must we document everything?
Why has everything become so performative?
There seems to be this peculiar compulsion now to make our lives observable. To go somewhere beautiful is one thing, but to be seen going somewhere beautiful is another. A hobby is hardly just a hobby anymore. A dinner, a book, a quiet afternoon, a trip.. somehow they all become announcements.
Surely an experience does not become more valuable because other people know it happened.
And yet we document incessantly. We curate. We provide evidence. Even leisure has acquired an audience.
There is something almost absurd about going somewhere to enjoy ourselves, only to spend half the time constructing proof that we enjoyed ourselves. Taking the picture, choosing the picture, deciding what to say about the picture. At some point the experience itself becomes secondary to its presentation.
I wonder if we’ve grown so accustomed to being perceived that doing something privately now feels almost incomplete. As though enjoyment needs witnesses to certify that it was, in fact, enjoyable.
And what an exhausting way to live, really.
To not only have a life, but to constantly maintain the appearance of having one.
Because once everything becomes something to display, even sincerity gets a little complicated. Are we reading because we like the book, or because we like being someone who reads? Are we traveling because we want to see the place, or because we like what having been there says about us?
Probably both, sometimes. Human beings have always cared about being perceived. This is hardly a new invention.
But I do think we have become exceptionally good at turning ordinary existence into a kind of exhibition.
Whatever happened to simply having a nice time?
To going somewhere, seeing something beautiful, laughing until your stomach hurts, and allowing the whole thing to disappear without documentation.
No announcement. No evidence. Nobody else even has to know.
Just a life being lived by the person actually living it.
There’s something almost luxurious about that now.