The other day, as I was having yet another internal battle with technological distractions, I found myself waxing nostalgic for what I perceived to be the day when I could “disappear completely.” That is to say, the “before-times” that people my age remember: before the internet, before email, before cell phones, etc. I’ve posted an embarrassing number of those memes about GenX myself; but I recognize the sad desperation behind posting those memes:
I am part of a generation evangelistically nostalgic for being able to disappear, while compulsively posting memes lamenting the fact that we were “invisible.” And, with every social media post, I’m attempting to feel “seen.”
Tragic irony? Poetic Justice?
[the above is a compilation of real PSAs that aired regularly in NY when I was a kid.]
Regardless, I think it captures an aspect of the love/hate relationship that all generations have with social media and other technologies purportedly designed to “connect” us. But I think that each generation is plagued by a different dimension of that relationship, and feels it in a different way. Each generation has a capacity for self-medicating on social media with memes for what is, essentially, a revisionist history.
I think we turn to those revisionist memories as a coping mechanism to the other extreme of always being available. Every generation on social media handles it differently, but the basic angst or trauma is still there. The truth of the matter is that, yes, there are certain aspects of our technological realities that require an online presence; but the extent to which we engage, and the depth of that engagement, is still completely our choice.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was confusing “invisibility” with the freedom that comes with setting aside connection itself. And as much as I thought that I really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I was embarrassed to realize that not only did I have a choice; but that the choice itself (whether or not I actually engaged it), was the product of deep privilege. I can choose not to be seen. I can blend very easily into the sea of white, male, cis/het hegemony with utter impunity. I can also pick up or let go of whatever social media platform I so choose, without my life literally depending on it.
Embracing not being seen can have darker implications, because we become accustomed to not just our own invisibility, but the invisibility of others -- or even worse -- rendering others invisible. But, more insidiously, it can make us resent the pain and experiences of those who do need our help, or who are fighting to be seen, and for their stories to be recognized. You know the ugliness of this phenomenon: you’ll hear certain older folks saying “I never saw any trans people when I was younger.” or “In my day, no one was whining about [insert social justice issue here].” When even a cursory gesture toward empathy would tell us that we didn’t “see them” because they were being oppressed, pushed aside, ignored, othered, and, in the extreme, were left to die or murdered.
The same people who tend to be so outraged by visibility of certain groups seem to feel that the visibility of others somehow eclipses or detracts from their own, as if visibility is a zero-sum game or commodity. I often wonder about what life would have been like if veterans of the Korean or Vietnam Wars had social media in their respective eras. Would they have felt as invisible as they did when returning from their tours, in deeply unknown or unpopular wars, feeling unseen and disposable? What would their posts have looked like? Would their parents think they were “needy,” “whiney,” or “high maintenance”? Would their parents have said, “back in my day, veterans didn’t need accolades to want to serve their countries” (even though the Greatest Generation continues to receive posthumous accolades).
And would the lost generation and their boomer successors be as quick to dismiss or erase the existence of other groups who don’t feel seen and wish to be?
I have a feeling that if we looked back a bit in old photo albums at pictures pre-1980, we’d find a group shot with a person just out of focus. or probably standing a little further away, or who is dressed a little differently than everyone else, or whose gender seemed a bit ambiguous. Were they a family member? A friend of one? Chances are their name was never written down on the back of the photo. Even though their image remains, they are still somehow erased. If there is a living relative who remembers them, they’ll have euphemistic ways of describing them. “Oh, that’s cousin so-and-so. He was odd. I remember him being very gentle, but kind of soft.” Or, “That’s great-aunt Betty’s friend from work” (even though great-aunt Betty lived with her “friend from work” and they went everywhere together).
Their lives in secret brought them safety, but it also robbed them of efficacy, and ultimately their histories, their experiences, and even their names.
If there is one positive thing about social media and the technology that has made us “always available,” it’s that younger generations have more opportunities to be seen through technologies their parents (or grandparents) don’t understand. They can see people who seem to be more like them. And in seeing them, they can, vicariously, feel seen.
But that vicarious efficacy isn’t enough when there isn’t real presence behind it, or real recognition.
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