Theresa Sauter’s article "
What's on Your Mind?: Writing on Facebook as a Tool for Self Formation" forced me to understand that self-writing – what I think to be a meditative, exploratory, and ‘unplugged’ practice of mine – is inextricably connected to technology and social media. Where historically self-writing and journaling were part of the private place, these practices have evolved into the public digitized space.
Writing has always been my form of self-expression: as a girl who can’t sing, quit piano, was never into sports, had a brief stint in drama, and has limited, emphasis on the limited, artistic ability… I always found myself coming back to writing as a form of self-expression. And while I did try out for field hockey, it was only for the cute outfit.
My experience with journaling, story-telling, and now publishing has for a long time been in the making. While I pride myself on being a highly self-aware person, writing has been a true vessel for my own self formation and conceptualization.
Sauter writes: “the use of online social networking sites (SNSs) has technologized this age-old practice of self formation”. As the digital encroaches on our everyday activities – we express who we are and curate our identities on public platforms of SNSs.
To examine an early digitized form of self-writing, I will point to none other than Carrie Bradshaw, the loved and glamourized narrator of HBO’s television series
Sex and the City. I do love imagining myself as the character of Carrie, especially right now — as I channel my inner columnist to write a blog post. Carrie’s writing was based on exploring her own life, relationships, and identity. Her iconic line, "
I couldn't help but wonder", communicated a form of self-writing that became public in a world that was tilting full speed towards tech. The 90’s and early 2000’s saw this initial shift in self-writing practices and tools.
As Sauter describes, writing for self-formation is increasingly translated onto SNSs like Facebook and Instagram. Sauter articulates how this transformation of self-writing tools only grew more digitized with time. MySpace launched in 2003, followed by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram – all sites that today, partly function as extensions for ‘self’.
Last semester I kept a gratitude journal to help get myself through a year of pandemic and isolation. I am not using FB to vent, confess, or self-improve. Instead, my self-formation lives in the visual space of Instagram and vsco. Self-expressions in public and vulnerable place have their inherent challenges. Identity formation may be skewed, open to scrutiny, or judgment.
From my own personal experiences and observations, self-writing and visual material on SNS’s are heavily policed by normative and oppressive ideals that perpetuate false realities and deception. User’s don’t engage with social media platforms like Instagram to create a digital diary that forms and aligns with the self any longer. Instead self-formation is repeatedly distorted, perfected, or skewed.
When I open my phone and scroll, I notice that these so called "self-technologies" have been largely reduced to visuals rather than words (Sauter). Take a look at Instagram captions: they have shrunken from sentences to single words to emojis. Is it the case that emoji’s are the new self-writing? I hope not.
Im not exactly confident that writing is a tool for self-formation when our words are limited to 150 characters. Where does self writing begin and grow when words are limited to 40 characters? Or swapped out for emojis?
I couldn't help but wonder: if diminutive and diminishing expressions are so widespread among young adult and other social media users... what does that say about our fragile forming selves?
Signing off.
Advanced Meh.
References
Sauter, Theresa. “What’s on Your Mind?: Writing on Facebook as a Tool for Self-Formation.” Journal of New Media & Society 16, no. 5 (2014): 823-839.
Images
"Instagram Photos"
Instagram,
Instagram.com.
"List of Emotions I Actually Feel"
Pinterest,
pinterest.ca.