Unfinished Conversations

My building staircase landing has a huge window, which means GREAT lighting. And because there’s a window, there’s a ledge. And because there’s a ledge, there’s the perfect spot for placing your phone to take a self-timer picture of yourself. Or as social scientists call it, a selfie.

What other purpose do ledges serve, if not for resting your phone to take a picture? Did the great architects of yore foresee this modern use? I bet they did.

I can’t disclose the location of this perfect staircase with the perfect ledge because I don’t want crowds of people showing up to my spot. I love the fact that nobody is usually around – EXCEPT ON THIS ONE DAY OMG!!!!

Here’s the context, y’all know I’m a big context girlie: I was leaving the house to go for a party. It’s not often that I go out without my daughter, which means on the occasion that I do, I like to make it worth my while by wearing insanely luxurious things – like earrings and a little bag.

I got dressed up and thought I looked great, so naturally, I wanted to take a picture, and good thing I knew just the spot.

BUT THEN SOMEONE WALKED BY.

First of all, how dare they!!!! Second of all, the nerve!!

They saw me standing there on the steps. They put two-and-two together and figured I was posing for a picture. And in a microsecond, they pretended they didn’t see anything and forgot all about it and ran away past me.

I had to run away in the same direction but FIRST I had to go get my phone off the ledge, while doing everything in my power not to jump off said ledge because it would accomplish NOTHING apart from further embarrassment. I don’t live on a very high floor and I’d at most just sprain my ankle.

So basically, we did what normal awkward people do.

We BOTH ran away from each other at the speed of light, avoiding all forms of eye contact. I was still shaky when I got into my car; my face was hot. I couldn’t even bring myself to check if the pictures turned out good or not. (side note: they were good but definitely not worth the pain)

The whole experience was terrible.

Should I move house? I don’t know the answer to that, but what I DO know is that I will never, ever recover.

Why is it such an awful experience?

Have you ever been caught taking a selfie? If so, how are you?
How are you, really?

I’ve been trying to figure out why someone seeing you take a selfie is so mortifying, and I’ve developed a few working theories that I’d like to share with you.

Okay, so in my opinion, seeing someone take a selfie feels a bit like you’re seeing something you shouldn’t. It feels like walking in on someone getting dressed because you’re catching a glimpse of someone’s prep time before they put on their public face.

Like with a selfie: You know that eventually they might post it for thousands of people to see, or at least share it with ONE other person, but the act of taking the selfie, somehow, is private.

Witnessing a person taking a selfie is something that sits uncomfortably in the space of private and public – smack dab in between. We don’t know how to categorize it, and so we file it under ‘weird’.

When you lock eyes with someone as they’re taking a selfie, it’s weird because you acknowledge that they’ve turned a public space into a personal, private one. Just like I turned a public staircase into a personal stage for my own vanity.

Am I an influencer in the wild?

I assume you’ve heard of the Instagram account, and if you haven’t, hi welcome to the internet, it’s NOT a nice place, pls turn around now.

Influencers in the Wild is a legendary Instagram account started by Tank Sinatra (not his real name obviously) that gained 1.5 MILLION followers in a MONTH. Today, the account has almost 5 million followers.

It pokes fun at influencers doing their job – in particular, shooting content in public spaces. It’s usually embarrassing, cringey content; but that’s not the point.

I definitely get the appeal of the premise of ‘Influencers in the wild.’ It gives us regular folks a legitimate way to snark at beautiful sexy people that act terribly in public. It’s a case of ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes.’

We can sit back and look at the ridiculous footage of people acting completely bizarre in the ‘wild’ for the camera and say: “hahahahahah how pathetic” while we simultaneously consume the content that we mock them for creating, all the while gladly giving them our $$$ in the form of attention, likes, and actual $$$.

Internet culture critic, Kate Lindsay, wrote a brilliant take on this called “InfluencersInTheWild has overstayed its welcome” where she says:

“Most of the videos shared show women in minimal clothing getting their pictures taken, resulting in comment sections filled with STD and rape jokes, along with the overarching sentiment that all of these people are responsible for the supposed downfall of our society.“

“Perhaps the most ludicrous part of this account is that all of these commenters, who had to be using social media to see these posts, are happily consuming the fruits of the labor they’re so quick to mock.”

The disproportionate hate and vitriol that you see in the comment section of any of the video submissions on this account will have you wondering why people get THAT worked up over it.

Now I agree, there are definitely ways to ‘shoot content’ in public, and ways you probably shouldn’t. I’m not trying to justify crazy behavior. That isn’t the point I’m trying to make. I like living in an ordered society too.

I’m just asking us to examine our reactions a little more closely.

