humour | See Squared

Instagram

Sometimes I wonder if I have well & truly lost my mind. Whether I had it together in the first place is debatable, but seriously. Whenever I buy something pretty I have this sick, self-obsessed routine;
I will get home. Put my bags down. Take my shoes off. Pretty normal shit, right? Then, the FIRST thing I do is grab the objects of my misspent money & I traipse around the house trying to find THE perfect place to get THE perfect picture to upload to Instagram. It’s both narcissistic & sad, yet I cannot stop. & this is why Instagram is essentially one of the most fucked up & contrived social media platforms to have ever leached its cancerous roots into my life.

I LOVE Instagram, let’s get this one fact straight before people hound me for my meticulously curated account of preplanned beautiful shit that I oft upload. I LOVE IT. I CHECK IT RELIGIOUSLY. I UPLOAD RELIGIOUSLY. I STALK PEOPLE RELIGIOUSLY. I’m obsessed with it to the point that it’s starting to mould & shape my everyday life in a way that is both laughable & toxic. Facebook, on the other hand, kind of pisses me off. The amount of times I see posts about something like animal abuse & then stew on it for weeks while never actually doing anything tangible about it is ridiculous. Facebook annoys me constantly, even though I for some reason still have it. Mostly to laugh at funny shit & tag my boyfriend in things, I guess. WHY is it, though, that Facebook well & truly has the ability to upset me regularly, & yet all Instagram does it satiate some primal magpie-like desire to see bucket-loads of pretty things? BECAUSE INSTAGRAM ISN’T FUCKING REAL. I’m NOT saying that every person that’s using it is fake (hello, am I not one?! I’m addicted to this shit). But every single upload on Instagram comes from a completely falsified & preordained place, & it’s not an honest representation of either life or who we are as individuals. It’s curated like an art gallery would be, the entire process of uploading an image much more intricate of a thought process than you have probably ever considered.

Let’s take a look at the ‘insta-celebrity’, shall we? The kind that posts their breakfasts to receive upwards of 10,000 likes for a bread board with food on top of it (no boobs in sight & 10,000 likes?! Witchcraft). While you or me would just make our breakfast & fucking eat that shit while wishing we could go back to bed, I imagine the ordeal of being an Instagram celebrity & eating breakfast would be utterly exhausting. While we would just shoot it on our iPhones while sipping coffee, my half-trained & unfinished-photography-degree eye tells me that these people take their pictures on a professional-standard digital SLR camera. Normal people speak? An expensive camera with a big-ass lens. That’s why their toast looks FABULOUS. It was taken on a fabulous camera, & maybe even tweaked on photoshop before being emailed to their mobiles to then be uploaded on Instagram with a pretty filter. & that is the process to getting thousands upon thousands of likes for a food photo. How much more contrived & constructed could anything possibly be?

I’m not here to just rag on other people who can’t defend themselves, I’m going to rag on myself too. My selfie-taking process (just the word selfie has immeasurable amounts of self obsession which I am ashamed of) is lengthy & stupid. First of all, I never take selfies in front of people. Obviously, it’s EMBARRASSING. There is an innate part of me that is at least trying to be normal. If someone were to film me taking selfies & play it back I’m sure it would be the most cringeworthy thing ever. Nearly as cringeworthy as Kim Kardashian’s selfie book. I probably take, on average, 30 selfies in a selfie session. 30. THIRTY. T-H-I-R-T-Y PICTURES OF MY OWN FACE. Then I cull. Double chin in that one? Delete. Eyebrow hair out of place? Gone. Hair looking flatter than my sorry ass after drinking a bottle of wine the night before? Fuck no, delete. So then there’s the candidates. I will look at each (say, three?) ten times each; picking them to within an inch of their lives. Two will get deleted as I looked at them so much they’re now butt ugly. There is a victor, finally. A face I am okay with letting my followers see. Better slap a filter on it so I look better than I actually do in real life. VOILA. AN INSTAGRAM SELFIE POST! I have literally micro-managed this picture to within an inch of its life. It’s not casual. It’s not simple. It’s not even really that honest, I guess.

Before Instagram. Raw image.

After Instagram, including a filter etc.

Such is the premise of instagram. It’s not really an accurate or correct representation of anyone’s lives, including my own. Instagram shows what people deem the “best” parts of their lives: the holidays, the shopping sprees, their dimple free asses after the 100 squats a day challenge & their new, juicy fake boobs which came with a free side of 20,000 new followers. At least on Facebook people sometimes get drunk & write a status about their dodgy baby daddy who hasn’t paid child support since their kid was born. At least that’s real as fuck, however questionable it may be to over share on the internet. You will rarely see that kind of raw honesty on Instagram among the green juices & Wang Rocco bags. I guess that’s why I love it, it’s all amazing shit & none of the bullshit. But it also pains me, because I pride myself on being such an ‘honest’ & ‘real’ person. But anyway, I’m off to make a coffee & construct a beautiful vignette of it for Instagram to hopefully get 100 likes. 100 likes or why bother, right?!

Shit graduates say

If the title involves a bad word, you can guarantee that’s just the prelude to a lot of bad words. So please, don’t read this particular post if you are not fond of bad words. I am really fond of bad words, obviously.

