The public to private to public to deactivated pipeline.
I’ve been thinking alot about Mark Fisher and his writings on anxiety and depression among this ～generation～of people who have grown up under the reign of social media in a capitalist landscape. This is not to say that all of Big social media is Bad. I’ve witnessed and partaken in its role as a primary tool for communication among counterpublics that have organized voter-registration sessions, food drives, protests, book clubs, dance-offs, and free meditation and yoga classes. I understand its power in connecting isolated communities or individuals with like-minded people. But the compression of space, time, and distance into my hand-held device collapses the division of private and public in a way that generates an anxiety that permeates the way I navigate the present day.
Perhaps it boils down to accessibility, this capacity for people (and bots) to present themselves in my DMs or on my homescreen as a hovering notification demanding my attention. Until I reply, the notification lingers. It implants itself in the back of my brain as I try to make it through the day, prodding me once in a while to reply, reply, reply—with emojis, exclamation marks, acronyms, or even full sentences. What’s particularly striking about the interface of the DM is that it flattens the relationships I have with the people in them. My real-life best friend, online best friend, acquaintance, co-worker, lover, influencer, and traumatizer are all stacked on top of each other, with profile photos next to their names to signify the way they present themselves online, partly detached from their real-life persona. I may be on the receiving end of a “how are you?”, of death threats or rows of sparkling heart emojis but the form of the DM doesn’t distinguish between either. I think this is where my anxiety with social media ultimately stems from—this seamless presentation of information no matter what the content or context, not being able to anticipate what comes next regardless of how many trigger warnings are put up in advance.
There’s also something haunting about the ability to see whether someone has seen a message. If opened and not replied to, the DM presents itself as an online ghosting which manifests as social negligence and the severing of ties. Were it an email, however, it could be feigned as an over-crowded inbox, a “sorry for my late reply, this week has been crazy!”. Left unopened, the DM triggers a domino effect of social behaviours—do I now need to stop watching this person’s stories, stop posting photos of my cat looking out the window, stop liking photos of my friend’s cat looking out the window, stop using social media at all, or, fuck it, just stop using my phone? The anxiety associated with mundane social interactions is paramount to the social interaction itself, eclipsing my decision whether to double-tap the next photo or written commentary that shows up on My Timeline.
It must be said that I am one of many that suddenly realizes they’re walking in the wrong direction when they see someone they know coming towards them. I turn corners to avoid the immediacy of seeing someone whose name I struggle to remember which often leads to the “hey, you!” that everyone knows is code for “oops, I can’t remember your name.” This ability to become invisible is practically impossible on social media. There is no sudden phone call which I must take immediately (sorry!), no imaginary lunch I’m late for, and no corner to turn. Everything and everyone requires my instantaneous attention despite the fact that social media has evolved so that the way we interact with it is to barely pay attention to it at all. Muscle memory and bad habits marry as my thumb yo-yos over a glass screen, and I forget the really cool stick-and-poke tattoo I just liked as soon as the next image or 140-character hot-take comes up.
I don’t have a solution to the anxiety that social media produces, and I wish I could settle on a healthier balance between interacting with the people I care for and negotiating the constant surplus of content social media innundates me with. Until then, I’ll mass unfollow and follow accounts that better reflect my present interests in the hopes of tailoring my experience, hover between privacy settings, and ultimately deactivate my online presence in order to rebuild my real-life one.