A week and a half ago, without much forethought and for no particular reason, I said goodbye to my last social media account. It's never been unusual for me to leave social media behind, but generally I'm leaving one place for another. This time, I left explicitly because there was nowhere left for me to go. (The only places you'll find me, going forward, are places I've helped build myself.)
People always seem a little jarred when I say my abrupt farewells. A lot of people, I think, are used to lingering: they stay in a place out of habit, until that habit slowly fades. When people do leave, they have some sort of plan in mind: a trajectory, a formal departure. Or they leave out of rage, frustration, and shame, which I do my best to avoid.
For me, it's always felt important that I don't leave according to any kind of plan. A planned departure is a social gesture. I don't leave places behind to be social: I leave them because it matters to me that my presence is mine. I can, at any time of my choosing, stop being seen. Just as, when I want to be seen, I'd rather make myself be seen than wait passively for somebody to notice.
Call it a performer's habit. I love the spotlight; I love being the center of attention. But I also love that, when you slip off-stage into the wings, you're gone: there is a clear line demarcating "visible" and "invisible," and the invisibility is as intoxicating as the visibility is.
Or how about this:
The first time I dropped acid was with a handful of theatre students in college. We wound up on the streets of Philadelphia somewhat late at night, several neighborhoods away from our own, for no particular reason, and perched in a particular park, talking loudly and carelessly amongst ourselves. All at once, we became abruptly aware that we were being watched, and by a particularly large group; it took a minute for us to realize that it was a ghost tour, and that we'd parked up at one of the city's more famous haunts. There they were, looking for a slice of history, and here we were, a bramble of uncouth locals treating the park like it was ours, because it was.
On another day, and under a different kind of influence, I'm sure that we would have politely excused ourselves, apologized even. On that particular night, though, we were just amused: amused by the awkward shuffling among the tourists, amused by the tour guide's attempt to keep his patter going over the sounds of five or so people unconcernedly existing in the space. We didn't feel observed—we were the observers. What they saw and thought and felt about us was none of our concern. They were our audience that night, and not the other way around.
It dawned on me that we were the ghosts that night, haunting that park by sheer happenstance. We, five strangers, had chanced upon their tour, inflected ourselves upon the mood and the intent of their evening, causing a mild, cheery ruckus (as certain ghosts are wont to do). And it struck me for perhaps the first time that this is often what people are to one another: we think of society as a permanent, long-lasting, intentionally-constructed thing, and think of our actions and behaviors as if we're pressing handprints into wet concrete—our slightest gesture etched into onlookers' minds forever, their judgments of us formed once and for all—when in fact we pass over and across one another like weather fronts, at once present and vaporlike, there one moment and gone the next. Nobody on that tour remembers this story; few of them remembered us five minutes after we had left, let alone fifteen. For a brief moment, we were accidental, unwanted stars of their show, and then we faded into the night and were forever gone.
I am passionate about forming community, about shaping community, about thinking of ourselves in terms of community. I found happiness, as many do, when I stopped trying to define myself in isolation, stopped thinking of myself as an individual, and started thinking of myself in terms of my relationships with others. I am more myself when I am connected to other people, not less. And I define the quality of my relationships by just how much the people in my life help me become who I am clearly meant to be.
But there's a flip side to that: if we stop thinking of ourselves as isolated individuals, the locus of our agency shifts, too. We begin to choose, not who we are, but where we are. We choose, not what to become, but who to surround ourselves with. And as we let go of our anxious concerns about our own identity, we have to start paying attention to what our communities turn us into. If we allow ourselves to be what the world makes of us, it becomes our duty to be very careful about which worlds we decide to live in. We decide where to go and when to stay. And we decide, too, when to leave.
Ghosting, in digital parlance, is both understandably controversial and just plain understandable. We let people into our lives 24/7; we keep them with us in our pockets. How do you free yourselves of the vines that wrap around you, day in and day out, without turning each and every shift in a connection into a laborious chore? For some people, the answer is simple: you ghost. You vanish. And the beauty and horror of digital connection is that it really is that easy. Nobody can see you unless you speak. Keep your mouth shut, and you'll have departed from their lives forever. In an ocean of humanity, it really is that easy.
