it’s been a great and scary year
I maintained a fairly transparent presence online when I first started TBS, partly out of a feeling of necessity for fostering my new and enthusiastic audience, but in the last year I decided to take a deliberate step back from my initial approach to social media for a number of reasons. Mostly because it’s exhausting in a way that’s difficult to describe, especially to those who haven’t grown up in front of computers or with smartphones in their hands. Partly because of very real and terrifying threats to my privacy and personal security, troubling enough to make me feel temporarily disempowered – which is a scary thing to admit publicly considering, y’know, that was probably the creeper’s intent.
Creating and maintaining an online presence tends to steal one’s personal identity and commandeer it in a way that is disconcerting. You relinquish autonomy for the sake of social currency and it’s confusing and awkward, like going through puberty all over again. You start to think about your ‘personal brand’ – a thing that can be monetized by, yeah, you, maybe, but also by other people, companies. You begin to wonder – am I doing, sharing, saying things that uphold that ‘brand’? what’s the brand? and your personality suddenly dissolves into a handful of shallow adjectives: funny, quirky, dorky, cute, artsy, happy, nerdy. There you go. Package deal. You get what you pay for. You’re a marketable object to be commodified and sold for a profit. Congratulations, and welcome to your fame. I started to get a taste of this and it’s bitter, weird.
What the whole point of this post is, is that it’s a promise that I’m never going to bullshit you. While I might not put myself out there as much as I used to – primarily because of a concern for my personal safety as well as a mutual feeling like that type of sacrifice wasn’t worth maintaining a falsely overjoyed online presence – I want you to know that what I’m doing, sharing, creating, promoting, encouraging, is genuinely coming from me, without external pressure to live up to someone else’s standards of marketability.
When online media feels so fickle I stress about my future success on these platforms, and I just hope you’ll bear the growing pains with me. Don’t hesitate to be in touch, send a note, ask a question. I’m here because of you and appreciate your support no matter what. Thank you. Here’s my digital hug. <3
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