From October 2015 to the present day, I have lived approximately 168 different lives on the internet. I was Eve the Nobody before I was Eve the Sex Writer before I was Eve the Comedian before I was Eve the Depressed Girl before I was Eve the Drunk before I was Eve the Feminist before I was Eve the Tech Blogger before I was Eve the Democratic Socialist before I was Eve the Hater before I was Eve the Teetotaler before I was Eve the Professional Politics Writer before I was Eve the Sword Girl before I became whichever iteration of myself I am today.
Translating the essence of who you are into a digestible product is a strange way to live, especially when you’re a young adult and your sense of self is in flux. It was never my main intention to peddle my personality for a living, but in the era of social media, the personal brand reigns supreme; self-commodification was an inevitable outcome for a young writer like myself—extremely online, comfortable with confessing her most deranged impulses to a large audience, and looking for affirmation and love. Translating the ups and downs of my existence into my personal brand was a way of life for me. The more I viewed my life as something to be consumed by other people, capitalizing on all the pain and pleasure and resentment and fear that come along with being alive, the more compulsively I posted. My way of being online was always unsustainable, and each time I couldn’t sustain it any longer, I shed my skin, and evolved into a slightly more adept version of myself.
Let’s go back to October 2015: My life was about to change forever because I was about to post my first viral tweet. I had graduated college a year before, and even though I knew that I wanted to write for a living, I was unsure exactly how to realize that ambition. After a year of aimless drifting, I ran into a friend at a bar who was working as an editor at a small web publication, and I started freelancing personal essays and silly blog posts while working part-time at a coffee shop. Every now and then, I’d tweet a mundane observation or a link to an article, but I didn’t have enough followers to get in deep. (...)
Fast-forward to 2016: I am on Twitter for hours and hours and hours every day, so it’s not entirely surprising that I am also lonely and depressed. I am tweeting through it all and I am handsomely rewarded for my social media impulses: My follower count balloons to 10,000 and it just keeps getting bigger. To me, that means I am special and I am doing something right. I’ve successfully capitalized on the internet notoriety I received from my first viral tweet to realize my career ambitions—I am freelance writing for whoever will have me and my Twitter brand is key to my hustle. I date guys who don’t like me back and then get paid by publications like Cosmopolitan and New York Magazine to spill the details of my disastrous love life, among other things. I feel like a legitimate writer, and I am reveling in it, and yet I still feel empty. Even though I panic about the toll my social media compulsion is taking on me, I tweet and I tweet and I tweet some more. I do it because I tell myself I wouldn’t be where I am—eking out a living off writing—if it wasn’t for all my tweeting. It’s not like I get the majority of my work through any connection or secret “in.” Instead, it’s because people see me on Twitter. I feel indebted to the social platform, and unlike the thrill of my first viral tweet, it feels like a burden. I don’t want to admit it, but I am scared.
Now it’s March 2017: I have just started a new job covering politics for VICE. I don’t think I would’ve have gotten this job without my Twitter; after all, I now have 40,000 followers, and those are the people who click on my articles, and that’s good for business. It’s what makes me a valuable asset. As I pivot from oversharing my personal plight to thoughtlessly spewing out half-formed ideas about our current political hell, my following surges. I’ll write an aggressive political take, and it will make some people mad and that will lead to more followers, and so it goes.
As 2018 swings into full gear, my life neatens up and I can no longer ignore the cracks in my personal brand. I have a full-time job and I am in a serious long-term relationship with an amazing man whose love and companionship nourishes me in ways the affirmation of thousands of strangers never could. I hate Twitter. I have 79,000 followers and I still fucking hate it. I also still use it constantly. My timeline is a stream of infinite negativity, of horrific news, and everybody yelling at one another, and maybe I’m just getting older, but suddenly I am exhausted by all the cyber-rage. Every day online feels like Gamergate. The internet is angrier and more savage than it’s ever been, and it’s not safe to use Twitter as loosely as I once did. For the first time in years, my impulse to inform the world of all my inane passing thoughts and feelings has fizzled out. Moreover, I am gripped with fear that an amorphous Twitter beast will punish me for all the crazy things I’ve publicly shared over the years, that all my meanest and most callous moments will come back to bite me in the ass.
