Social media as smoking habit

Greetings. It’s been a while. I’m grateful that people keep signing up for this newsletter and reading and liking old posts, despite the fact that I’ve been silent on here for about half a year. It makes this space feel a little less impermanent than the Internet at large, although I did see this news, that MTV News’s 20-year old archive has been taken offline, so that all these articles, new voices, essays etc. no longer “exist.” I’ve been thinking a lot about the ephemeral nature of so much of what we are doing now. I have diaries from my childhood and early teenage years. My old Yahoo and Facebook accounts, where I recorded just as many of my thoughts during late adolescence, no longer exist. Yes, cloud this, and storage that, but I think the abandonment of the analog has been very, very bad for the archives. It’s also completely changed our relationship with the archive. I’ve seen all my parents’ old Kodak albums, grainy photographs of them posing in classically surly expressions in the Pakistani north. But when my son asks me to show him photos of me riding a camel, I exhaust of the idea of scrolling or searching through my phone for photos of a 2018 trip to Morocco.

Another thing I’m thinking a lot about is privacy, and how egregiously we have collectively given it up, how normalized that abandonment has become. Much of the conversation around privacy talks about the nefariousness of social media algorithms and non-consensual sales of data, which it should, of course. Those things are deeply structural, and related to institutions that desperately require more restrictions and oversight. I’m interested more specifically in the cultural phenomenon of putting your entire life out there for the world to see, what that does to you as a person, and what the long-term personal, spiritual, and, yes, career ramifications of this are. Honestly, the reason I began thinking of this is somewhat embarrassing. I don’t follow either of them, but I have too many South Asian friends to have remained unaware of the Sufi-Anjali break up saga. For those blissfully aware, let me rob you. Anjali and Sufi are two female influencers who began a queer relationship some years ago. Their extremely cute photos, wearing traditional gear, along with their cross-border love story (Anjali’s an Indian-American Hindu; Sufi’s a Pakistani Muslim), went viral. Recently, they broke up, and made color-coordinated, public posts detailing the break up, along with its reasons. The details are not important. What struck me was not how openly they were giving away their secrets. I’ve seen influencers provide live updates on their miscarriages from the hospital room. It’s part of the contract they’ve made with themselves, and they at least have something to earn from it all. What really got my attention was the reaction of Anjali and Sufi’s followers, who wanted details, every salacious bit, and were indignant when they felt any information was withheld. What does it do to us when we start believing that neither we nor those around us deserve privacy? What does it do to your perception of yourself when you are earnest or loud or sexy or coy on the Internet all the time? What does the hole in your personhood look like, when you can’t imagine your existence without the projection of that existence?

Think of a very rich person you know who’s not a celebrity or controversial in a major way. It could be a financier, your friend’s rich dad, some third world industrialist, etc. Google them. Chances are high that you’re going find very little about them online. Now Google the milennial poet you love so. Chances are you’ll find an Instagram handle full of the typical carousels of flowers and odd cleavage shots and disembodied cigarette hands and what not. Maybe the artist is a parent, and then you might see their children, a breast pump, a maternity shot. Chances are you’ll find an X account full of that person giving away their deepest, sometimes profound, sometimes terrible thoughts online for free. For free, although it doesn’t feel that way, the dopamine rush feeling like its own coinage. But it’s not coinage. It’s temporary and fleeting. Coinage is what my dude the invisible financier has.

I’m interested in this discrepancy. Five years ago, Jia Tolentino hypothesized that the Internet might “someday occupy a status akin to cigarettes, which are peddled as a pleasure and a relief to the lower classes but which élite Americans largely attempt to avoid.” And I believe that we are deep into this process now. Generationally speaking, older people, who tend to be less present on social media platforms, also happen to be richer. It seems hugely disadvantageous to be a young person in today’s world. In the US, you have, for the most part, a lower chance at economic stability, home ownership, and retirement, than the older generation. At the same time, you also have a much higher chance of having no privacy whatsoever, of employers being able to glean your political leanings, of depending on the Internet for your sense of self.

Anyway, below are some random things I have enjoyed in the past few months, and which I recommend:

1. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. I came across this book far too late, but it is truly stunning, slim, unputdownable.

2. Derek Walcott’s poetry. Midsummer is a good, and seasonally appropriate, introduction.

3. The farmer’s market in Union Square, New York, where I got a jar of kimchi at Lani’s Farms, that I finished within 24 hours. The peaches there were summer distilled into soft, bruised perfection.

4. This Portuguese cheese, called queso amanteigado after manteiga, Portuguese for butter because it is less cheese and more a buttery, oozy, gooey spread. You’ll likely never find at a supermarket, but if you ever do, please, please buy it. Life-changing.

5. This old recitation of a Noon Meem Rashid poem by Zia Mohyeddin.

Wishing you all a happy summer.

Dure