#keeeeeeep on scrolling

[perhaps-it-is-me]

Ahahahahahahaah h e y

[landolewis]

.

[xspaceprincess]

As new people (mainly kids) are finally coming into the ATLA “fandom” with this resurgence and everything, I just really hope the shipping discourse (or “war” as I remember it) isn’t too bad for them. I mean, it’s 2020. Let people ship who they want to ship. Don’t like it? Keeeeeeep on scrolling. Don’t worry about it! If you have to vent, either tag it appropriately or vent to any likeminded friends who don’t like the ship that you don’t like! No need for fighting. No need for coming at people. I mean, this goes for ALL fandoms, but I am still haunted by the atla shipping wars of my youth (and god how much worse it was when the canon wasn’t settled yet and everything was still pretty much up in the air). Be kind and keep the waters peaceful for all those coming in. 💜

[maryofone]

Followers

Social media is some humbling shit.

I want to take a break from my usual rambling about relationships to talk about social media. I’ve only just resurfaced in the social sphere after a five-year break (which is a LONG FUCKING TIME for a millennial), and I feel like that unique experience has given me a unique perspective on all this noise. I’ve only been back for four months or so, but it’s already been a fascinating study in human emotion. There are so many new feelings to parse through. Feelings I didn’t have when I was out of the bubble for five years. Let’s parse through them together:

Anxiety. Something happens when I open Instagram that doesn’t happen when I open any other app on my phone. I get a weird pang when I open it. Almost like a wince. Part of me feels a desire to see what posts are going to pop up, but this other part of me feels… I don’t know... worried? No, that’s not it. I don’t feel worried when I open in Instagram, I feel like I have to check on it though. Check that I haven’t missed something cool that everyone else knows about; check that an adequate number of people have reacted to whatever the fuck I posted; check that everything is recycled meme business as usual. It’s not a dreadful feeling but it’s also nothing close to joy.

Amusement. Okay I’m going to throw social media a bone here. I figured out that Twitter can actually be a place of nonstop hilarity and joy, it just depends on who you follow. TRUMP NATION and TRUMP RESISTANCE are pretty fuckin loud and proud on Twitter so there’s no avoiding that frequency of frustration, but I purposely don’t follow politicians and journalists and people who are constantly fucking talking about it. I follow upcoming comedians who are tweeting their asses off every single day and producing the funniest shit on the internet. So I’m happy (and surprised) to report that Twitter is actually a huge source of joy for me. And only the occasional shiver of existential panic.

Nausea. I started noticing recently that when I log off of Instagram, I feel vaguely ill. Nothing serious, more like I almost have a headache; I almost feel sick to my stomach; I almost just want to lie down and stare at the ceiling. There’s something dizzying about Instagram and I can’t think of an instance when feeling dizzy is a good thing. Just saying.

Addicted. First of all, I’m pleased to report that I’m light years away from being as addicted to social media as I used to be. I used to check that shit every waking hour. But maybe five years without it really did reprogram my brain in some way, or maybe just woke my soul up to how fucking pointless it all is. I’m just too aware now of how dangerous it is to scroll my precious minutes away. That SAID, when I am on Instagram or Twitter or Imgur and I’ve decided that I should probably log off, it is surprisingly difficult to stop scrolling. My brain will be telling me, “Yeah you should probably shut this down” but my thumb just keeeeeeeps swiiiiiiiiiipiiiiiing uuuuuuuup. Like a fucking zombie I just keep knocking that screen up for more hits. More hits of what… stimulation; amusement; anger; something to fill the void that none of the previous 200 posts were able to. Who knows. Social media just feels weirdly unsatisfying for how addicted I feel when I’m on it.

Inadequate. This brings me to all this follower business, and the real feeling I wanted to write about today. Before I quit Facebook back in 2012, Instagram was really just starting to take over. It wasn’t being used by everyone, but people were starting to see it as the cooler version of FB, and its popularity was exploding right as I took my ball and went home. And in the last half decade since Instagram exploded, something new arrived in our culture: the importance of followers. Sure Twitter was the birthplace of followers and people establishing a platform, but not everyone uses Twitter and Facebook has always been about friends (even though friends and followers are effectively the same thing, that word change makes all the difference psychologically, if you ask me). So now that Instagram is the thing, everyone has followers. And everyone is looking at people with more followers who are aspiring to be like people who have even more followers. Suddenly we have this new metric to measure people by. We measure people by it, but we don’t even know what it means. We are in awe of and feel intimidated by people with big followings, but the reality is all kinds of people have big followings. Having a shitload of followers isn’t necessarily a reflection of someone’s talent or contribution to the world. It could just be a reflection of how often they’ve been on their phone for the last decade. It’s just such a mysterious meter stick we’re now unconsciously measuring everyone against. Measuring ourselves against.

Ambitious. The only plus side (that I can see) to our collective appetite for followers is that it makes me want to be a better writer. My end goal is to be a better writer anyway, but it really fucking irks me when people I think I’m better than have more success than me, and scrolling through Twitter and Instagram reminds me of this reality every fucking day. So while social media may make me feel mildly nauseous and occasionally panicked, at least it’s making me try harder, and I can’t hate on it for that.