why am i doing this?

My relationship with social media, or any vice for that matter, has been wildly unhealthy. For the vast majority of my youth, I believed in everything social media told me. Social media told me that everyone was interested in the way I looked. That there was a right and wrong way to live my life according to other 14-year-old sluts living and posting from the greater Calabasas-Malibu area. Many of those sluts (using sluts in a non-derogatory way but more like heyyyy sluuuuutttttt) still continue to live their lives according to social media and their online image. I’m looking at you best-friend-of-all-time Kylie Jenner. 

This mentality continued on into my mid-20s, though it was a shape-shifting beast I thought I had tamed with each new ‘rebrand.’ Same with my relationship to substance: I would confidently say “I have been unscathed by the grip of vices” as I smoke my 23rd chop out of my crusty-ass nonbinary bong water.

 In college, I adopted the popular ideology of being different. How fucking paradoxically insidious and truly humiliating for all parties involved. If my social media could feature dusty photos of edamame shells on the ground, a cigarette placed between my toes, and my haggard-ass vintage outfits thrifted for $50 and some change from Eugene Jeans, I was worthy of an audience and cool enough for friends. This audience of idiot kids were doing just the same, thinking the next kid was the “genuine” one. My perception of reality was filtered through Instagram likes all the way until the pandemic.

After some of the lockdown was lifted, and, with the support of those closest to me, I decided to delete all of my socials. Not just Instagram. Tik Tok deleted, Twitter deleted, FB messenger gone, Snap (rightfully so, what am I 10 years old?) gone, and of course, Instagram. The only social apps I held onto were Discord (my best friends who own my life live in there) and reddit (sorry). Anything, where I could either doom scroll or compare myself and my body to others, was in the trash. Without social media, I found my thumb inadvertently clicking the part of the screen where those icons used to be. I was down so bad for online.

Despite the isolation it caused me (everyone forgot I existed if they weren’t in my day-to-day or my family members without my regular story posts), I felt free to do and think as I wanted. I started gaining weight back; weight that them bitches who don’t eat convinced me I needed to lose. My friendships became more intimate; those who were curious about my day-to-day asked me and didn’t nonconsensually choke on my finsta posts every hour. Long story short, I got my life back, I was able to cherish relationships in a way I never had, I came out of several different closets, I got into the most nourishing relationship I’ve ever had with a partner and also with myself. I found that I took no photos of myself, whereas my camera roll was previously flooded with selfies and even photos of my daily activities just for the purpose of posting.

As I return slowly to social media, I could care less about your trip to Capri. I am here to share art with my friends and honestly avoid some of the social isolation I was feeling being offline. I am starting this blog as a way to express myself online without the constraints of a platform. You wanna know about my shit and my faggy ass opinions, seek it out. I don’t want to live my life in a cycle of rebrand on fake ass apps. So many people (including myself) are actually convinced a rebrand is a real thing! You’re a human being, not a store-front. If you use social media for work, that’s dope as long as you have a separate sense of self. Your aesthetic is not original nor are half of you asshats worthy of having social media with your busted-ass opinions, though I digress. I mean, I wasn’t worthy of having social media at all. At the end of the day, I slam no one but myself <3.

Disclaimer: I super respect social media and the opportunity it presents. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York. I have social encounters with strangers upwards of 3 times a day (meaning encounters where I start conversation and socially exert myself to form genuine connections). If I were to live in the middle of nowhere with 0 queer community and few friends, I would use social media as a way to fill my social quota. I am social enough, I don’t need to use social media to fill my cup, I have the incredible privilege to walk outside and shake hands with another REAL human being. 

In conclusion, I am trying to figure myself out. Though this process is far from linear and far from based, I know I’m funny and I know my friends love to see me embarrass myself. I want to share my experiences as a friend, not as an abstract figure sharing through a one-way mirror. Online can be fun, so I’m making it fun in the way I want it to be fun, which is so funnnn. I’ll be posting to my blog whenever I feel like it. That might be twice in a day or once a year. Either way, I wanna make the people I love laugh in a way I know how– through my writing and my opinions that genuinely no one asked for. Thanks for sticking around.

-Lars