for no one and everyone to see all at once: late stage social media, ChatGPT’s favorite food, and the art of cringing at our past selves online

I'm starting to get a little bored with the over-curated side of social media. I want to see your messes, your unfinished projects, your scribbles, and your half completed thoughts. I don't want to arrange my open sketchbook on a white background and place my pens and markers casually angled inward to draw your eyes to the focal point. I don't want to look up the appropriate hashtags to add to the end of my captions, and I don't have an intro, a hook, or a course to sell. I just wanna post the raw sketches as they happen, late at night with my puppy's sleepy butt in the upper right corner of the photo. 

I’ve been attempting to loosen up the way I show up online lately, posting imperfect bits of life and raw little sketches here and there, no pressure. Changing the way I share my life online has made me start thinking a lot about my old blog. 

I was a blogger, not a very popular one, back in the Golden Age of blogs, circa 2006. I started it to basically make a little newsletter for my college friends as they moved away so that I could share my art and things that I was doing and thinking with them. Back then there were no pins on Pinterest with captions that read “I made $300K during my first 8 months of blogging! Download my ebook to find out how!” Actually, I don’t think Pinterest even existed at that point, and if there were ways to monetize a blog at that time, no one told me. 

So last night, I decided to go down my little blog rabbit hole, and I started out by reading my very first post. That one was ok, I guess… But as I kept going and reading post after post, I started to cringe. I actually found myself physically making the cringe face and everything, so horrified at the things I had felt the need to write down and post for all the world to see. So horrified that it was all still there, just hanging out for no one and everyone to see all at once. Some of it was so petty and narcissistic, and I wish I had just kept certain feelings to myself. It's amazing how embarrassed we can feel when we encounter our past selves and revisit our old posts on the Internet. (Does it feel like a weird slap in the face when a Facebook memory pops up for you too?) I ended up archiving a bunch of my worst posts since I was so embarrassed of my past self.

Isn't the act of posting online at all kinda cringe in and of itself? Isn't posting one's own creative work (whether it be a painting, a poem, a song, or a video) in fact, the most cringe-worthy thing that a person can do? What drives humans to post anyway, ignoring potential consequences like embarrassment or ridicule?

Is it the need to be seen, to feel less alone? Or maybe we post in the hopes that someone else will connect with something we post and feel less alone in the world themselves. It’s definitely a mix of both.

To get an outside perspective, I asked ChatGPT why we silly humans are driven to post anything online at all, and basically the response I got was that “the act of posting is about taking ownership of your voice and your creativity, despite the risks. It’s a way of saying, ‘This is me, and I’m okay with the world seeing it, even if it’s not perfect.’ That courage is powerful and can lead to deeper connections, personal growth, and sometimes, even a sense of freedom from the fear of being judged.”

Quick off topic sidenote: I couldn't help but ask what food ChatGPT would like to try if it were human. The response I got was: “If I were human, I think I’d be curious to sample sushi. There’s something fascinating about the combination of textures, flavors, and the artistry involved in creating each piece. Plus, it’s a food that embodies a balance of tradition and creativity, much like art itself.”

I stumbled across something really interesting on my FYP on TikTok a few months ago. (Yes, I’m too old for that app, and yes, it is my most favorite app ever, sorry...) The post was about late-stage social media and how the Internet feels a bit flat lately and so driven by influencers and consumerism, which makes it a lot less compelling than it used to be. It feels like most of the apps are adapting the characteristics of the apps they are competing against, and brands, even huge brands like McDonald's, feel the need to be chronically online, on trend, and funny. did u see grimace’s text about yr free med fries? Iykyk. 

For most people, the Internet used to fulfill the concept of a third place: a location to “inhabit” that was not home and was not work yet still provided us with a sense of connection and belonging. The Internet of yesterday was more about keeping tabs on friends, sharing news with family, and following your favorite artist's favorite artist to find out about potential new tour dates. 

