Come one, come all, and witness magic!
Okay, it is not actually magic, it is a confessional monologue. There is no more “behind the curtain”. We wear our manifestos with filters on. Everyone’s got one now, equipped with a ring light, trembling voice and hashtags that hiss their traumatic backstories (and hopeful redemption arcs!)
Once upon a time we wrote diaries with aluminium locks with keys we always lost.
We have “evolved” into a public exfoliation of guilt where the pores never close.
Something akin to theatre wearing therapy’s face.
We keep posting until our trauma has a marketing plan.
We remix pain with ring-light confessionals and call it “healing content.”
We curate our ruin like it is an aesthetic.
You can almost hear the latte foam deflating between sentences.
When every paragraph beings with “I”, (“I am ashamed”, “I have lied.” “I am the Flying Spaghetti Monster.”) we become fluent in a language that never asks for forgiveness – just likes, hearts and comments that tells us how proud of our growth a user in Kansas is. We bartered human touch for USB ports plugging in our shame for downloaded sympathy and we call it connection.
We used to cry in the bathrooms, snotty Blair Witch Style. Now we film it in 4K and live-tweet our breakdowns praying to trend before we have a serotonin crash. Healing does not live in the comments. Forgiveness does not arrive in your inbox. Redemption is not a snap away. And you cannot download intimacy no matter how many cloud upgrades you have.
The espresso and the adderall are going to wear off (and yeah I am raising my Thor’s Hammer as I type this because I am screaming from the choir). We are going to need to touch someone again. No filters. Skin to skin. Sans captions. The terrifying silence of real presence.
Here is to the oversharers (me), the delicious sinners (not so much me), and the spoken-word Patreon tiers – may we one day log off, unplug and remember how to hold a hand (or a conversation that did not require our thumbs).
