“The Woods are Full of Eager Interpreters.”
We used to just be people. And let’s face it: our lives were sometimes boring. In unmediated reality, we gained weight, had pimples, and sometimes, spent weekends alone. There was a lot of second-guessing. Relationships ended. We psychologically dissected ourselves. Friends drifted in and out of our lives. And we changed constantly, and in private.
Now, there’s something better. We can selectively immortalize our attractive angles. Wear the same, sultry dress for six years. Graduate from Harvard with only two interests: chocolate covered strawberries and champagne. Every single one of our comments can be witty and permanent. Friendships can form without meeting face to face— or after meeting only once. We’re always on vacation, always making people laugh, and when we don’t want you to be part of our personal universes, we can hide your posts without offending you. Because you’ll never know.
In the tedium of our daily lives, we retreat to a medium of infinite social possibility. A more perfect world. Our successes are congratulated, relationships celebrated, and our suffering instantaneously elicits words of compassion. When we’re clever, we’re “liked.” It’s a place where everyone remembers your birthday.
The price we pay is simple: our public humanity. In all of its awkwardness, ugliness, and ambiguity. We erase these things digitally because we can’t—yet—from our brains.
On Monday, I sat in the woods of Annandale, Virginia with a friend who rediscovered me on Facebook. Over cinnamon rolls, we shared reticence about our online alter egos. “Maybe all these things make relationships more meaningful,” she offered. “When you meet in person and someone asks you out on a date… that’s real courage!”
But what are we to make of this parallel, eternal broadcast of our aspirational selves? Are the moments spent away from screens and lenses privately devalued by their public irrelevance? Or are pixels the new human eyes—facilitating more encounters than they replace? Have we created a temporal domain where our pasts can exist in the present—but only the bits we like? Or this medium really about selectively forgetting?
I am surrounded by people in a city. But though they walk on sidewalks and stop for sandwiches, they do not live here. No one is looking at the sky.
