Findings From Almost Two Years of Instagram Abstinence

 

From the east stage at field day 2023 in Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, London

What could matter more to a person than how they occupy themselves when, for the day, the requirements to sustain oneself have been met? In our western way of life, the means to survival have been standardized and enumerated. We work for others in return for money which is then spent later. I am of the opinion that work is a means to survival, and that the advantage gained in doing one unit of work should be spent mostly, in fact almost entirely, in recreation, where possible. A rather more sinister trend has emerged in the last couple of decades, in which it has become acceptable to demand more and more of a person than is agreed upon in the contract of employment. Technologies have allowed many forms of abstract, tertiary work to become independent of where one resides spatially – a development which is somewhat of a double edged sword: for one, this eliminates the need for many people to commute and waste away behind the wheels of their vehicles or otherwise to emit gaseous penalties to the environment, but on the other hand, cities that never sleep have, using the always-open gateways of the internet, been holonomically reconnected to each other, and themselves, to form a humanity that either never sleeps, or even less than before. It is here that I reach the main topic of this short piece, which is on the necessity and the individual consequences of using one’s free time for the purpose of online ‘networking’, after a short, blockheaded period during which I washed my hands entirely of the very concept. As with most of everything that has been on my mind, the story starts with a situation we’re all so well acquainted with now.

During the pandemic, social media was given almost a monopoly on communication. For several weeks, the closed, self-contained networks and various formats which a handful of companies have conceived of as products, were the method of choice for a conversation, for discussion, for matters of interpersonal intimacy (where one may take liberties in using that word considering how laughable ‘digital intimacy’ often is). It was during this time that I first realized how important it would be to me, both as a private person and as an aspiring careerist, to garner and maintain a presence. My facebook account was started in 2016, but I only began to use it upon entering university four years later. 

To illustrate how new I was to the concept of social media absolutism, I may relay a rather embarrassing anecdote from my first week in Homerton. The isolation we were all subject to, drove me to the point where I would rather look at pictures of people’s faces than do my work. I was so obsessed with these signs on my phone, having forgotten that they were all careful constructions, and on some level nothing but coloured squares in a grid, that I was able to delude myself into falling in love with someone of whom I knew nothing other than their name, and the photo they chose to represent themselves with. As time progressed and the solitude did not lessen, this culminated in a rather ill-conceived attempt to initiate a conversation with said person, who, living in the same building and perhaps better adjusted to the situation there than I, reacted politely and kindly, considering how it must have seemed to her. I was so nervous to talk to her, because I had already constructed for her, using the materials provided by facebook, a vast and opaque marionette, which echoed back at me nothing other than my notions of it; it didn’t react, didn’t surprise me, was not a thing in itself rather than a sort of part of me. This is obviously different from a real, living, breathing person, and I knew this: a contradiction simply too large for what followed to have been different. She was talking on the phone outside of our building, probably to her family, while I was working on some notes, something related to elliptical differential equations or such. Naturally, since my studies already occupied the lowest priority in my life, I decided to pack up and awkwardly position myself in the surrounding park in such a way as to maximize the probability that we might ‘run into each other’, pretending and eventually convincing myself that the whole thing happened organically. When she was finished talking, and we eventually did, I could do little more than to stammer some words in the vein of ‘oh I’ve seen you around’, and ‘well I think you’re quite attractive’. Total filler. Granted, this was my first attempt at such an attempt, but I knew I could have done far better if I had never seen this girl on facebook. Not that that would have changed the outcome, no, it just would have been a lot more dignified, and, considering my general attire, appearance, and behaviour, would have been far less concerning for her. Many men, including myself at the time, are so much more concerned with results in romantic pursuits, rather than experiencing their own highest form at all times, some of which happening to contain romance, but this is a different discussion which I might develop later. In any case, not a good way to ‘network’, and definitely not a good way to ask someone out.

A string of similar events was eventually enough to force me to reflect on this and identify, as the source of the problem, my Instagram account (strange, right?) of roughly 200 followers. And so, in September of 2021, I deleted it. Now, to anyone not familiar, people my age don’t really exchange phone numbers anymore. It does happen, but the standard practice really is that of exchanging socials, of which Instagram is the most important. It allows you to see a person’s face, style, and body, gauge your desire to interact with them in whatever capacity it may be, and peer into their lives without any additional formal invitation or consent to do so. Sure, people set their accounts to private, but it seems to me that there is an unspoken rule: follow requests are to be accepted without hesitation, if you want social congress, even in person, to occur without strong prejudice. People who meet many more new faces each day than I do, are forced to juggle two or more accounts to keep strangers, acquaintances, and friends wholly separate from one another, in accordance with those separate categories. This whole game became far too convoluted for me, and as I was not making much progress on the real-life front, decided to stop pursuing the matter altogether.

The first week was really quite nice. I felt so enigmatic. I still take great pride in obfuscating myself sometimes, which, while intellectually vain, is just too satisfying to pass up. The second and third weeks were much the same, and I stopped really thinking about it as my studies started perhaps two, three weeks into the experiment. The pandemic was also ending at the same time. At some point two months later, I managed to turn a casual conversation into a romantic relationship while on the varsity ski trip in the French alps, which gave me confidence that I was on the right path. I accepted my new identity as the guy who doesn’t have Instagram. All was well for quite a while.

However, at some point, I realised that I was not substituting this tool with sufficient effort in real life. I still had little idea of how to strike up a conversation with a stranger. How to actually be a human being within the wider context of larger structures and magnitudes. I could keep exhuming the cause of this, which stems perhaps from a disconnect with the cultural origins of my family, having grown up under the uncontroversial and unchallenging cover of one of the most grotesquely deluded bubbles in the world (an international school in Munich), but it serves no purpose other than to undermine my own credibility, so I really shouldn’t. At some point, I realised that it makes no difference at all, that maximising my own happiness isn’t a goal, and if it was, it certainly isn’t achieved through hiding. I made a new account two months ago, which I now have a far better relationship with. It re-entered my life, but was no longer a primary focus, as is making friends and expanding one’s circle. The correct way to use social media is to never allow yourself the callous disregard of equating another person with the image their profile allows you to paint for them, and, in turn, never equating yourself and your life with success in the exploits of networking. General socializing is hit and miss, and at that, rather more the latter in my experience. One cannot allow this to translate into disdain and contradiction, causing frustration with others and oneself, and one then to become undignified, social media or not. Realising this was quite an important step towards maturity, I think.

In conclusion, do I think that the pastime of ‘networking’ is valid, based on this realisation? No. Networking is not something you do, it is something that happens as a consequence of living your life well. I refuse to use my free time for the sole purpose to pursue a person or group that I would otherwise never have met. The best way to expand your sphere is to keep its radius constant while expanding yourself (which I guess makes it a shell), not by trying and expanding your reach while staying small. The latter is currently a popular paradigm, and it is worrying.