

my least favorite thing about wanting people to read my writing is that i have to post it and market it so people read it. and instagram is so overwhelming. like i know i judge people’s social media, so i can’t imagine what people do to mine. and at the risk of dropping the confidence filter, i will admit that social media makes me feel insecure about every little thing ever.

but instagram is literally how i used to keep my close friends updated on what i’m doing. as we know, i rarely have a recollection of what i should be telling people, so when things happen in the moment and i post it on my story, i skip the step where i sputter and think about what i’m supposed to say.

access to people’s perceived thoughts and feelings at once is a dangerous thing. for one, it makes us think we’re way closer to someone than we probably are. secondly, i really don’t think it’s healthy to be constantly consuming other people’s lives just because we’re on the bus and there’s nothing else to do. all of this is to say, our culture has the unfortunate habit of trying to feign nonchalance and encourage being mysterious. we hide behind the safeguard of being occupied and unapproachable.

during my detox/cleanse, i’ve noticed, more than before, that our phones are a barrier to interacting with people in front of us. even in the instance of using social media to connect with friends to update them with our lives, we are still curating and crafting what they see to be funny and relatable, often leaving the vulnerability of real connection out of it. one of my friends asked me if i saw their instagram story and when i reminded her i was off of insta, she got happy and was like “omg i love that i get retell the story for real”. by eliminating access to social media, we reignite our face-to-face connections with the dynamic aspects our curated shares can’t recreate.

and just to remind everyone i’m down to earth and not trying to be a dickhead who bashes using a phone for no reason, here’s a list of things i look at because i don’t have anything to mindlessly scroll on:

1.) both my gmail and my outlook email.

2.) chess.com - the app.

3.) LinkedIn. (this is technically social media, but it’s so corporate i don’t count it)

4.) my work schedule

5.) my bank app (i get sad every time i open this one)

back to the program-

i was on the bus the other day, and this girl was at the bus stop. she was on her phone sitting in a shaded bench area. i was worried the bus had passed and she was waiting for a different one. i asked her if she was waiting for the same bus, which she was, and she was also confused because she had been waiting for a while. she asked if she could look at my bus app because her phone was on 1%. after, she asked if i could watch her stuff so she could run and get her charger from her appointment. obviously, i said yes and luckily she came back right as the bus was a stop away.

we started to chat and we had the same major, we were the same year, and lived across the street from each other. we both find political science majors in student government terrifying and we both think we want to go to law school. most importantly; we both had the same bus stop. upon arriving at our final destination, she asked me if i had instagram and i was like “yea!” then i remembered it wasn’t downloaded on my phone. i tell her that i can put mine in her phone and then she remembers her phone is at 1% and she has to go to class. so we chalk up our next run-in to fate.

realistically, if we exchanged instagrams, the most likely outcome is that we would just follow each other, like photos and stories, but never really interact beyond that. is having a quasi-connection on social media meaningful? having her instagram and not having it changes our trajectory very little in the grand scheme of things, so why not leave it to the universe?

and that interaction kinda put some things into perspective for me.

1.) the unapproachable barrier of a phone cannot stop me. i have transcended social anxiety.

2.) we have to refocus on the importance of interacting with people just to interact with others.

maybe we see them again, maybe we never will, but i think when we let interactions be what they are when they happen, we center the art of being a person who exists as more than just selected images.

we need more casual kindness to curb the curse of isolation.

and that’s where i’m at after one-ish month off of major social media platforms. by the end of september, i’ll be on a flip phone.

ttyl!!!