Y’all know my love/hate relationship with Instagram and the curated life. Kat is here on the blog today to share some thoughts!
I don’t know many of the people reading this right now, but I care a lot about what you think of me. And I mean I care a lot about what you think of me. And I know you’re thinking: “Kat, everyone cares a lot about what others think of them, get over yourself.” And for a long time, I thought that too, that I was exaggerating the ways in which the opinions of others shaped the ways in which I viewed myself, that is, until this past fall semester. As part of an education course I was taking, we were required to take a personality test to determine the five foremost traits of our personalities (liberal arts education amiright?). Every trait of the twenty-five or so students in the class appeared more than once. Except one. That one being mine, which revealed that I care a shit ton about what others think of me.
“I love your Instagram” is a complicated statement for me. On one hand, it’s flattering. I work hard to make my Instagram aesthetically pleasing; taking hundreds of photos, venturing out to interesting and exciting places, and editing them to fit a specific color scheme. On the other hand, it’s exhausting and intimidating. I’ve had people mention my Instagram in job interviews. I hate speaking about my photos and my photography, because the truth is that I’m not a photographer, and my Instagram is curated to make my life appear as something it is not. I don’t like to talk about my photos. I don’t like to talk about my follower count because my photos are so deeply personal to me and in many ways so wrapped in lies, that appreciation for them from outside my own little circle feels intrusive and invasive. I’ve had a number of experiences meeting people who knew my Instagram before they knew me. In these circumstances, I often came across as cold and rude (and not in the sarcastic, New Yorker type tone of my captions), when the truth was that as much as I am appreciative of them, and as much as I enjoy the attention, I no longer know how to convey that.
Over the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen that myself, Audrey, and Julia took a trip up the west coast together. The blog posts from San Francisco to Seattle to Portland are beautiful; they depict delicious meals, walks on the beach, sunsets, and more bubble tea and dogs than I even remember seeing over the course of those two weeks. But they don’t tell of our actual trip. We bickered incessantly, the three of us. By the end of the trip, it was obvious that we had been cramped together for too long, and needed some good peaceful time away from each other. We spent hours in our hotel rooms, not speaking, each wearing headphones to drown out the sounds of the others. And that’s not to say that we didn’t have a great time. We did. And certainly the nostalgia has painted it to be a much brighter memory than it felt at the time. But that’s the truth. Every waterfall, every beachfront sunset, every airplane shot that appeared on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook was curated to be that way, to depict our lives and friendships as something they were and are not.
I wrote, at exhaustive length, last year about my toxic love-hate relationship with social media: how I choose to engage in staggering degree with social media and place heavier weights on the opinions of strangers of my life. I still do this. Even knowing its toxicity. A friend of mine of eight years, recently said to me over dinner, “You know, we’ve known each other for so long, but I don’t think I know anything about you.” And she was right. The front that I’ve built, beginning with my Instagram, is one of mystery and sarcasm. When we build walls so high, with so many secrets, there’s no amount of ammunition that can break them down. But she knows the other side, that I was an oversharer (you know the ones, the ones that you unfollow on Facebook, so that it doesn’t seem rude like you blocked them, but also you really don’t care about anything that they have to say), that I cared very deeply about things and was not afraid to share them, loudly. Now I am. I’m paranoid about what happens when I skip one day of posting on Instagram. How will my followers drop? What will people think? I spend hours sifting through old photos finding something to post, and even longer trying to fit it into my current color scheme. Will I have to archive it? What will people think? I bemoan being shadow banned because my like count won’t be as high. What if I have to re-post it later? What will people think?
Why do I care?
More and more we are hearing in the news media about how social media is no longer just a way to communicate with loved ones; it’s a way to cultivate a personal brand, to put on a facade of who we’d like to be, so that who we are stays safe and tucked away. “Fake it till you make it.” But it has stopped us from being honest. Those fabrications have come my reality: lies filtered enough just to become truths, a reality curated to please bots roaming endlessly and aimlessly in the digital sphere.
I’ve ended every post that I’ve ever written on Brunch with Audrey’s in a positive way, I’m not quite sure how to do that here. Except to say, even as you curate your Instagram and Facebook and Twitter to make yourselves appear to be something you’re not, even as you cultivate a brand that will rake in the followers and take you far and wide, be humble and be honest with yourself. This life that we live is not one to be taken for granted, and not one that should only be seen through a camera screen. Take a second, a full minute if you’ve got it, because what you’ll find is far more vast and wonderful than anything that can be captured on a screen.
Website | katherinelee.co
Instagram | whatkatsby
PS: more from kat: asian representation, breaking up with social media, dorm tour