Our Editor-in-Chief taps into the thoughts, feelings and delusions which drive the Instagram version of himself. Will it provide insight into his relationship with social media?
Sometimes I think about the Instagram version of myself. As I watch them grow and develop, I feel like I’ve created and nurtured them, like a parent does with their child. Would they be satisfied with the existence they lead? It’s a weird thing to contemplate. But it’s also weird, even if normalised, now, to curate another version of myself, let alone one that seems able to dictate the way I think, feel and behave. They should remain entirely within my control, but I increasingly worry that, actually, I am the one subservient to them. This becomes more apparent when they cultivate thoughts and feelings I didn’t know I was capable of, that I would now rather be oblivious to.
It’s a phenomenon I’m particularly conscious of at the moment, because, once again, I ignored one of my friends last night. I didn’t deem what she wanted from me good enough. It’d be a waste to acknowledge her. Wasteoftimewasteoflife. Maybe I was presumptuous for doing that. Spiteful, even. She jumped at me out of nowhere though, while I was eating dinner in front of the Sex Education finale, and I’d had enough, I shut her out because I couldn’t be bothered, I just wanted to relax. Why should she be entitled to my time?
I don’t understand her secluded, private life. She doesn’t show herself doing anything, and what’s the point if there’s no one there to see? She’s not living, laughing and loving, she’s just living, not proving anything, always accessible, but only sometimes in my eyeshot. See that little circle containing her eyes and cheeks? That’s her face! I exposed it to the big wide world last week, and I think it humiliated her. She didn’t seem to appreciate it, neither openly scathing nor showing her love, so I must have messed things up. In the end, I compromised, taking us away from it all, away from the photo booth in that bustling bar with the disco lights in town, as if we were never there.
Why did she choose to come to uni and not be able to face the music? I don’t get it. I only go to things when I look good, so I get on fine. Life is so enriching, connecting us with all these people we meet by chance. Someone makes the first move, sometimes it’s reciprocated, and our paths are intertwined, just like that, with all the love, hate, joy and envy that ensues. Why waste it? There are some people who don’t waste a moment. Not a word, not a calorie. Who work hard, play hard, who are beautiful – they know exactly how to live. I’ll never be like them. I don’t know how I’d describe my relationship with them, because they’re not my friends exactly. I can find out loads about them, but they know nothing about me, like the opposite of those therapists in their sterile co-working spaces, who expect you to divulge while they examine you and don’t say a thing. These people are better than therapy, because they speak to me. Sure, they make money out of me, but they don’t charge me. Thatcher’s wet dream. They’re helping me, soothing me, influencing me, they’re my medicine.
I love this life I really do, and it’s my medicine getting me through. Medicine never tasted so good, so addictive, so unrestrained. I consume my medicine when I want, which is all the time, and when I consume someone else, I’m instantly reminded that I should be consuming them, instead, because they know what’s right for me.
I love this meritocracy, where people can consume me, too. It’s a level playing field, anyone can thrive, and those who do have truly earned it. I work on myself constantly. I maintain me, because I’m devoted to myself, and care about me. I rearrange myself, removing my face from this life when, upon reflection, it’s looking a bit too chubby.
I use the worst version of myself to project the best version of myself. Because I’m self-obsessed and hypocritical, people can see me as a smiley, outgoing social butterfly. I can never falter from perfection because this existence, beautifully, gives you second chances. It starts when you want, erasing the years when I was spotty, wore ugly glasses and had no friends. My words and actions have consequences, but I can take them back, instantly.
I eventually felt bad about how I ignored my friend. I was momentarily imperfect, I eschewed message etiquette. I convinced myself she wasn’t entitled to my time, but in the end, my guilt in not acknowledging her existence was more significant to me. I put things right, I gave her a kiss and put my shades on, I gave her reassurance. She probably thought I was being spiteful for the days I ignored her, but that’s normal for this existence, which thrives upon assumptions. It induces supposed solutions to our insecurities, but simultaneously makes those insecurities worse. It made me upset one day, because that boy I thought was mine appeared to be someone else’s. I suddenly didn’t want it anymore, I’d been given the wrong prescription, doctor. I said my goodbyes for three months, and pressed delete.
They weren’t the best months of my life, but they weren’t the worst, either. They were delightfully unremarkable. Sometimes I was insecure and anxious, but I also (finally) did Firewater Thursday, and saw Big Joanie live. I saw my friends some evenings, read in bed on others, attended at least some of my seminars, ran this paper’s culture section, and generally kept busy. I was a smiley, outgoing social butterfly.
No one joined me in my act of rebellion. I removed myself from what I believed was causing my toxic dispositions, but I also didn’t attend exhibitions which I would have enjoyed, or parties I never gave myself the chance to be invited to. I got FOMO, I didn’t know what was happening, I removed myself from an existence which is here to stay, stimulating and draining in equal measure, both awful and essential, its content manufactured, yes, but its consequences real and tangible. So I went back, in the end, partly out of necessity for my (offline) personal and professional life, but also because I didn’t want to feel like an outsider, more in tune with my parents than the rest of Gen-Z.
I now think a lot of us maintain the Instagram versions of ourselves, nourishing and exacerbating a symbiotic relationship, because, perversely, we want to, or at least feel resigned to. Being online has become fundamental to our identity as young people – we know we’re mentally ill and socially inept, that’s what the headlines keep telling us – and what’s more stupefying than a self-fulfilling prophecy? I was convinced that influencers were my medicine, but they aren’t caring for us. I said that you always get second chances, but that overlooks the all-powerful screenshot, which put me back in my place when I claimed I wasn’t on my phone. I called it a level playing field, but why does it give some people body dysmorphia and not others? I now know all this deep down, I’m sure you do too, yet I still went back to Instagram after happily living without it, and I continue to allow it to deceive and command me, perhaps because it’s easier to just do what is expected of me, even if that’s contrary to my best interests.
I failed to survive without an existence whose sustenance is stress, and modus operandi is jealousy. That makes me scared. Maybe there’s no such thing as an Instagram version of myself; I was just trying to deny that I am them, and they are me. I’m trapped, though, in a vicious cycle. There are bits of myself I don’t like because I am on Instagram, yet I remain on Instagram because there are bits of myself I don’t like. It gives me little to zero pleasure, so I spend more time thinking about it than actually using it, diverting my surveillance of others to surveilling myself, caught up and paranoid in my own introspection, to which I either pronounce myself a nutcase for not being able to handle it like everyone else, or a narcissist for analysing myself too much.
Because my friend and I had largely moved to Whatsapp during my three month digital detox, she didn’t really need to mark my return to Instagram. I hadn’t missed much, apparently, maybe some reels which neither of us remember (like the one I ignored). She spends most of her time somewhere else now, though. It’s great, she says. Like Instagram it’s never-ending, maximising her quality of life by judiciously examining every second of what she’s already experienced. But even the music is sped up, quirky, and higher-pitched. There’s no message etiquette thank goodness, because people barely talk to one another. It’s all about you, it’s made for you. It’s called TikTok.
