social selves

or my foray into the "newsletter economy" (sorry Substack) or my love-hate relationship with social media

PROLOGUE: I started this draft on the 10th of October and right now we’re on the last days of December (or this post might even reach January). Life and my messy mind has made me postpone finishing this draft. Recently, I made the decision of returning to Twitter but I don’t know yet if I’ve fully returned on the platform but nonetheless here goes the planned first post --

Nowadays, I have almost rid myself from active participation in social media except for Instagram — through its ephemeral Stories, that get lost into oblivion after 24 hours¹ upon posting, and my sparsely spaced feed.

Prior to this, I was into connecting with people online. Blabber constantly tweeted, shared, or posted just like any other teen on the internet. Eventually, expression, explanation, or the search for words in less than 280 characters felt tiring and useless. Sharing myself to the world simply felt draining once it became tedious.

As I grew older, engaging in social media slowly transformed to be not my cup of tea. What’s mostly left in my socials is an archive of past selves and my search for identity.

Photo by Jonas Verstuyft on Unsplash

This was the beginning…

I first structured this post as a litany of the platforms I signed up on throughout the years but I don’t think it would be fruitful to go through them one by one.

In hindsight, it seems like popular platforms like Friendster, with its ultra-customizable profile layouts, and Facebook, with its games back then, seem to have little room for one to be genuine.

With its mass appeal and format, I was simply swept in and participated in social media as a preteen with our dial up modem in the shared family desktop computer.

Twitter

In some sense, I entered the race quite early. I pride myself on being a pioneer in the emerging social media platforms, like Twitter, where I set up an account around Grade 3 or 4 before it became famous among my peers. I partook in that endeavour with a close friend back in elementary school.

I first gained access to Twitter, in the Grade School library in one of those desktop computers with big, thick, monitors, when LCD/LED screens weren’t that common yet. Since Twitter  was kind of new and not widespread, the website was not yet blocked in the library computer.

I’m a bit annoyed at how I simply decided to just delete that first account and re-emerge with another later on. It contained tweets about everything and I’ll emphasise EVERYTHING. There was no limit to what I wanted to express — what I was doing, what I was probably watching or listening to, and what I felt. From the mundane, like getting groceries with my mom, to more profound insights, the spectrum is just too broad.

Back then, I hoped to have a phone that could access the internet, which would enable me to tweet every single time. I even hoped that Twitter had a functionality where you can text something to a number and it gets automatically uploaded as a tweet. Never did I imagine how technology would exponentially advance in the next few years and make gadgets more accessible that that dream would turn into reality. However, I simply lost interest along the way.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Tumblr

Tumblr, which I believe is supposed to be a microblogging site but all I did there or I think most of the people I know who were there just reblogged things. It sort of curates, reaffirms, and shapes our identities and tastes as adolescents, brimming with angst and a desire to belong in the world.

I have a strong feeling that my stay on the platform shaped my taste when it comes to my consumption of content. It was this time when I encountered the British shows Skins and Misfits which were added to the other British shows that I was watching which were Sherlock and Doctor Who. Through reblogging or resharing posts to our blogs, we sort of become connected to different communities we fancied. 

I know that reblogging is similar to how posts are shared in Facebook or how tweets are retweeted, but there is something more tangible to Tumblr. It is where you can literally see the lines of usernames who’ve participated in sharing the same interest. It might be just me, but although the community in which you operate on the platform is largely anonymous, the sense of belonging is much greater, much felt than a friend pool in Facebook where you supposedly know your friends in real life. 

Unlike Twitter where there was a marked period when I felt that staying on the platform was simply too much for me to bear, my “departure” from Tumblr was more amiable. I simply, perhaps, have gotten too busy with school back then that I didn’t anymore have the time to wallow in the expanse of relatable content.

Relapse/rebirth in IG

When you’ll go through my Instagram profile, it would just be easy to scroll down to my first post since I haven’t posted much in between then and now.²

The reason for which it became my preferred social media platform is that images or short videos leave little room for explanation.They in essence can standalone or, if I wanted to, a little bit of caption would be sufficient for a story to be told. In visual form lies ambiguity and abstraction.

Maybe I’m not sure what I wanted to say or I’m not sure of what I wanted to feel and a still from life would be enough. Shoot something, insert a little caption, or choose some filter beforehand, and it’s ready to be shared for the next 24 hours. IG stories are what really hooked me to the platform. More so when close friends were introduced, a limited audience where you can share more personal matters. It was an attractive feature for me. 

I think that it’s better to not be alone much with my thoughts. So this is me, trying to recover that glimmer of hope of sharing to the world my thoughts. Doing it as a form of therapy, of purging my mind.

The future/postscript

So here we are in this Substack post that I’m trying to finish before the new year starts. This is supposed to be the part where I explain why I’m trying out Substack. Simply put, it’s due to my love of newsletters. I’ve subscribed to a few in the past few years for news, pop culture, and media recommendations.

The first Substack subsciption I had was with a US short story writer, then I saw some of my friends starting their own cool Substacks as well.³

More or less, it’s more direct, personal, and natural. A letter straight from me. Sorry if I don’t know exactly how this space will be.

I think the challenge for me now is to forgo expectations, to let go of how I want myself to be perceived by others. I have this ringing on the back of my head of expectations of what I should be. This hyper-awareness and meta view might also be a curse as a student .

But in the coming year and this Capricorn season⁴, I want to just be. To just continue to share life without fear, I guess. I know that it’s easier said than done but let’s try!

EPILOGUE: So thank you, for reading and making it to the end of my inaugural newsletter/post. I hope that this will be an interesting ride. Welcome to the *eli*minal space!

1. well, not really into oblivion, but into a personal archive

2. there might’ve been a bit of a surge lately haha

3. I will link theirs in my next posts once I ask their permission and I think you guys are only a few who are reading this right now in your inbox.

4. which is also my season as a Capricorn sun and moon