I'm not a fan of ghosting individuals. It happens, sometimes, because unfortunately I am tremendously popular and likable and I have a terrible habit of wanting to form deep intimate connections with everyone I meet. But I try my best to manage my connections healthily. I have been ghosted, and I know how disconcerting and unpleasant it can feel. And I can tell, when I vanish from somebody's life, how it affects them, and how unhappy it can be; I prefer not to make anybody feel that way, if I can help it.
But I am more than willing to ghost platforms. I leave Discord servers without a moment's hesitation. I walk away from entire social networks, no matter what connections I've formed there, no matter how much I feel like I belong. Because it's an insidious lie that social networking platforms are your community. Social networks are just interfaces, and they're toxic ones at that. They're tools for making yourself visible, and they're lenses for looking out at others, and they distort everything you do and everything you see, and the biggest distortion of all is this: you need to be here, your life starts here, your identity was formed here, you need to be seen, you must be seen, you will be seen, you are nothing if you are not seen. You need to look, you need to watch, you need to keep up, and looking means being looked at, existing means voicing yourself out loud. Your whole being is defined by the quantifiable validation others give you, which means that belonging to community is more-or-less the same as brand management; having a social life is fundamentally interchangeable with doing endless PR for yourself. The lie is: this is all real. The lie is: this all means something, whether you want it to or not.
People always seem a little jarred when I say my abrupt farewells. A lot of people, I think, are used to lingering: they stay in a place out of habit, until that habit slowly fades. When people do leave, they have some sort of plan in mind: a trajectory, a formal departure. Or they leave out of rage, frustration, and shame, which I do my best to avoid.
For me, it's always felt important that I don't leave according to any kind of plan. A planned departure is a social gesture. I don't leave places behind to be social: I leave them because it matters to me that my presence is mine. I can, at any time of my choosing, stop being seen. Just as, when I want to be seen, I'd rather make myself be seen than wait passively for somebody to notice.
Call it a performer's habit. I love the spotlight; I love being the center of attention. But I also love that, when you slip off-stage into the wings, you're gone: there is a clear line demarcating "visible" and "invisible," and the invisibility is as intoxicating as the visibility is.
Or how about this:
The first time I dropped acid was with a handful of theatre students in college. We wound up on the streets of Philadelphia somewhat late at night, several neighborhoods away from our own, for no particular reason, and perched in a particular park, talking loudly and carelessly amongst ourselves. All at once, we became abruptly aware that we were being watched, and by a particularly large group; it took a minute for us to realize that it was a ghost tour, and that we'd parked up at one of the city's more famous haunts. There they were, looking for a slice of history, and here we were, a bramble of uncouth locals treating the park like it was ours, because it was.
On another day, and under a different kind of influence, I'm sure that we would have politely excused ourselves, apologized even. On that particular night, though, we were just amused: amused by the awkward shuffling among the tourists, amused by the tour guide's attempt to keep his patter going over the sounds of five or so people unconcernedly existing in the space. We didn't feel observed—we were the observers. What they saw and thought and felt about us was none of our concern. They were our audience that night, and not the other way around.
It dawned on me that we were the ghosts that night, haunting that park by sheer happenstance. We, five strangers, had chanced upon their tour, inflected ourselves upon the mood and the intent of their evening, causing a mild, cheery ruckus (as certain ghosts are wont to do). And it struck me for perhaps the first time that this is often what people are to one another: we think of society as a permanent, long-lasting, intentionally-constructed thing, and think of our actions and behaviors as if we're pressing handprints into wet concrete—our slightest gesture etched into onlookers' minds forever, their judgments of us formed once and for all—when in fact we pass over and across one another like weather fronts, at once present and vaporlike, there one moment and gone the next. Nobody on that tour remembers this story; few of them remembered us five minutes after we had left, let alone fifteen. For a brief moment, we were accidental, unwanted stars of their show, and then we faded into the night and were forever gone.
