Have you ever thought someone was waving at you, only to realize, after you wave back, that their intended audience was someone behind you?
That's kind of what social media has been feeling like lately.
At the beginning of the month, I made the goal to "decenter social media." I wasn't exactly sure what I meant by that. I just knew I'd already started.
Now these digital spaces, where I used to waste so much time, seem so unwelcoming. So unsocial.
It's all advertisements. If not for a product, then for a person—an influencer. I opened Instagram, and it immediately recommended a reel of a 24-year-old homeless woman cooking on a single burner in a tent behind a Walmart. The video had the polished treatment of a chef influencer. She held up the packages, said how much everything cost, gave step-by-step instructions, as though this were all perfectly normal for us to watch.
Of course, there are the people I know... but do I?
A former student posts a story. I know she got married. I know she lives in California now. I know she has a baby. Yet she never told me any of these things. Not mano a mano. Not woman to woman. Not really. I learned them passively, as she posted for her parents, her in-laws, her friends—for everyone keeping up with her life.
A wave that I saw before its intended beloved.
My mistake. I'm embarrassed. Carry on with your day.
And even the people I do talk to regularly—I don't know that I need to see your six photos from June. And I'm especially tired of the daily reshares of posts you didn't even create. What is this? Surely it's something with broad enough appeal that it already got two thousand likes somewhere else. But it's not just the regurgitating Möbius strip of information.
It's not even, "Oh, I'm ignoring my life to peek into yours."
It used to be fun. Like being a fly on the wall, peering through windows. *My God, that's how they live!*
Now I'm not sure anyone is really living there.
The moment your child is born. The concert finally starts. The anniversary dinner arrives. Before the feeling has settled into your body, there's the instinct to capture it, crop it, caption it, and send it out into the feed.
Then it's wedged between a homeless woman performing resilience for the algorithm and an ad for a viral dress you'll supposedly wear every day—60% off, today only, if you buy seven.
And somewhere in that endless scroll, I mistake another broadcast for a conversation. Another performance for a person. Another wave that wasn't meant for me.
Maybe that's what I meant by decentering social media.
Not spending less time online.
Just finally realizing no one was waving at me.
