Pics or it Didn’t Happen

I have questions. Before 2005 (the year we started being able to post pictures on FB), nobody knew what you ate for lunch unless you saw them and told them. I say saw them and told them because I did not have text messaging abilities until well into 2009 and I do not talk to anyone on the phone ever unless they are a medical professional, someone I’m paying to bring me food, or someone at my kid’s school. There was never a day that went by where I had the thought “I wonder what Jordan ate for lunch today, I guess I should go online and see if they posted about it.” Side note: in 2005, my best friends were both named Jordan. Affectionally called boy Jordan and girl Jordan. They are exceptionally wonderful people, but I’ve truly never paid a moment’s thought to when or what they eat.

I realize this has already taken a turn to talking about food. Because I love food and it is 4:30 in the PM here which means dinner is not far away and I’m thinking about eating. If I’m not thinking about eating, it means I’m sleeping because eating and sleeping are very much always the most important parts of my day. Anyways, back to lunch pics. I realize I post a bajillion and twelve pictures of pie and cookies and all the things I like to bake, but I do not equate that to “pics of what I had for dinner last night, and oh by the way it was from here and OMG, does this make me an influencer now? #blessed” No ma’am.

I love that social media gives us a chance to catch up with people halfway around the world or even 2 minutes down the road at a moment’s notice. I love nothing more than watching babies whose parents I knew when I was a baby grow up and getting a peek into the cuteness of their sweet faces however often their parents choose to share pictures. What I don’t appreciate is the pressure people put on themselves and attempt to transfer to other people to present themselves some kind of way on the internet.

When I drill down on my feelings, I find it frustrating when I see posts proclaiming that someone did something, anything, on a particular day and they want the world to know about it right then because #picsoritdidnthappen. What is the impulse behind that? Is it to garner “likes” from the people who follow you on x and such platform? Is it some form of accountability for you where you had a conversation with a friend and decided to make a visual representation of meeting a goal? Is it some insecurity that you aren’t good enough just as you are so you feel compelled to post about something you did for validation? I have questions. I genuinely do not understand the complexities behind why we post certain things on social media and not others, but I do feel like it is important to have that conversation with ourselves often regarding what in the world it is all for.

I know there have been times I’ve posted things on the internet for validation from others. There is a large part of me that would like to say that when I post accomplishments it is because I am proud of myself and want to share that feeling with others. That I would be just as content if no one saw what I put out there because the intrinsic value I derive from my accomplishments is all I need. While it’s absolutely true that the only person whose opinion of you matters is yours and yours alone, I know I’ve used whatever platform I have to garner validation from others in the past. But that is not healthy. And while I make efforts now to be thoughtful and intentional about what I choose to share with whomever, I will likely still exist in some amount of hypocrisy at some point in seeking validation for something which should only require validation from me, myself, and I. 

I think back to what the world was like before 2005. And because I was born in 1984 and have the benefit of living 19 whole years without any social media, minus the AIM away message, but I just used that for Grey’s Anatomy quotes that vaguely related to my life at the time, I have a pretty clear picture in my head of how it used to be. That first year in college, the only people whose lives I knew anything about on a granular level were the other women I lived with and the few dudes who we hung out with sometimes. That was it. There was no FOMO or concern about what truly anyone else was doing because like the vast majority of 18 year olds living away from home in college for the first time, we believed we were fully grown adults who could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. We were adorable and ignorant as hell and while we thankfully concerned ourselves with world events on some level, the grand majority of our time was spent figuring out what our plans for Thursday night Friends watching would be and if we were ordering food. (It always comes back to food with me. Food is magic.)

I don’t ever remember feeling like I needed to measure up to where someone was eating or what store someone was shopping at or vacationing in. That wasn’t a thing for me, and I don’t know if that’s just a me thing or a it wasn’t in my face on the internet thing so I didn’t have the inclination to think about it thing. Regardless, the ignorance to literally any trend was lovely and I’m super glad I got to exist in a world where I had no clue what the it thing was unless I had an actual conversation with another human person or that time I noticed that 84% of the people around me (it was probably closer to 23% but I was 19 and prone to exagerration in my mind) had the same shoes. For real though, so many people I went to college with had the same pair of flip flops. Which I didn’t want to buy until 2013 because I didn’t want to be like all these other people, but also are legitimately the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever owned and I should have just gotten them in 2005 and not given a crap about what message my shoes were sending.

Fast forward 16 years (a full child able to drive amount of time) and the whole pics or it didn’t happen mentality is all over everywhere online. But it did happen though. Whatever you did at any moment in your day did in fact occur and whether you choose to share that moment with other people via the internet does nothing to augment the value of the moment. I worry that a lot of social media use comes down to an insecurity in our own worth that manifests itself in carefully thought out captions and filtered photos. Be it “real” photos where people show crying children with some comment to the fact that their kid is being “dramatic” (I legit will never understand this impulse and if the hill I die on is asking people to stop calling children drama queens or using the term boys will be boys to explain foolish behavior, I’m cool with that) or pictures of something fancy with the caption of “you deserve to have everything you want. Join my team and together we can create the life of your dreams. DM me for the details.” (The details are you pay this person to make you feel like you need to be a millionaire to be happy. Which maybe that is what you yourself need. But maybe also, they are selling you their dream and trying to make you think it’s yours when in actuality you are more than happy with your 8 year old car and free college shirt.)

I feel icky when any person at any time tells you that you need anything external to achieve contentment. Yes, there are tools that we pay for that help us run our life show better. But no thing brings contentment. Moments of happiness? Yes. Moments of happiness come from food I buy all the time. Or a cozy sweatshirt or a body sponge (y’all, I got a new body sponge and it definitely provides happiness.) These things don’t in any way affect my contentment, though. For over 30 years, I was never content. I didn’t know her. I was “too serious” or “too sensitive” or “too into this or that”. I cared a whole heap about all the “too”s and what that meant when another person saw me. Now, especially in the past almost two years when contact with other humans has been dramatically limited, I am still quite serious, sensitive, or heavily into whatever this or that I’m into (if deep dives were a love language y’all. I could write a whole post about the one I did on Elizabeth Montgomery the other night while watching Bewitched for the first time since I was a kid. It was magical. If you, too, have a deep and abiding admiration for Elizabeth Montgomery, we should talk cause I feel like we’d be tight.) And I love every little bit of me, even the parts that are all jacked up like the annoying as hell skin on fire feeling I get when I’m anxious. Every single time. You think it would have gone away by now, but it’s just out here doing it’s thing trying to induce panic.

I should note that is post was heavily inspired by The Best Today Podcast episode this week about social media. This podcast is in heavy rotation for me and I always find gems in Shunta’s words. I followed her advice a few months back to heavily curate what I see when I get online and found it extremely helpful. At the end of each day what we consume shapes who we are and what we think and her advice was integral in helping me check my online behaviors and tweak my game so that I derive the greatest benefit and joy from what I see. That’s the kind of stuff I love from social media. People from all over the place sharing wisdom and goodness and information. And baby pictures. Literally any pictures of anyone’s children doing their thing. If you know me and you’re reading this, your kids are super adorable.

There’s been some rambling. There’s been some less than fully formed thoughts and a fair share of rants. And I still have a lot of questions about why we behave the way we do on the internet. I do not want to just live with the assumptions (because assumptions are 99% trouble) and opinions that I have (which are sometimes right but no opinion is ever all the way right). I want feedback. I want conversation and nuance and discussion. I want someone to tell me I’m wrong (in a kind way, nobody needs to yell) if they think I’m wrong. Can we talk about why we post what we post? Thanks for reading and happy Wednesday!