I am passionate about forming community, about shaping community, about thinking of ourselves in terms of community. I found happiness, as many do, when I stopped trying to define myself in isolation, stopped thinking of myself as an individual, and started thinking of myself in terms of my relationships with others. I am more myself when I am connected to other people, not less. And I define the quality of my relationships by just how much the people in my life help me become who I am clearly meant to be.
But there's a flip side to that: if we stop thinking of ourselves as isolated individuals, the locus of our agency shifts, too. We begin to choose, not who we are, but where we are. We choose, not what to become, but who to surround ourselves with. And as we let go of our anxious concerns about our own identity, we have to start paying attention to what our communities turn us into. If we allow ourselves to be what the world makes of us, it becomes our duty to be very careful about which worlds we decide to live in. We decide where to go and when to stay. And we decide, too, when to leave.
Ghosting, in digital parlance, is both understandably controversial and just plain understandable. We let people into our lives 24/7; we keep them with us in our pockets. How do you free yourselves of the vines that wrap around you, day in and day out, without turning each and every shift in a connection into a laborious chore? For some people, the answer is simple: you ghost. You vanish. And the beauty and horror of digital connection is that it really is that easy. Nobody can see you unless you speak. Keep your mouth shut, and you'll have departed from their lives forever. In an ocean of humanity, it really is that easy.
I'm not a fan of ghosting individuals. It happens, sometimes, because unfortunately I am tremendously popular and likable and I have a terrible habit of wanting to form deep intimate connections with everyone I meet. But I try my best to manage my connections healthily. I have been ghosted, and I know how disconcerting and unpleasant it can feel. And I can tell, when I vanish from somebody's life, how it affects them, and how unhappy it can be; I prefer not to make anybody feel that way, if I can help it.
But I am more than willing to ghost platforms. I leave Discord servers without a moment's hesitation. I walk away from entire social networks, no matter what connections I've formed there, no matter how much I feel like I belong. Because it's an insidious lie that social networking platforms are your community. Social networks are just interfaces, and they're toxic ones at that. They're tools for making yourself visible, and they're lenses for looking out at others, and they distort everything you do and everything you see, and the biggest distortion of all is this: you need to be here, your life starts here, your identity was formed here, you need to be seen, you must be seen, you will be seen, you are nothing if you are not seen. You need to look, you need to watch, you need to keep up, and looking means being looked at, existing means voicing yourself out loud. Your whole being is defined by the quantifiable validation others give you, which means that belonging to community is more-or-less the same as brand management; having a social life is fundamentally interchangeable with doing endless PR for yourself. The lie is: this is all real. The lie is: this all means something, whether you want it to or not.
And it's not that social media never means something. But it means something in the same way that we pass over other people's lives: it means something in the same way that cloud fronts are a part of where we live. That cumulonimbus drifting overhead is not your home. Rainstorms only get you wet if you let yourself stay outside. On social media, we are all ghosts. That's delightful when you let yourself enjoy the merriment and trickery of being everybody else's haunting; it's when you start to crave being real, being definite, that you start to go insane. Because you're less real on social media than you are when you're drifting through a city in the middle of the night. The moment you stop talking, you disappear for good. The only way to keep alive online is to never stop talking. And that's a kind of hell, whether or not you realize it.
(Not for nothing did Samuel Beckett repeatedly depict hell as a place where the damned are never allowed to stop talking—tormenting themselves, not only with their own existence, but with their incessant need to make themselves exist.)
