Well this is embarrassing. I'm trying to get more comfortable with making mistakes. Many times, I overthink in order to make the best decision and avoid the worst outcome. Because of this mindset, I have never gotten comfortable with the prospect of failure. "It's okay to make mistakes." It's not that failure itself makes me upset. It's that I never carve out failure to be an option. For mistakes to be an option. And I limit myself greatly in doing that.
Yesterday my friend performed at 216 Dwight—the radio house at Yale. The place is known for being "indie" and "alt." Students (mostly white) drink cans of beer and smoke cigarettes in the backyard while some underground artist or band plays in the basement. Yesterday my friend Gabrielle was performing and my friends and I were front row, White Claws in hand, swaying to the music in the basement. Her performance was incredible for several reasons. Firstly, her songs were actually amazing. They were originals and her voice was perfect for them. We all want her to release more music on Spotify. Second was the people. I'm actually not a big fan of 216 Dwight because the crowd is overwhelmingly white and artsy people who congregate can be annoying. But this was a senior-only event, and all of mine and Gabrielle's friends were there, so I felt blanketed in warmth and connection. And third was the ambience. The basement has blue and pink string lights that wrap around the pipes, giving everything an indigo glow. Gabrielle's set consisted of her on guitar, Calvin on bass, and Josie on drums. Impeccable vibes.
I knew everyone would be taking pictures and videos to post on Instagram, and that was okay. The environment was too beautiful to not take a video. And I wanted to cherish this memory forever. So I pulled out my phone to take a video. I was standing right by the speaker, close enough to Gabrielle to take a cinematic shot. So I took another video using cinematic mode, angling my phone so that the speaker was in frame but blurred while Gabrielle's face was in focus. I swayed with the camera, panning down to her fingers strumming the guitar and back up to the microphone where she was singing. Everything was a shade of blue. It was a stunning video. I put my phone away and enjoyed the rest of the show.
After the night wrapped up, I was rewatching the clips of the show and clicked "edit" to adjust colors and sharpness. When I did that, a square appeared on Gabrielle's face to indicate where the focus function was targeting. This looked really cool to me, so I screen recorded myself editing and saved it as another video. I really liked the way this looked and just had to share it. I couldn’t keep the moment to myself. I contemplated, what exactly is “better” about keeping something to oneself versus sharing it? How do you tread the line between sharing from genuine desire versus sharing as a compulsion? Taking pictures because a moment occurs naturally versus staging pictures to create moments. Is it possible to tread these lines with the way social media is designed? Is there anything inherently good or bad about either option? There are some psychology papers about how sharing or taking pictures increases joy of that moment. I'll read those and report back.
Anyway, for this post, my finsta was not good enough. This needed to reach more people. Part of it was enthusiasm for the aesthetics of the video itself. Part of it was me wanting to associate that video's arsty-ness with me. I caved and reactivated my Instagram. I uploaded the video to my story with a few more effects. While at it, I also uploaded a cool picture of me smoking on my close friends. I sighed. Closed the app. And went to bed.
When I woke up, the first thing I wanted to do was check Instagram for notifications. I keep notifications off, so I can't tell from just my home screen whether anything has happened. I had this mental image of a red bubble indicating whether I got any DMs. I could picture my activity feed, where I could have had other notifications. It felt like a primal urge to check. The more I resisted, the more I was curious. I went to my notes app and typed this:
"i am typing as i resist the urge to check instagram. i want to see if anyone swiped up on my story. i want to see if seth posted the pics i took of him. i need to see. it’s so hard to resist. i might just check after i type this note. game plan: open the app to only check for notifications. don’t look at anything else. no stories no posts. hypothesis: if i have notifications, i’ll feel a burst of satisfaction. it’ll quickly fade after until i want to check for more notifications later. if i have no notifications, i’ll be a bit disappointed. probably still wanna check after. what does all of this say about the self? we are biologically wired in a way that makes us need this. this is feels like a primitive response."
I'd like to say that among my friends, I consider myself less attached to my phone. I'm not some crazy vain Gen-Zer, so my reaction was a bit of a shock even to me. Maybe it was the specific situation with this specific video, but how many more of these situations until I am just using social media like normal again? I ended up opening the app and only checking for notifications. I had one from my roommate in response to the video. Then I checked my activity feed and how many people viewed my story. That was the stressful part. Seeing how “well” I’ve performed or whether my crush saw it. Are metrics inherently bad though? Am I just weak for not being able to handle performance statistics? Or am I conditioned to assign too much meaning and value to them? They clearly reflect my self image. Metrics indicate whether people are interested in me enough to click on my story. Whether my "art" is impressive enough to evoke responses. (Of course, this is my perspective. In reality, algorithms are playing a huge role in controlling who sees my content and when). I am intentionally overanalyzing this one post and its effects so that I can better understand all of the emotions that I feel within minutes of posting.
In the end, was posting this video worth the stress it caused me? How can I consent to what I see on media and how I choose to use it? Is that even a possibility with the way algorithms are designed? Even if I start off with control, I am eventually just sucked into an endless stream of content. What if I treat Instagram as a site for showcasing instead of consuming? I wonder if I can self-moderate by choosing not to view posts and stories and only opening the app for posting. But then I would grapple with performance—with the filtered version that people see of me online versus the full picture. My multidimensionality. Also, would it be selfish to not care about other people by ignoring their posts? Shouldn't I be curious about what my friends are up to, or what my distant friends are doing?
I'm still disappointed in myself for re-downloading Instagram. Granted, it's not on my phone and I have to do some work to access it. But I've been in this place many times before. It feels like I'm going in circles. I'm going to continue with my break after this. Maybe I'll keep letting myself post in only dire situations. There's nothing that makes me a bad person for using social media. But I still feel bad. My friends think it's weird. They're all pretty tech positive and don't associate social media with guilt and shame as strongly as I do. I feel like I've been asking a lot of questions in these first few blog posts, with no answers. Maybe that's okay. Maybe I'll arrive at some answers later.
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