Today, however, Facebook seems like it is just for confusing Grandma with AI images, checking if anyone you know has died, and potentially unloading your old entertainment center on marketplace. (Sorry, I will not deliver. Cash only, no phone numbers.) Comments on videos there (Do they call them reels there too? I don't play with FB much…) are some of the most cutthroat and unhinged I've seen anywhere on the Internet, and I have the NextDoor app on my phone. 

Twitter (oops, I meant X) is mostly for billionaires, political conspiracy theories, and celebrities who are no longer relevant. At least this is what I can gather from the 8 minutes total that I've spent there over the last two years. (I think I mostly just DM’ed Chewy.com. I sent them messages twice - once to ask if they could paint my dog, Ruby Roo, and then again to ask them to paint Maggie May. Don’t sleep on these free portraits - all you gotta do is ask. They turned out amazing!)

Instagram appears to be mostly for millennials doing skits and posting memes about 90s nostalgia, then reposting them, forgetting they already posted that, then reposting it again, just in case. (God, I miss old school tumblr.) It's also for watching trending reels that were already trending on TikTok about 6 months to a year ago. Don’t get me wrong, I do love IG. It’s my best source for keeping up with my actual friends from my age group. I love making weird and random slide shows for my moots almost every day and sharing them in my stories. But I really hate the IG algorithm, and no matter how hard to try to “train” it, nothing really helps. There is another app which has a much better (and more trainable) algorithm, in my opinion…

I might sound a bit biased here, but other than showing me a broad range of interesting, intelligent, entertaining, and sometimes surprising content, TikTok really is a win for me. My only issue with the platform is that it keeps trying to sell me a very specific Korean sunscreen in the form of a stick, and they are pretty worried I'll accidentally buy a knockoff sunscreen of this particular brand from another site and not get the full sun coverage I need, and did you know that the FDA in the United States has not passed new laws for sunscreen since like a very long time ago? I will forgive TikTok for pushing sunscreen on me so often because I truly do love the platform and enjoy opening the app every day to see what rabbit hole it will lead me into. 

Oh, and then there's Reddit. There is a lot to say about Reddit, but for now I will just say that I like it second best after TikTok…

No matter where you decide to post, I think that posting online does inherently require a certain amount of bravery mixed with a splash of healthy creative delusion. This combo can sometimes feel a lot like risk… So it’s important to remember that every creative pursuit (and YES, posting online is very creative and is in and of itself an act of ART) does involve a bit of risk, but it’s in those moments of vulnerability that the most meaningful connections and experiences can happen. Plus, embracing the cringe that can often occur when posting online can be a fun and liberating way to remind yourself that it’s okay to be imperfect and messy.

Back in 2006, I was posting to keep my friends up to date with my life and my projects, but at the same time, I ended up making real connections and even some new friends, a few of whom I was lucky enough to be able to actually meet IRL! When I decided to look back on my blog, my first instinct was to burn it all down due to all of the sloppy cringe that was hanging out everywhere, but in the end, I decided to let a version of it survive.

I still have compassion for the 2006 version of myself, and I am trying to love the person that I was despite also feeling pretty removed from that person at the same time. She still deserves to have a little grace and a little bloggy facelift in the form of a removal of some of her most extreme, unflattering bits. The choice between deleting the whole thing or just keeping it “as is” was slightly daunting, so when I decided to take the middle ground approach of archiving only the worst parts for now, and that felt like a good fit for the person I am today. 

Right now, I am cringing about my past self less and less and trying to cultivate more compassion for that version of myself who had so many things to say to strangers on the Internet. And when something weird pops up on my Facebook memories from ages ago, I try my very best not to make the cringe face. I am starting to view my past self as part of the foundation that helped build me into who I was becoming. Despite her bad choices and her online oversharing, she is me and I am her, for better or for worse. 

Ok, gonna push “publish” on my first blog post in 5 years now…