In all likelihood, if we had only seen the finished product – whether it’s the photo or video they were aiming to shoot – and if we hadn’t had a chance to peek behind-the-scenes at how the photo or video came to be, we simply wouldn’t have thought about it all that much. We might’ve just scrolled on by.

We wouldn’t have thought to insult the content creator, or cringe at them. We just wouldn’t have gotten THAT worked up. So why do we react differently when we see content being made?

Is all of this just an attempt to shake off the awkwardness of getting caught taking a selfie?

Yes, but –

Let’s go a little further, shall we? Let’s leap off the ledge, shall we, and hope our ankles survive.

I found an interesting thought by a philosopher called Alasdair MacIntyre.

MacIntyre says that humans are inherently narrative beings. This means that we make sense of our actions, choices, and experiences by embedding them in a storyline. This narrative framework helps us understand who we are, and guides us in determining what we should do.

MacIntyre says that this mechanism isn’t a choice, but a necessity. And I agree.

One of MacIntyre’s key arguments is that we cannot understand ourselves outside of the narratives we inhabit. Our lives are like unfolding stories, and how we understand ourselves and our roles in society, is deeply rooted in these stories.

He suggests that this narrative structure is essential for moral reasoning. By viewing our lives as narratives, we gain the ability to evaluate our actions and decisions within the context of a larger story, rather than in isolation.

Most importantly, when we are constantly putting together coherent narratives, it isn’t just so that we can make sense of ourselves, but it’s also so that others can make sense of us.

What he’s saying is that we essentially construct a public figure of ourselves, and that’s how we want to be perceived and represented. MacIntyre calls this self-presentation.

It’s the process by which we select aspects of our lives that we want to present to others, and what we choose to keep private. The private stuff isn’t private and hidden because we deem it shameful, but because we decide that it doesn’t contribute to our self-presentation.

While writing this blog, I decided to upload the staircase picture on Instagram. The one that someone walked in on me taking. But I’m leaving that embarrassing detail out of the caption.

I’m instead talking about how cool it was that I went out, and I’m drawing attention to my nice little outfit. I’ve clearly left some details out of this self-presentation. None of the people that like or comment on this picture will know the backstory.

Again, not because it’s shameful (lol who am I kidding tho it is so so shameful) but because I’ve decided that it doesn’t contribute to my self-presentation.

When someone caught me in the act of taking a selfie, they were witnessing a part of my story that I usually keep hidden: The behind-the-scenes of my self-presentation. Someone got a peek at the mechanisms of my personal story-making, and it felt jarring.

THAT’S why it felt jarring.

Ahh. I finally got there.

The problem we have today that we didn’t have when MacIntyre wrote about this whole self-presentation-narrative thing is this: Social media.

Social media has given us many, many, MANY more tools for self-presentation. Omnipresent and powerful tools. If controlling what we show others is an inevitable human urge, social media is only an explosion of the means to satisfy that urge.

I don’t have any advice for navigating this dilemma.

Personally, I think it just helps me keep in mind how I present myself, both online and in real life. I’m paying more attention to the things I leave out of my self-presentation, and why. I’m paying more attention to whose attention I want; and whose attention I celebrate.

And I’m definitely paying more attention to who’s walking by when I take a selfie.

If you enjoyed this essay, you have two people to thank

1. Not me.
2. And not the selfie-interrupting-stranger.

I met two people at the party I was headed to (pls note, I never normally write about the people I meet and interact with in real-time, especially not in such specific ways) BUT – they asked for it.

Kinda, sorta.

So I was hanging out with these two people at the party and we were all having a good time, enjoying ourselves, haha-fun-times, the usual – and then I said something mildly silly.

I obviously felt a little embarrassed about it (god that day really wasn’t my best work), and they were like, “Oh are you going to write about this in your blog,” to which I was like:

Well of course I am!!!

I didn’t tell them that I have a whole pipeline of blogs in the works. I didn’t tell them that I usually ruminate on ideas for weeks, sometimes months, before any of them see the light of day.

I didn’t tell them that because that would be dorky, and in case you forgot, I was pretty much maxxed out in that regard.

So, I had to keep my word and write about it, and THAT’S how we got here.

The thing is, I didn’t feel bad about making a fool of myself in front of these two people. It was very different. Embarrassment, in its essence, is a social emotion. And because we all had the chance to laugh about it together, there was very little to be anxious about later.

It got me thinking about why my staircase crisis felt so much weirder.

I think it’s because I had no opportunity to connect at a human-level over the vulnerability of that embarrassing moment. Instead, I was left with a banger picture of myself, and a new, deeper understanding of the unfiltered truth of our human condition. I was left with a painful reminder that we are all fallible, all prone to error. And that sometimes, all we can do is just cringe, avoid eye contact, and run away. Really, really fast.

And hope that you eventually meet two nice people at a party who can help you laugh at yourself.