Modern Day Ills of Social Media Artistry
All those little squares of posted pictures staring back at me (or the ones imprisoned in my camera roll, yet to debut, or maybe never to), making me question if the tones are too same-y, or complementarily coordinated enough to tie everything together and offer a consistently balanced color palette and fluid feed scroll for my, and others’, optimal viewing pleasure. If the textures presented are spaced in a strategic manner that is acceptable, so as to provide an adequate depth and dimensionality to the overall profile. If they pass a thorough evaluation of their worth through a detailed inspection and comparative quality check. Maybe you can relate, and maybe you’ve even gone one step further to reach the same conclusion as I have, that the aim is no longer to capture beautiful life imagery as we stumble upon it or it stumbles upon us, but to plan, overthink, artificially seek, and rigidly cull content to produce and maintain a “mood board” theme at all costs, especially at the expense of a creativity that was, before all of this, organic, unencumbered, unique, and illimitable.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good mood board as much as the next person, maybe even more. In fact, I follow a decent number of them, in addition to many influencer accounts whose feeds always appear, without fail, to be on point. Both are such massive sources of inspiration and much-needed escapism for me, and I admire tremendously the skill and eye it takes to organize and present content in such a beautifully cohesive and evocative way. The issue is not the fact that I want to achieve the same effect of a beautifully curated gallery of my own work per se, but rather the subconscious take-away which has been suggesting to me, under the radar, a number of things: 1.) This is the only right way to present my art, especially if I want it to be noticed and appreciated and 2.) It should be as easy to accomplish as it looks because 3.) I have my desired lifestyle and all the appropriate, accompanying resources to access and work with. In other words, I find that the issue is not so much with the inherent idea as it is with the unrealistic, internalized expectation that is generated from it and the conformity and/or confinement of creative thought and expression that results, along with the toxic feelings of inadequacy and disappointment from the perceived notion of always falling short or paling in comparison to others.
Truthfully, I don’t really know how much good acknowledging this does. I say this because I have to admit that at this point (however I got here), keeping a theme, as challenging and restrictive as it may be, keeps me interested in posting and certainly satisfies my OCD. As has happened numerous times before, when the aesthetic of my profile loses direction as a result of personal impatience or laxity, I lose interest and it all falls apart, and I inundate my archive with once-loved and still-loved photos that I have deemed, based on careful consideration of some arbitrary criteria, as no longer making the cut. Give it a few days or weeks and like clockwork, I’ll resurface from my despondency with newfound inspiration to give it all another go. I guess now I’ve intercepted the old cycle by instead ranting on the blog, which perfectly segues into my return to blogging and my reason for having a presence on here at all: we’re on a break, Instagram and I. Until I can learn to more peacefully enjoy the platform, I will be on here, letting my creativity and words roam free(r).
Like I totally did NOT overthink the photo for the second thumbnail . . .
. . . Okay, so I did because there isn’t one. But there probably will be one by the time you’re reading this. One that I’ve chosen to like exactly because I’ve chosen to like it without any complicated consideration for how it ought to fit into the larger aesthetic puzzle.