The Death of Nuance: The Instagram Files
Straight guy posts picture of Trump’s fat ass in white shorts
Caption: Worst president in history lookin’ thick as a malted
Reality: If that back was on a woman I may have followed her down the street, but only for a block. Come on, I’m not a creep! TBH, his tax cuts have been helping my small business, but I can’t tell my friends that. They'll think I like him, when really I just like the tax cut.
Girl posts PICTURe of friend’s bachelorette trip
Caption: Best trip ever!!!!
Reality: Saturday on the boat was the most fun I’ve had in a while, but if I had to hear Gwen talk about how being a cat person informs her identity one more time, I may have jumped ship. And was the brunch on Sunday really necessary? I mean, at that point everyone is hungover and in their heads about getting home. Just get bagels to go and be done with it. Casual $1000 trip + 3 new outfits from Revolve = can't really make my rent this month, but like, que sera?
GIRL POSTS PICTURE OUT POST-BREAK UP WITH RAP LYRIC CAPTIOn
Caption: I only love my bed and my mama I'm sorry
Reality: That man child is on the rebound posting those cryptic Insta stories and thinks I'm all bent out of shape. I'll show him. What respectable dude posts multiple times a week anyway? Unless you're Drake, of course. Ima give 'em hell with Revenge Body a la Khloe. Prayers she dumps Tristan. Prayers I swipe right on a good human.
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Nuance has died, so let’s have a funeral.
Nuance requests tea lights, an organ and a floral wreath made of mums and white roses. Then it would like a proper shiva, because nuance has no ties to any religious denomination and would like you to spend at least a week thinking about it.
Nuance lived a long and fruitful life until around 2008, when it began its slow demise into irrelevancy. It was 2017 when Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram completely annihilated nuance and opted for convenience. Poor nuance just couldn’t stand a chance when met with the dwindling attention spans of its interpreters who wish to see, read, and hear everything all at once.
It seems we have two options: black or white. There’s simply no time for color. It's the best! It's the worst! She's the best! He's the worst! There's nothing in between. I suppose this extremism of opinion is for the sake of brevity. Or maybe out of fear or image-cultivation. Or maybe it's really what you think, but it usually feels half-baked/provincial.
It's understandable to want to project a certain image online, which comes along with fabrication and exaggeration, but it's tiring to ingest. We've all done it, we all do it, but that doesn't mean I can't call it out or at least bring it to light. Especially in the wake of skyrocketing mental illness and the horror stories of last week, it just can't hurt to be more honest in your representation. Maybe just one self-deprecating post will do. I know I'm sort of jumping topics here, but this is just a blog and these are just free-roaming thoughts! You connect the dots. :) :)
On another note, sadly, I’d rather scroll through my Twitter feed to superficially digest the opinion’s of the 1,500 people I follow rather than read your article that takes me 20 minutes to understand that considerately captures the sensitivities of most subjects. I just have to make it through the entire feed until I get to the last tweet I read prior, or my OCD will kick in and I’ll feel like I missed out on some pseudo-authority's opinion on an article that hasn't been fact-checked! Or maybe the greatest trip of all time this girl I know from camp went on with five other girls, which means it really couldn’t be the greatest trip! You know someone must've taken 2 hours to get dressed for dinner every night, or another girl forgot her passport, or got food poisoning and it was sort of hilarious and awful all at the same time. No one seems to be "here for" a slightly contradictory, contemplative perspective. It takes too long. Sometimes longer than it takes for my Seamless driver to make its way to my apartment, and that’s pretty fucking long. 40 minutes to an hour, to be exact.
If we’re talking ice cream, we're looking at chocolate or vanilla. To take this ice cream metaphor as an example of our bland cultural discourse a step further, I’d say we’re in the realm of plain old Haagen-Dazs when really, we need to embrace the textured flavors of Ben & Jerry’s. We’ve forgotten all about the double chocolate chip with cookie dough and fudge that you find gloriously layered in the middle. And the walnuts! Oh, the walnuts. How can we neglect those?