Translating the essence of who you are into a digestible product is a strange way to live, especially when you’re a young adult and your sense of self is in flux. It was never my main intention to peddle my personality for a living, but in the era of social media, the personal brand reigns supreme; self-commodification was an inevitable outcome for a young writer like myself—extremely online, comfortable with confessing her most deranged impulses to a large audience, and looking for affirmation and love. Translating the ups and downs of my existence into my personal brand was a way of life for me. The more I viewed my life as something to be consumed by other people, capitalizing on all the pain and pleasure and resentment and fear that come along with being alive, the more compulsively I posted. My way of being online was always unsustainable, and each time I couldn’t sustain it any longer, I shed my skin, and evolved into a slightly more adept version of myself.
Let’s go back to October 2015: My life was about to change forever because I was about to post my first viral tweet. I had graduated college a year before, and even though I knew that I wanted to write for a living, I was unsure exactly how to realize that ambition. After a year of aimless drifting, I ran into a friend at a bar who was working as an editor at a small web publication, and I started freelancing personal essays and silly blog posts while working part-time at a coffee shop. Every now and then, I’d tweet a mundane observation or a link to an article, but I didn’t have enough followers to get in deep. (...)Fast-forward to 2016: I am on Twitter for hours and hours and hours every day, so it’s not entirely surprising that I am also lonely and depressed. I am tweeting through it all and I am handsomely rewarded for my social media impulses: My follower count balloons to 10,000 and it just keeps getting bigger. To me, that means I am special and I am doing something right. I’ve successfully capitalized on the internet notoriety I received from my first viral tweet to realize my career ambitions—I am freelance writing for whoever will have me and my Twitter brand is key to my hustle. I date guys who don’t like me back and then get paid by publications like Cosmopolitan and New York Magazine to spill the details of my disastrous love life, among other things. I feel like a legitimate writer, and I am reveling in it, and yet I still feel empty. Even though I panic about the toll my social media compulsion is taking on me, I tweet and I tweet and I tweet some more. I do it because I tell myself I wouldn’t be where I am—eking out a living off writing—if it wasn’t for all my tweeting. It’s not like I get the majority of my work through any connection or secret “in.” Instead, it’s because people see me on Twitter. I feel indebted to the social platform, and unlike the thrill of my first viral tweet, it feels like a burden. I don’t want to admit it, but I am scared.
Now it’s March 2017: I have just started a new job covering politics for VICE. I don’t think I would’ve have gotten this job without my Twitter; after all, I now have 40,000 followers, and those are the people who click on my articles, and that’s good for business. It’s what makes me a valuable asset. As I pivot from oversharing my personal plight to thoughtlessly spewing out half-formed ideas about our current political hell, my following surges. I’ll write an aggressive political take, and it will make some people mad and that will lead to more followers, and so it goes.
As 2018 swings into full gear, my life neatens up and I can no longer ignore the cracks in my personal brand. I have a full-time job and I am in a serious long-term relationship with an amazing man whose love and companionship nourishes me in ways the affirmation of thousands of strangers never could. I hate Twitter. I have 79,000 followers and I still fucking hate it. I also still use it constantly. My timeline is a stream of infinite negativity, of horrific news, and everybody yelling at one another, and maybe I’m just getting older, but suddenly I am exhausted by all the cyber-rage. Every day online feels like Gamergate. The internet is angrier and more savage than it’s ever been, and it’s not safe to use Twitter as loosely as I once did. For the first time in years, my impulse to inform the world of all my inane passing thoughts and feelings has fizzled out. Moreover, I am gripped with fear that an amorphous Twitter beast will punish me for all the crazy things I’ve publicly shared over the years, that all my meanest and most callous moments will come back to bite me in the ass.
by Eve Peyser, Vice | Read more:
Image: Kitron Neuschatz & Lia Kantrowitz
