In the noughties I had a bad case of social-media verbal diarrhoea — but I’ve finally realised it’s okay not to live tweet my life

Tanya Sweeney

'The selfies, which I thought looked spontaneous and effortless and casually flattering, should really be subject to the long arm of the law'

February 03 2023 06:00 AM

It’s one of Facebook’s least appealing features, but it keeps happening anyway. This morning, a memory popped up from about 13 years ago. A photo from a bar in Melbourne, in which I am flamboyantly, animatedly legless. My first thought was that it felt like the photo was taken 74 years ago and not just a dozen. The second thought came in quick succession: “Why did I ever even post that publicly? What was I thinking?”

There are a couple of answers to this. Thirteen years ago was the infancy of social media, and we were, for the most part, acting without precedent. It was the first time that we could allow people we sort-of knew — the line manager who’d always thought we were ‘precocious’, the cousin in Denver, the person we fancied at college, the friend we hadn’t seen in years — access our wider lives. They could see us while we were travelling! On a night out! With our friends! We could brag about being in Lisbon, instantaneously!

It was the first time we could take a step back and curate a highly specific and desirable version of ourselves. I don’t blame any one of us for being punch-drunk on that possibility, and sure enough, most of us set off documenting the minutiae of our everyday lives with aplomb, photographing every Saturday night in Whelan’s with the gravitas of a golden wedding anniversary. It became a feeding frenzy, because we could also access the same information about everyone else.

For a few years back in the noughties, every time I went out the door to meet friends, it ended up on social media. Every fancy dinner was photographed from all angles; a modern-day replacement to saying grace before meals. Half of what we did was almost done in service to the social media feed. And somehow, that seemed entirely normal.

A quick hop back to my noughties-era activity on Facebook proves that, online at least, I was suffering from a bad case of ongoing verbal and emotional diarrhoea, as was pretty much everyone around me. I was positively awash with indiscretion and useless information about myself, offered up for the delectation of my couple of hundred ‘friends’.

“Lemsip for breakfast whaaaaat,” was one status update that I posted in 2009. “Might try making tapas later,” was another one, presumably written in the hunt for a crumb of validation. In the cold light of 2023, I still have no idea why this happened. The selfies, which I thought looked spontaneous and effortless and casually flattering, should really be subject to the long arm of the law.

Letting everyone know absolutely everything about us these days seems downright weird

There was also, regrettably, much Vaguebooking going on back at the crazy dawn of Facebook (“Oh my God, what an interesting day this is turning out to be,” posted back in 2010, was swiftly followed by a flurry of “You okay hon?” posts from others). The ramble back in time gave me a full body cringe, but this was exactly how we carried on as we went through our metaphorical growing pains as social media users.

But now we are grown-ups, even by social media’s relatively short timeline. Letting everyone know absolutely everything about us these days seems downright weird. Putting every passing thought out as though it deserved a wider audience now seems like the last word in gauche. Just as they have with most of my friends, the parade of selfies has dried up.

Every so often, usually when I’m bored and could use a water-cooler moment, I throw the odd conversation starter out on Twitter, or chuck out a book recommendation. But even now, I can sense that I’m being more judicious about what I’m posting on social media.

A friend once said, “I like using Twitter, but I’d never post an opinion on there,” and that usually seems like perfectly good sense. I try to avoid the negativity of pile-ons, or adding to the blizzard of topics that are trending. It can be fun to become part of the cacophony of an entertaining Internet Moment, whether it’s Kylie Jenner wearing a stuffed lion to a fashion show, or following the soap opera of Leonardo DiCaprio’s colourful love life, but there are many more people offering better and funnier commentary on all of that than I.

I’ve also done away with a great social media staple: the ‘shocked and saddened by the news of X celebrity’s death’ posts (which sound like an official missive from the ambassador of a small country), because, well, no one cares if I’m shocked or saddened, do they?

In the main, my friends and I have stopped recording our restaurant visits, or our live gigs, or our birthday parties on social media. Now, we are more likely to send updates on our families and lives in private WhatsApp messages. Sometimes we don’t even bother with that. I think we’ve finally realised that the world will still keep turning if no one has any of this information about us.

Besides, you know what’s cooler than going to Lisbon for the weekend? Going to Lisbon for the weekend and not telling everyone about it.