The internet has found a new way to irritate me: with those Instagram In/Out lists, pseudo hastily thrown together* on the Notes app (for added fake authenticity); those influencer-generated barometers of cool, of cultural imperatives and spiritual ambitions for 2024, intended to be superior to plain ol’ new year resolutions because… Dunno. They just are.
They include stuff like:
IN: that interesting, not-obviously-but-actually-super-hot actor from the niche movie, which: OHMYGOD you haven’t seen it yet? OHMYGOD you must!
OUT: that boringly-clearly-hot Hollywood dude you still think is It (but isn’t, he’s done a Marvel).
Interspersed with intellectual pretension:
IN: vinyl.
OUT: downloading that one hit, calling yourself ‘a fan’.
And emotional enlightenment:
IN: not caring what other people think.
OUT: pick-me attitude.
Ah, but wait! About that last In. I threw it away like it doesn’t matter – but it does! Not caring what other people think is the freest, truest, most comfortable way to be – but blimey, it’s hard to pull off.
The desire for it is not new. It’s more pertinent now, of course, when social media insists our every moment be captioned and filtered into a bid to win the admiration of anyone. But I first heard of it pre-socials, in my early twenties, when a friend who’d just hit 30 (so old!) explained she didn’t care what other people thought any more. This astounded me. I could not conceive of not caring what others thought. Had no clue it was an option. I cared so much! Cared what they thought about: how I dressed, what I knew, said, my exam results, my skin, my accent, my everything.
When I reached 30 myself (so old!), I remember thinking: ‘I knew she was lying!’ because I still cared. If I no longer cared what people thought about my exam results (ancient history), I cared what they thought about my flat, say. Substitutions were made in the specifics, but the caring endured.
I got older. I still cared. This was complicated because I was now a columnist, which meant I had to invite the judgement of randos on my opinions, feelings, how I looked in my byline pics because, otherwise? Yeah: no job. I navigated this by either: caring what people thought and doing (/writing) it anyway, or caring what people thought and doing (/writing) it to annoy them. This might have been mistaken for not caring but it was not the same at all.
But something’s happened since then because, when I saw that entry on those lists, I realised: I don’t care any more! Not really. There are people whose good opinion I relish, but they are proven and few. As for that haunting, inhibiting, shame-enlivening sense of an implacable ocean of strangers who must be pleased and amused, or denied and defied; who watch, listen, twitch curtains, eternally monitor me for ugliness, wrongness, stupidity? It’s just… gone.
If I can’t tell you when it went or why (time? Therapy? Life? All of the above?) I can say, it’s not cos I wrote it on a new year’s Instagram list. Cos I didn’t.
*painstakingly, self-consciously curated