For a long time, I've been fascinated by Gotye, whose hit song "Somebody I Used to Know" was unavoidable back in 2011 or 2012 or so. After his success, Gotye—real name Wally De Backer—did the sanest and most ethical thing he could possibly do: he vanished. I forget when I decided to hunt down what De Backer had gotten up to in the years since his success, but I was delighted when I found my answer: he'd been playing with a local Australian band, making music, playing shows where he lived, having a great time. He wasn't hiding, exactly—his band put up videos of their live shows—but each video got maybe a few thousand views apiece. Even today, where they've somewhat surged in popularity, they have maybe ten times that. This man released a song that got played literally billions of times, and just a couple of years later, he was making music so "anonymously" (by which I mean "under his actual name") that most of the comments on YouTube were from locals who'd seen him play at the pub.
As somewhat of a crank, I'd already appreciated Gotye for keeping me from having to hear about him, ever. (Would that Hozier would do the same.) Learning that he'd disappeared, not to hide away, but to play music and live locally... that filled me with such admiration for the man, such quiet respect. This was something he'd done, not just for everybody else, but for himself. He won himself a Grammy, then removed himself from the stage. He found a stage more to his liking, and then he stayed there, and the rest of us stayed here, and everyone left happy. Wikipedia claims that he's working on a new album, but those claims are dated 2018; perversely, and selfishly, I hope a follow-up never surfaces.
Friends and I were joking the other day about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce going to a 4-H fair together, arguing about which one of them would be winning stuffed animals for the other at ring toss. The punchline was, of course Taylor Swift would never go to a 4-H fair. She couldn't even if she wanted to. The way she lives her life, the way she manages herself as a brand, comes at the cost of her ever being able to attend a small-town fair without immediately changing the timbre of the entire event. Her stage travels with her, no matter where she goes. She could leave that stage, if she wanted to, but she doesn't, or at least she hasn't. Because changing over to another stage would mean leaving this one behind, and she doesn't want that. She can have something close to everything, but she's not allowed to have it both ways. She can't be there so long as she's here.
That's the invisible trade-off that we all face, whether we realize it or not: we can't be here and there at the same time. We can let go of caring who we are, but it will always be up to us to choose where to be.
Where I am is who I am. And it matters to me that, when I move from one place to another—or from one place to nowhere at all—that choice is for me and for me alone. It's not for other people, and it's not even because of them, not exactly. It's simply a matter of situating myself. People would find it less jarring, I think, if more people saw themselves and the world this way. The people who do see things this way are the ones who struggle to understand why anyone else would matter. (If they see me depart at all, that is, and few of them stay in one place long enough to notice in the first place.)
I may complain about the Internet, but I like it. I like the digital world and its endless potential, its ability to mutate into virtually anything. I like belonging to it, a fluid and amorphous spirit traveling here and there on a whim. I like drawing attention to myself, I like building community, and I like forming meaningful connections with people. I like mattering to people. Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? Why else would I use social media to begin with?
But that endless potential shrinks down awfully quickly, the moment you let yourself be contained to a single place. TikTok really isn't the infinity it claims to me. No social network is. They're all constraints, shuttering out most of the world, restricting you to a pinhole. In the olden days, people told stories about ghosts who got trapped within physical objects, constrained to a physical body in ways they resented and grew violently angry at, longing for the freedom of immateriality.
Nowadays, I think we get trapped within apps, within social networks. This world is new enough to us that we don't realize what's happening, but we feel it just the same. We yearn to be freed from our imprisonment. We just don't understand what's imprisoning us, because we've fully bought into the lie that identity and location are one and the same.
Who are we, if we're not here? That's the question we ask ourselves, whether we realize we're asking it or not. But whether we ask it with dread or delight is up to us.
I will, I hope, be sharing news very soon about where I intend to be next. In the meantime, I exist here, writing silently, being read silently, without quantifications or responses of any kind. Just a voice in a void, a spirit dwelling in a home that's the shape and size of exactly one person. When I'm not here, you'll find me nowhere. What a thought. What a lovely, lovely idea.
(Not for nothing did Samuel Beckett repeatedly depict hell as a place where the damned are never allowed to stop talking—tormenting themselves, not only with their own existence, but with their incessant need to make themselves exist.)
