being seen, getting used to that
the prospect of people reading my posts is still something i'm getting used to. it seems silly, to me, as someone who's been online since the dot com era's fruition. i'm an alum of tumblr university and took intro to css on xanga and neopets. i used twitter avidly when you had to text to tweet and actually "quote" a tweet to quote-tweet.
i just have instagram now, and even then, i'm treading lightly. it's very easy to lose time because of the advent of infinite scrolling and the prodigal tiktokification of interfaces. i go on semi-regularly to post as a means to clear photos off of my phone--a sign of life through photosets. i check on my friends too, to keep up with them. then, i indulge in the algorithm i built brick-by-brick by scrolling through a handful of wholesome cat and pokémon reels. anything more than this is excessive, and i try to remember that. if i forget, then before i know it, it's bedtime. or my lunch break is over. or it's time to go.
as far as posting on instagram, i keep things relatively short-form. i anticipate, even with the shortest of captions, that people will skim my posts for morsels of information, possibly interact, then resume scrolling. for this reason, i typically don't do captions longer than few lines; i like to think the photoset will do more of the speaking.
that isn't to say that i don't want to do longer-form content on something like instagram; the social media paradigm of today begets short-form more than ever, and it shows in the features available at my fingertips. back then, the scope of visibility was relatively tight-knit within the communities you participated in, forums and instant messaging clients alike. your social group was in one room and others were next door.
i recall making my first webpage from scratch and thinking something along the lines of, "wow i wonder how many people will see this!" my conceptualization of "people" certainly wasn't to the scale of potentially billions sets of eyes. then again, i was near the cusp of being a teenager at this juncture, so my idea of "a lot of people" was a gymnasium full of tweens.
i don't think the progenitors of social media could've predicted this extent of visibility. at times, it feels as if we're all in an amphitheater embodying the roles of spectated and spectator, whether we like it or not. other times, it's a public park dappled with picnic blankets and strolls on a lazy saturday. our feeds are the people we follow, but it's also "posts you may like" and sponsored content that nestle in as friendly, unwelcome guests. it all blends in a little too well. at times, i'm looking for the people i chose to follow in a ribbon of advertisements.
it's no different than walking with peers amongst the glitz of the las vegas strip or times square: both shiny and unassuming distractions being sold left and right; sometimes you forget to look both ways before crossing and a friend swooping you into the sidewalk or an attentive driver blaring their horn grounds you to a cold sweat. and yet, posting anywhere nowadays feels like i'm somehow being seen and not at once. algorithms will have posts pass by in colorful flashes that rival the fahrenheit 451 billboards.
still, i'm getting used to being seen. a lot of it is throwing caution to the wind when publishing a post of any kind. i suppose it warrants some feigning vulnerability as well, as i'm putting thoughts to paper and putting them out there. it's the same exposed feeling of showing a friend a drawing or craft you worked hard on. it's that same tingle of someone reaching out to you personally about something you posted online.
i'm a sucker for analog recognition. posting here does take me back to the days of having to refresh a page to check for updates instead of a ping. it's the humble ambience of the a/c humming and shifting papers and throats cleared politely in a public library. buttery white noise. even instagram can be as calm.
this is just a long way to say being noticed is nice but it takes getting used to, isn't it?