Doing for Pleasure, Rather Than Performance

For the last few years, I tried to make my social media accounts “a thing.” What thing I was after, I have no idea, but I kept trying to do… something.

You might know the feeling. Social media alleges to serve a function for us to share our normal lives and increase our connections. But what it seems to do in reality is pressure us into a constant, never-ceasing performance.

We must not only perform, but also produce. All that posting needs to generate some kind of result, whether that’s likes and attention — or it’s actual money, celebrity, or commercial activity.

At the very least, there’s tremendous pressure and expectation that even the most average person act as professional curator and editor of their own life. That's the entry fee for access to stand on the stage of social media.

You must ruthlessly cut the ordinary and the normal from the draft of your real life to create a more polished (but perhaps not quite as honest) finished product. You choreograph your feed endlessly for the sake of the performance.

All that carving up of your life doesn't feel good. It also takes effort and energy, which adds to how much these platforms can drain you.

Curator, editor, choreographer — these are all jobs, back in the real world. It’s work. These are artistic roles, to be sure, but they are professions and careers nonetheless. To maintain a presence on social media now means picking up another job.

No wonder the performance exhausts us, even if we manage to avoid falling victim to the countless other traps of modern media (unhealthy comparisons, fear of missing out, unrealistic and literally unreal cultural standards…. We know this is the baggage of participating on these platforms, but knowledge is nothing next to the urge to keep scrolling — and to keep performing.

I never set out to be an influencer. I’ve never identified as a blogger. And while I write about finance, and make money writing about it, I never considered myself a true expert or authority — so I never felt comfortable getting on social media and sharing my knowledge. It felt forced, awkward, and painful.

I didn’t like performing. I never have.

And so, last winter, I decided that maybe I needed to walk away from social media in my personal life. (My work obligates me to hang around to some degree.)

I stopped posting, I deleted many old posts that in hindsight felt preachy and annoying; who asked me to share my thoughts on this stuff, anyway? What gave me the authority to pontificate on these topics? And why, why did I need a picture of my face to go with a caption about resilience, or lessons learned about the only constant in life is change?

The problem, I decided, was that social media was useless.

Nothing erased the compulsion to post pictures or write captions like realizing I had no answer to questions like, “What is this for? Why I am I doing this?” And there were benefits to going cold turkey.

Distant acquaintances and relatives who only saw me at family holiday parties no longer made awkward or creepy comments about that one slide I posted on my Stories 6 weeks ago that I didn’t even remember.

I didn't have to explain my particular brand of humor to anyone or break down why a meme I shared was funny. I didn't have to catch someone up on 10 years of internet culture to explain where my post fit in. I didn't have to verbally articulate a caption that someone didn't get because they don't understand dry wit or sarcasm in real life, let alone in writing.

My phone sat untouched for hours, even days at a time. With nowhere to post a picture of my cup of coffee and breakfast in the morning, there was no reason to spend 10 minutes attempting (and failing) to compose my meal into an appealing smartphone photograph.

There was also no reason to take ten different pictures of my face to carefully scrutinize, judge, rip apart, and determine entirely too flawed to post to an ephemeral internet portal that would erase them in 24 hours anyway — which meant I spent very little time worrying about my face at all.

I had more time for things that mattered and more energy, too, when I stopped performing for the endless scrolling void that is social media.

But after a few months, I realized there were some things I missed.

I first noticed it when I opened Instagram not to scroll, but to look up a specific account to learn something, pull up a recipe, or follow a workout. I noticed it when I realized I missed the great meme my friend DMed me weeks ago. I noticed it when I wasn’t sure what book or podcast to start next but I knew who always had great recommendations, even though she’s someone I only know online.

I also noticed it when I took a picture of something I really liked or got excited about, and didn’t have anywhere to share it. The phone photos were not objectively “good” or worth showing off; they weren't from exotic trips or special experiences. They were amateur snapshots from completely mundane moments of my everyday life. But they made me happy anyway, and I wished I could put them somewhere other than my camera roll.

And I noticed it when I realized that even though social media is not my primary medium for creative work, it was something that served as a sort of... creative vent. As any writer knows, the only way to get to a powerful finished product is to work through what can feel like an infinite number of shitty first drafts. The thing I liked about Instagram before was I used it that way: as a place to try out some shitty creative exercises.

I’m not a photographer, but snapping things that catch my eye with my smartphone and then publishing them somewhere was like a lateral creative move for my writing and editing and producing. Publishing is always part of the creative process, even when you think the work is terrible. Deliberately putting terrible work out there somewhere, in a safe, low-stakes place, is practice for publishing the bigger, more important stuff that you might otherwise be too scared to share.

Maybe, I thought, the problem wasn’t “posting to Instagram” or “scrolling social media.” That was too general. Perhaps the problem was more acute. Maybe it was in the pressure to create a performance out of my presence.

What if I removed the expectation to perform, and just did stuff because I liked it?

I stopped thinking of social media as something I had to maintain for a personal brand. The first career goal I ever had was to develop the kind of work for myself where I never needed a resume again — so why did I care about maintaining a living representation of that through making myself a brand?

I stopped using apps that planned out Instagram feeds to give you the perfect set of top nine photos. I quit wondering, “is this a good time to post for maximum engagement?” Anytime is a good time to maximally engage with life, and that’s the priority. Be here now and share the memories later.

I stopped seeking out photo ops or planning out my days, noting what I could make content out of. I took pictures when (and if) I remembered. I stopped carefully constructing captions with the goal of provoking someone to read it and go, “whoa, deep;” I wrote literally whatever dumb thought I had about the picture when I posted it. I started sharing stuff that I liked because I liked it.

In short, I stopped performing and started playing. In an entirely expected turn of events, playing turned out to be much more fun, relaxing, and even energizing rather than stressful, anxiety-inducing, and draining.

I’ll still share my stuff on Instagram when I have it. I’ll link to this blog post. I’ll talk about the podcast I cohost and produce, that I’m currently in the middle of completely revamping (which is a huge creative undertaking that I’m thrilled to tackle).

And in the meantime, I won’t worry about what kind of hashtags to use to get new people to find me and give me likes. I will post very ordinary pictures from the routine, totally normal parts of my life — not because they will produce anything but because I liked them, and wanted to.

Stepping away from social media reminded me I do love many things about these platforms: the ability to learn from other people; the opportunity to consider different perspectives I would have never known about on my own; the chance to explore new ways of doing things; and the possibility to create connections and communities across literal and figurative boundaries that might not be passable in the real world.

None of this absolves social media of its many and very real problems. But, for me at least, removing the orchestrated component from my time on these platforms freed me up to play instead of perform. That, in turn, has helped me feel more creative and expressive in the ways it actually matters to me.

Maybe this can help you too: Drop the performance. Eliminate the need to be profound, or productive, or to put on a good performance of your life while the real thing suffers for it. Simply embrace the pleasure of sharing something just because you thought, “hey, I like this,” and enjoy.