For a long time, I've been fascinated by Gotye, whose hit song "Somebody I Used to Know" was unavoidable back in 2011 or 2012 or so. After his success, Gotye—real name Wally De Backer—did the sanest and most ethical thing he could possibly do: he vanished. I forget when I decided to hunt down what De Backer had gotten up to in the years since his success, but I was delighted when I found my answer: he'd been playing with a local Australian band, making music, playing shows where he lived, having a great time. He wasn't hiding, exactly—his band put up videos of their live shows—but each video got maybe a few thousand views apiece. Even today, where they've somewhat surged in popularity, they have maybe ten times that. This man released a song that got played literally billions of times, and just a couple of years later, he was making music so "anonymously" (by which I mean "under his actual name") that most of the comments on YouTube were from locals who'd seen him play at the pub.
As somewhat of a crank, I'd already appreciated Gotye for keeping me from having to hear about him, ever. (Would that Hozier would do the same.) Learning that he'd disappeared, not to hide away, but to play music and live locally... that filled me with such admiration for the man, such quiet respect. This was something he'd done, not just for everybody else, but for himself. He won himself a Grammy, then removed himself from the stage. He found a stage more to his liking, and then he stayed there, and the rest of us stayed here, and everyone left happy. Wikipedia claims that he's working on a new album, but those claims are dated 2018; perversely, and selfishly, I hope a follow-up never surfaces.
Friends and I were joking the other day about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce going to a 4-H fair together, arguing about which one of them would be winning stuffed animals for the other at ring toss. The punchline was, of course Taylor Swift would never go to a 4-H fair. She couldn't even if she wanted to. The way she lives her life, the way she manages herself as a brand, comes at the cost of her ever being able to attend a small-town fair without immediately changing the timbre of the entire event. Her stage travels with her, no matter where she goes. She could leave that stage, if she wanted to, but she doesn't, or at least she hasn't. Because changing over to another stage would mean leaving this one behind, and she doesn't want that. She can have something close to everything, but she's not allowed to have it both ways. She can't be there so long as she's here.
That's the invisible trade-off that we all face, whether we realize it or not: we can't be here and there at the same time. We can let go of caring who we are, but it will always be up to us to choose where to be.
Where I am is who I am. And it matters to me that, when I move from one place to another—or from one place to nowhere at all—that choice is for me and for me alone. It's not for other people, and it's not even because of them, not exactly. It's simply a matter of situating myself. People would find it less jarring, I think, if more people saw themselves and the world this way. The people who do see things this way are the ones who struggle to understand why anyone else would matter. (If they see me depart at all, that is, and few of them stay in one place long enough to notice in the first place.)
I may complain about the Internet, but I like it. I like the digital world and its endless potential, its ability to mutate into virtually anything. I like belonging to it, a fluid and amorphous spirit traveling here and there on a whim. I like drawing attention to myself, I like building community, and I like forming meaningful connections with people. I like mattering to people. Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? Why else would I use social media to begin with?
But that endless potential shrinks down awfully quickly, the moment you let yourself be contained to a single place. TikTok really isn't the infinity it claims to me. No social network is. They're all constraints, shuttering out most of the world, restricting you to a pinhole. In the olden days, people told stories about ghosts who got trapped within physical objects, constrained to a physical body in ways they resented and grew violently angry at, longing for the freedom of immateriality.
Nowadays, I think we get trapped within apps, within social networks. This world is new enough to us that we don't realize what's happening, but we feel it just the same. We yearn to be freed from our imprisonment. We just don't understand what's imprisoning us, because we've fully bought into the lie that identity and location are one and the same.
Who are we, if we're not here? That's the question we ask ourselves, whether we realize we're asking it or not. But whether we ask it with dread or delight is up to us.
I will, I hope, be sharing news very soon about where I intend to be next. In the meantime, I exist here, writing silently, being read silently, without quantifications or responses of any kind. Just a voice in a void, a spirit dwelling in a home that's the shape and size of exactly one person. When I'm not here, you'll find me nowhere. What a thought. What a lovely, lovely idea.