Writing Memoirs - You're Doing It Too
At a wedding where I hardly know the bride or the groom, I am introduced to a hundred (or what feels like a hundred to me) people. I take pictures of the stunning venue. But the aesthetics – the claustrophobia that I do not have, triggered by the sound of the friction of gold and gold imitation jewels that I do not care for, bored people revealing too much of themselves to people they hope they will never see again, a colorful blur – is not captured completely until I take a Snapchat video of my surroundings. It will be on my Instagram too by the time I get back home.
I was there, and I was not impressed.
When we go through social media profiles, most of us are met with the sensation that we are being presented a sort of decorated wall – impersonal, polished, and only bearing the things the person wants us to see about their lives, all their achievements in the right lighting and none of their flaws. Concerned critique floats around – on other social media platforms, ironically – that being so obsessed about the image we present to the world is making us more and more anti-social and vain. The phrase “this generation” is thrown around haphazardly, painting people with almost immaculate social media profiles into some laughable parody of Cruella de Vil.
While many a “concerned” adult will corner us with a “you kids, always on your mobile phones” the minute we even look at them (and maybe for some of us, this comment is well-warranted), an angle these critics may not be looking at is the sentimental side of it all. Here I am, in my happiest moments, in the best light, sharing all of this with you leaving it behind someplace that will outlast us all. I want to be seen. When I am gone, I want to be known.
Recently, Facebook has developed a method to memorialise accounts that belong to the deceased, as a sort of long tribute to these people, displaying their best posts for anyone who wants to come and visit their page. Facebook, and other social media of course, are means to stay connected in an increasingly disconnected world. Rather than the superficial values one may think social media present and seem to promote, they are only a means of remaining in each other's lives beyond time, distance and at this point, planes.
They are kind of like memoirs. Kind of.
According to Wikipedia, the word “memoir” comes from the French word mémoire: memoria, meaning memory or reminiscence, and the difference of memoir from autobiography is due to the fact that autobiographies are known as “the story of a life”, whilst memoirs tell “stories from a life”. It is the same game we have learned to play with our audience on all the social media platforms, the art of hide and seek.
Social media allows us to create a window into our lives for people we want to keep on the outside. Why we want to create a window to begin with, is different for each individual – but for some it is truly an act of compulsive happiness – here are my best moments, for all.