THE UNBERABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING AN ATTENTION WHORE ON THE INTERNET

OF ALL THE MENTAL-UNRAVELING in life right now, the most enthralling has to be how chaotically horny everything has suddenly become. While self-isolating, the world seems to currently be obsessed with sharing their most intimate parts with significant others and social media followers alike. I suppose when you can’t physically see or feel someone, sharing selfies, sexts and risqué videos is the closest thing we have to skin-to-skin contact and maintaining a spark. If you are single, you probably have never felt more single in your life. Without physical contact with literally anyone, it makes sense that these unprecedented times will most likely inspire some form of sexual exploration within all of us.

Honestly, I have been pretty fucking bored and horny during quarantine. We are overwhelmed by so much self-affirmation and bad bitch content out there that it almost makes it wrong to admit or allow yourself to feel lonely – even during an isolating global pandemic. It is one of the most perplexing paradoxes of modern society as well, how despite technology bolstering our ways of communicating, loneliness is still one of the leading causes of mental illness. Right now, people are documenting everything. Creativity and Individuality are being prized more than ever- but weirdly enough we haven’t learned to celebrate our time alone as part of it. Instead, capturing our lives for content somehowvalidates they are valuable and what would be perceived as intrusive has become inclusive.

I understand that reading this, I must sound like a bit of a hypocrite. I mean, you are reading my unsolicited thoughts – on a blog! But I have a love-hate relationship with self-publishing my life and musings on the internet. It often occurs to me that because of how personal the work is, people can only relate to it through me as an individual and I hate that. The idea also fascinates me though. That despite it all, I am as much an attention whoring exhibitionist as the rest of humanity. The notion of privilege of freedom of speech and what people can and cannot say if they haven’t gone through enough shit in life to be able to commiserate, is a fucking disease.

In the last decade, the whole like, favorite, retweet, comment culture has only revealed how deep people’s need for validation is. While the psychological need for validation pre-dates social media, new technology has just become a channel or conduit for validation that didn’t exist before. Whether we like to admit it or not, we really are alone all the time. You wake up alone, no matter how many people might be waking up next near you or texting you good morning.You read tweets alone and think alone. Behind the online performative irony and projected image is just you. So, when we are forced to confront that quieter, more vulnerable side of ourselves, it can be pretty horrific.