This Title is my Biggest Strength and Greatest Weakness

I just want to put it out into the ether that there’s something about Macaulay Culkin that draws me to him.

I have this theory that on each of our social media platforms, 5-8% of your friends, followers, mortal enemies, etc. see/read/watch what we post. And ohhhhhhhhh boy… if you’re one of those “he was so well liked, he had SO many friends and people who loved him” people that ends up murdered and on a riveting Dateline episo—wait. My bad. I mean… and if you’re one of those very well liked and everybody loves you people, I bump it up to 10-12%. I’ll be honest. I don’t know if this is actually MY theory, or if I read it somewhere or if it’s a spin-off of that “you only use 10% of the clothing in your closet” statistic. Lately I’ve been making up statistics that sound logical. Yesterday I told a friend that 3% of the world’s population are murderers. See? Sounds logical, but DO YOUR RESEARCH! Make sure what you read and share comes from a reputable source and not from a girl who as a small child may have picked up chewed gum from the street and ate it. What?

Anyway If you think about the actual reach on your social media… it’s such a small number-- I’m sorry. My brain has many things that it wants my fingers to type and they just all collided and I have no idea where I was going with this or what is happening right now.

Okay, I got it. Webster’s dictionary defines a devil’s triangle as—kidding! Hashtag boof

What I’ve been trying to say for the past 20 minutes..

Ahh.. I wish you could have seen everything I’ve done besides type in the past 15 minutes. I peed. Twice. I haven’t even drank any water since last Thursday. Alright. Okay. Let’s just go in. I’m going in. Belly flop or bust.

I think the basis of this garbled piece is twofold. A- I tweeted something about potatoes last week. I really hate deleting things once posted, I try owning everything; the dumb, the incorrect, the absolute poignant stuff that should be needlepointed on pillows across America. It is very, very, VERY rarely that I delete a tweet. After I tweeted about my craving for potatoes, I felt immediate anxiety. Why? Because it was a metaphor for something deeply personal? No. It was a nonsense tweet, because the world is nonsense. I said out loud to no one in particular, “Omg I just sent out unneeded nonsense to 300 people.” Moments later I was like “whoa, Chandra T. Check yourself and ‘situate yourself in the middle of infinity.’”  Social media makes our reality so distorted. Twitter, Insta, Facebook.. they put the number of our “friends,” “followers,” “ all the people you randomly hooked up in the mid to late aughts” right at the top of your page in bold lettering (numbering?) so when you— actually I’m going to start saying ‘I’ because, who knows? Maybe this isn’t you and you’re just better than me and didn’t call the lady that picks up your office trashcan ‘Mom’ today (and not in a Gen Z stan way). When I log into these pages, I am immediately under the misconception that whatever I’m about to post is going to be seen by hundreds of people when in reality it’ll be seen by tens. And it’s by the tens that I would hope and want to see it. 

The whole picture number just gives you this false sense of importance when let’s be real, you are not important. No. I mean, you ARE important and you DO matter, but you’re like not THAT important. Well you are THAT important but like no one really cares. I mean people DO care, but like…not like you are Reese Witherspoon care. Not that you COULDN’T be Reese Witherspoon, just…anyway here’s my second fold….

AM I THE ONLY TYPICAL EVERYDAY AMERICAN PERSON THAT FEELS ANXIETY AFTER EVERY POST I POST?? Maybe it’s because it’s all me? Like I don’t have baby that I can post pictures of them eating their own poop or a video of my 5 year old lighting our living room couch on fire or whatever else babies and kids do. Those are guaranteed to be a hit. No one is not going to like that or make a negative comment like “Why does your baby look like that?” (May have learned that the hard way. Lost a good friend. MISS YOU BECKY) Babies and kids are social media porn. Nope. NOT porn. Nope. I should delete that, but I just wrote that I don’t like deleting.  So..........…

I, myself, who claims only myself on my taxes don’t (doesn’t?) have any type of social media porn. I mean, I guess maybe my mom? Oh. Oh okay, that’s wrong too.

I assume what I want to know is like how does everyone I follow just seem so confident with their posts? Or is that just an Emmy-worth façade and you too are full of anxiety after you hit send? Do my posts read confident? If you answer yes to that, know (clearly) that I am not and let us silently stew in that together from afar. And parents, do you feel anxiety after when you posts pictures of your kids? Or are they just so perfect that you don’t know that one flaw that everyone else notices in the picture? KIDDING. ALLL OF YOUR CHILDREN ARE BEAUTIFUL! (hashtag noporn). Okay. Lates.

Oh I do want to share one social media thing that I do that helps keep my health and my sanity…when I post Insta stories or Snapchat stories I NEVER look at who watched. I look at the view count, of course and Insta shows like two icons of people who have watched but I NEVER click. I’ve done it in the past and chaos ensued. And this has been the healthiest thing I have ever done emotionally, physically, mentally, technologically and that's all.

 

Okay. Lates for real.

DUnno

VOTE