So anyway, I found out I passed everything this semester, with a High Distinction as the candied, sickeningly sweet cherry on top of what was my university degree. Thank god I got at least one in my final year. I THINK that means I will get my degree?! (more on this coming). Anyway, all I seem to talk about is that I just FINISHED UNI! Like wow, so much awesome. “So what do you do?”, “I just FINISHED UNI man. YEAH!”. The ceremony is next year but I keep calling myself a graduate. I assume I am graduating as there are 5 big fat COMPLETED on my progress transcript right now. (How awkward if I don’t actually graduate next round of ceremonies, I’ve even had a FRICKEN PARTY & EVERYTHING). So anyway, it’s a really weird, in between stage of life. This is what you may find yourself, or other graduates, saying after you have danced around your burning textbooks naked & drunk (based on what I can’t stop blabbing to everyone right now):

1. “I JUST GRADUATED”

Well, shit. It’s not rocket science (unless you just graduated with a major in rocket science?! In that case, I’m a little lost for words right now). Meeting new people means they will ask you what you do. The funny/awkward/confusing thing is you don’t actually really do anything. Except maybe the part-time job you’re still holding on to while you’re floating in this black void of space. Whenever asked ANYTHING about your life, the only thing you really can say is that you just graduated. Most people will give a massive congratulations… and then the conversation is gone. Just like that. A topic usually lengthy & fantastic at breaking ice becomes a mere fork trying to demolish a glacier. Because actually, you don’t do anything except think “help” while pondering the real world you’re standing at the gates of while nursing a hangover from congratulatory shots (the uni lifestyle isn’t gone, even though your student status may be).

drunk

2. “WHAT DO I WRITE HERE?”

Forms become confusing. Why?! What do you mean? Am I talking about a tax return? Because that shit is always confusing… No. You see, I now realise every form asks you your occupation. I was getting a massage/facial/pedicure at a swanky retreat, & the form had the obligatory health questions, and my address, my birthday, yada-yada. Apparently to have expensive mud slathered over my face, & my dimply thighs rubbed by a complete stranger, they must know what I do for a living (couldn’t you just buy me a drink instead?!). This is where it becomes SO GOD DAMN HARD. I FEEL LIKE I’M BACK SITTING MY FINAL EXAMS. I START LOOKING AROUND THE ROOM NERVOUSLY TRYING TO FIND THE ANSWER. Student? No. Not anymore (small tear slowly & gently falls from the corner of one eye). I majored in Journalism… Lie & say I’m a journo? Mmm, no. I’m not. That’s weird. Write ‘graduate’? That’s not a thing. Well, it’s a thing, but it isn’t an actual THING. Anyway, forms are weird because life has all of a sudden become weird too. Welcome to the life stage of perpetual in-betweenness.

idontknow

3. “I’M SO GLAD IT’S OVER”

I am. Genuinely, I am. It was so hard. I cried. I had nightmares. I stressed so much my adrenal glands have permanent damage I am sure. I am experiencing something that happens once in a lifetime (mostly, usually, in general). It’s amazing. & I constantly tell EVERYONE how stoked I am it’s over! But then my conscience, or inner child, or the part of me that never wants to be an adult, screams out NO! No no no no no no no no no no no no no. No. Stay at uni forever. Stay young forever. Do not become a slave to the MAN. CAPITALISM IS EVIL. RETAIN YOUR INNOCENCE. BE AFRAID! Okay maybe I’m becoming a little bit dramatic. But graduates will say (or I have anyway) how so over the moon they are that they finally got here. & it’s true. But we leave out the part that never wants to be anything but a uni student, too.

grow up

4. “I DON’T KNOW”

THIS ONE IS THE ONE. This is the holy grail. Prepare to be asked by every single person every single second of every single day “what are your plans now?”, “what will you do next?”, “what are you going to do?”.

whateverifeellike

It’s a reasonable question. Logical. It probably fills that awkward silence that comes after revealing you don’t do anything & therefore have just whacked a massive stop sign right in the middle of the dialogue between you & said stranger. It’s dangerous territory. Well, for me it has been. I don’t have a five year plan. I don’t have a one year plan. OKAY, I DON’T HAVE A PLAN. I don’t. The last four years have been all about studying. All about getting that degree. All about surviving. Never daring to envisage life afterwards because most days it felt like I might not ever get here. Now I am here. & shit, I don’t know. I majored in two things I liked, & did well at. Isn’t that okay? Isn’t that what they tell you in high school? Ah, alas, I am not in high school. I just graduated uni, therefore making me an adult & my majors must have had everything to do with my life plan & nothing about what I enjoy. Um.. well, shit. When asked what now I just have to say I don’t know. & this makes me feel like I lack direction, drive or ambition. It probably looks like that too. It’s not true though, I have a burning fire that most graduates have & a belief I can achieve greatness. This is probably because I haven’t started job hunting yet (god help me). But it’s there. Don’t ask me anything else, please. Because I don’t know. My qualifications are so broad that there are no set paths. Also, I don’t even know how the hell to actually GRADUATE. Do I just do it? Where are the forms? Am I actually even graduating? What does this stuff mean? What do I do? I DONT KNOW?! You get the picture.

Lastly, sometimes I’ve thought, but not said, “I regret that”. The tattoos on my fingers suddenly seem idiotic. University & its toleration of any hair style/colour/body mod/tattoo doesn’t last forever. I regret not relaxing more. I regret not believing in myself more. Ah, hind sight. The biggest bitch that ever was. Apart from Monday morning tutorials.

regret

Growing up can suck. Graduating can be awkward & weird & confusing. But it’s also the start of the rest of your life… & that shit is pretty cool.

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Shit graduates say