Be(come) Yourself

Scrolling through your own social media history is the ultimate in narcissism. The very best bits of your life, documented in a scrolling timeline for people you hardly know. For people who, were they to change their name to something hilarious on Facebook, you would likely forget. Like ‘who the fuck is SteAmboat SArah? And why does she like capital As so much?’

I’ve been on facebook since 2007. You can scroll back to a time when they used to have that graffiti thing on each page, and when you could have a ‘pet’ and you had to feed it. You can scroll back to a time when I used the word “retarded” publicly and without shame, when I thought it was ok to call people sluts. You click through another month, another life and think, ‘who is this jerk? Oh wait, it’s me.’

I read this post on tumblr the other day and it said:

there’s a lot of unspoken pressure to keep liking the things you used to like and to keep dressing the way you’ve always dressed and to never question what you believe in and basically “be yourself” has slowly morphed into “be what everyone knows you as” but trust me when i say if you just give it up and simply make decisions and take actions based purely on what would make you happy, you’ll gain a very comforting sense of self peace (floozys)

This has never been truer than on social media. Where you’ve still got people hanging around who you went to primary school with. Hell, I’ve got people on there who haven’t seen me since primary school. Do they think I’m still really sad about being flat chested? Do they think I’m still the same girl who spread gossip and drama and left a love note in a boy’s desk? There are people on my facebook who were never my real life friend to begin with. Whose wedding dresses and beach holidays and puppies look pretty nice I guess, but whom I’m never going to talk to again. What do they think of me? Do they even remember what I was like in high school? Could they even picture my face if I didn’t upload a selfie every 3.2 days?

On this blog I have a written record of thought spanning back four years or so. My first post is a kinda sexist rant about how I think my opinions about other girls’ bodies actually matter. They don’t, clearly. Sorry women. I’ve changed, so should I take it down? 

I don’t think so?

I like to see this blog as an external record of some fairly complicated internal changes. And maybe it’s important to leave it here for all to see. Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But I’m gonna leave my thoughts out there anyway, for better or worse.

I guess what I’m saying is it’s really hard to acknowledge when you’ve changed. And for all the wonderful things I love about social media, sometimes making a solid, written, record of an opinion can make it harder to change. So let’s embrace our past stupidities, let’s acknowledge that we got facebook before we knew how to hold reasonable conversations, let’s proudly change our opinions.

The internet is forever, but our dumb-ass opinions don’t have to be.

 

Right?