# notes --- - [[i often feel the call to write about heavy life experiences]] - [[writing, especially about one's life, is a process of telling half-truths]] # highlights --- > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > Transported away from the day-to-day stressors of our ordinary lives, we can all at least pat ourselves on the backs for not being this attention-hungry, this eager for the quickest possible route to fame and fortune. I’m self-congratulatory about my humility - so proud about how I can discredit others’ perceptions of me. > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > When I turn off the TV, I open my laptop and begin typing a personal essay to share with an audience of strangers, eager to mold their impression of me in the way I see best fit. I am not solely writing for attention, per se, but attention inevitably comes with an expanded readership > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > People who have built the most lucrative online careers have done so by playing to the main strength of the internet: its accessibility. More specifically, by allowing followers to feel like they have enhanced access to you - even if the personality they’re accessing is a farce. ^ [[{1.2a1a1a} online authenticity paradox]] > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > As a child, I, and most kids I knew, wanted to be entertainers when we grew up. > > hmm, i bet it's more that we wanted to be artists, and Entertainment(TM) is one of the only places we saw it... we might have been into the glitz and glamour, sure, but i think the prospect of making $ doing something you love or find creatively fulfilling -- i don't think that's a childhood dream, but a human one > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > This migration occurred because we didn’t actually want to become actresses or pop singers for the craft of art-making itself. No, we wanted - as many little kids desire - the ability to harness attention. Garnering not necessarily fortune, but certainly fame. > > yeah, see, i don't totally buy this... i mean, attention, yes, but not in the name of fame i don't think.... in the name of being and feeling seen in the CONTEXT of creative pursuits... kids want to be seen and heard, kids want to express themselves… again i think this is a human need (maybe that’s just semantics) > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > The barrier to entry is a personal device, and we all have one near-tethered to our hand. > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > there seems to be reverence reserved for people who offer viewers and readers a healthy amount of emotional vulnerability. This reverence is especially held by young women viewers for young women creators. Setting up your phone camera to cry about your breakup on TikTok. Opening up about physical insecurities in a YouTube vlog. And on Substack, indulging readers by exposing your rawest thoughts and personal stories, perhaps even offering a glimpse into past traumas to better illustrate your perspective. These behaviors often make creators appear more “authentic” and thus more personable. > > i know this isn't really unique to women, but i wonder if women are uniquely pulled bc we don't see these stories told... we know that ppl don't believe us... we mistake attention for vindication. - [ ] Need to connect this to social media as reproductive labor… > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > The anonymity and accessibility of the internet provide pathways for connection that may not otherwise be afforded to young people, especially those with identities situated on the margins, who are physically isolated from others like them. > [!check]- Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > I often feel the call to write about heavy life experiences for a number of reasons, ranging from seeking solidarity with others to wanting to work through my own feelings. Across my blog and my personal diary, I write to connect, to illuminate, and, selfishly, to salve personal wounds. Predictably, these reasons often blend and overlap. However, I have an ongoing fear of crossing a line. Of offering excessive personal access for the sake of it, conflating it with “good writing” when it’s really just a cumbersome confessional - a self-gratifying expulsion. ([[i often feel the call to write about heavy life experiences]]) > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > I want people to look at me, but not too closely. Just the right amount and in precisely the manner that I want them to. > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > offering yourself to the internet means risking lost context. It means risking ill-perception. And it means risking readers doing unwanted extratextual research > [!check]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > . “In the age of Substack, the risk associated with sacrificing anonymity is much greater than it was before the internet,” Coburn writes, explaining that nowadays, writers have a “digital paper doll” version of themselves via their social media profiles that readers can intimately interact with. If people want more of you, they can and will find it. > [!quote]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > The compulsion to share online to cope with ill life happenings is strong. > >i think some of this is also the compulsion to Talk About It, but most of us don't have communities where that type of genuine intimacy feels safe -- so we opt for faux intimacy online. > [!check]+ Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > It gifts one an instantaneous emotional release - the feeling of being seen and heard. > [!check]- Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > writing, especially about one’s life, is a process of telling half-truths, exaggerated truths, and fabrications. Writing - at least the writing I enjoy reading - is rarely precise reality transcription. It’s a simulation of reality, refracted through our personal preferences, stylistic choices, and unconscious biases. [[writing, especially about one's life, is a process of telling half-truths]] > > THIS IS OUR HUMANITY > [!check]- Updated on Sun Oct 13 2024 12:26:11 GMT-0400 > > Look closer, the writer asks, gaze at the viscera that I’m willing to show you. I’ll try to keep my guts tidy. And you, dear reader, can understand that your gaze is only partial. That your perception is limited, by your own positionality and by the amount I’m willing to share. That’s the beauty of writing and reading - embarking on a song and dance to seek understanding.