I hate to use the word “curate,” I really do, but maybe it is the only word that fits here: I have seen so many people I know become totally warped by this obsessive desire to curate their lives for an online audience of mostly strangers. I reckon all of this began a long time ago. 

I was nine years old when I first started making websites and hangin out online, and back then (lol) it wasn’t so much about who you were. Actually one of the most appealing aspects of the internet, at least to me, was not having to be a person or play into a personality. And then of course everything changed, and now the internet is all about you, and me, and everyone else, and on and on—so many people it makes you want to throw up.

I have mentioned before that you see these kids in Portland (and anywhere else for that matter) standing around in a way that indicates to me that they are waiting to have their picture taken. They’re holding cigarettes and walking and standing and making facial expressions in this creepy sort of calculated way—posing for pictures, more or less, and hoping someone will notice them!! Oh, God! What a nightmare this world is.

The more sinister form of this invisible disease is that people pretend to be one person online while being a completely different person . . . in person! I have a feeling this sort of thing is mostly subconscious, but it still creeps me out hecka hard. Like 99% of the time when I greatly dislike someone’s quote unquote online presence, I actually really like them in person. What a weird feeling! And really, that’s the nicest thing I could say about someone: “I like you so much that it makes me real sad that you would pretend to be anybody else.”

Heck, man, why not just be the same thing all the time? Why obfuscate it to seem like a perfectly normal and functional person??

And don’t you know that hardly anybody is truly normal and/or functional—whatever that even means to begin with???

Stop being insincere!!! Stop posing for pictures!!!!!!

Who cares about those reptiles!! Just freakin live, baby!!

ugh!~!!!