4/8/23

Things are a-changing. I've been giving this little project of mine a lot of thought. Thinking about how it can be used, whether for my portfolio or personally, what exactly my intentions are, etc. So with that, I've begun coming up with alternatives, an evolution to the thing I've been working on for almost a full year now. Now it gets tricky, mentally, because on one hand, yes things like this should evolve and grow, become more of what they are, however, that usually happens when the project gains traction of some sort, and mine has not. I think it's gotten worse in the manner of engagement with my posts. But I want this to become something more if that means spending more time on each post, changing the way I post, or what. So I've begun formulating a plan. 

The blog will be no more. I've realized the way I've been writing and the subjects I'm writing about are not to the point where I would ever be able to be hired using this as part of my portfolio. But I also realized that I enjoy what I'm doing, and have no intention of halting my weekly info dumps on whoever decides to partake. So I will start uploading weekly Vlogs instead. I feel like the formatting of my blogs would work so much better in a verbal setting, which is why I also really want to start a podcast, but that won't be happening anytime soon. However the blog itself, the cite at least. will become something more. I plan to subvert the blog's main two subjects into two different mediums. One is the tangents I go on, still concerning fashion, or about random things I find significant enough to publically discuss, and just do that in one, long, uncut video. Doesn't that sound like so much fun? The most exciting part though is what this site will become. Between now, and next week, or maybe the week after depending on how much I have to refurbish, I will essentially be making this site into my own publication. I want to write little articles, rather than blog posts, about one specific subject, and be able to get in-depth about all of the details. I'll be moving previous posts into one subsection of the cite, the photo journal will stay, and I may end up deleting the references page altogether, but beyond still being able to find my previous posts, and my photo journal, everything else about my site will be completely different next time I announce a post, and I hope you can all be as excited for this new step as I am. :)

However, I don't want to leave on a bland note. So I did prepare a little tangent to go on for the last time. 

Social Media has ruined our lives. 

Until I was 14 years old, I was not allowed a cell phone, but I did have an iPod that I used every other weekend when I was at my mom's house when I was about 12. So, unfortunately, I did have some social media before I probably should have, fortunately, I just only had access to it 8 days out of the month. This I think is a large contributing factor as to why I feel the way I do about social media. You can very easily observe the different kinds of people on social media based on their age and when/why they probably got it. Also, most of this is going to center around Instagram, but know Im talking loosely about all variations of social media. Parents, who got it way after everyone else did, post random Facebook-esque pictures if they post anything at all, they are still in the 2015 mindset of not having a "feed". Then there is the older, millennial group of people who continue using those orange-tone filters and only really posting pictures of themselves out on the town, to show how fun their lives are. There are a few subcategories in my age group, the ones who post nothing and only have it because all of their friends do, the ones who post religiously cause they think they're famous (me), and the ones who only really post on their stories, etc. All of this shows the different relationships people have with social media, the connection being the younger you are the more you probably think about it as a result of the kind of being able to grow up with it present in your life. I have always been the kind of person who has all the apps but just doesn't think too heavily about them as actually significant elements in my life. I like to post pictures and slide up on people's stories, but I'm also known to remove/block people I simply don't want to see, not responding to DMs or messages because, for me, social media has never been a real indicator of the life I'm living. The same thing can be said for texts, I feel no desire to text my friends or family every day because they don't only exist on my phone, and I can catch up with them and hear about their lives the next time I see them. Much of this is a generalization, not everything I'm saying about other people, or myself, is true 100% of the time. But I wanted to bring this conversation to the table because not everyone feels the same way as I do, and I think the world would be a better place if people did (because I'm the only right person). For me, social media is for me, if I don't want to see what you're posting I will unfollow you regardless of how I feel about you in real life. If I don't feel like conversing with someone I won't respond right away, and so on and so forth. I think the main thing, and I know I've talked about this before, that causes people problems with social media is that nobody is doing it for themselves. I have Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok to see funny videos, see what my friends are up to, and share what I'm up to with my general audience. But I bring up the age and circumstance of when you gained access to these apps because I do think it plays a major role in how you build or maintain relationships through it. I had social media at a young age but didn't have access to it most of the time, and by the time I did, I had just changed schools and had more dire things to give my attention to than who's liking what posts and who was following me. However, I've noticed with some other people who had access to these apps earlier do genuinely care about all of that. But I think the biggest player in this discussion was the pandemic. For months we were forced away from real-life interactions and our iPhones and social media were all we had to connect to people with. And for months I only interacted with people via my iPhone, and that made dealing with social media in the normal way I had been, and finally do again now, much more complicated. And this mindset, in which I hyper-analyzed when people responded, opened my message, how long I was left on delivered, who was liking my posts, did anyone unfollow since the last time I checked, had such a grip on myself, but also very much seems to dictate a lot of peoples lives even now. We are at a point, literally in society, in which people will ignore having a real, genuine connection with someone, based only on the fact that they unfollowed you on TikTok. Forgetting the fact that there are other ways to interact with one another, were now letting our INSTAGRAM FOLLOWING dictate who is and is not allowed in our lives, and I genuinely think that is very sad. What's more these apps are controlling how we make friends as well, how we get into relationships, as well as murdering the quality of relationships, though I posted about that a few weeks ago. I think we can all recognize that Instagram is pretty dead, Snapchat sucks, TikTok might be getting deleted, and Twitter is okay I still love some parts of Twitter, but I think my point is getting across. None of us care about social media anymore, yet it still is playing such a major role in our social lives. I'm over it, personally, I'm over it. We cant maintain relationships because they don't open our snaps soon enough, and were cutting friends out of our lives because they don't follow us on Instagram, this is crazy and I don't think I will ever fully understand it. 

Getting into media for the week. I've been listening to a lot of Beabadoobee again, 1999, and the unreleased "the way things go" have had a grip on my Spotify recently. I've also been getting back into some Kali Uchis again, hasta cuando just really resonates with me, and as appreciated as Kali Uchis is I still feel like she's under-appreciated. I haven't watched much TV this week beyond South Park, so I guess watch South Park. And that's it. That wraps the final post after just shy of a year of posting every Sunday, minus the few I skipped. I love you all, I'm so excited for this next little project so I can pretend I'm doing something exciting with my life and I hope you all are too. 

~Christian Reid