Remember those call-and-response songs you learned as a child? Or songs "in the round" with verses repeated by all, always just a few bars behind?
I'm starting to think of social media, and its endlessly repeated and imitated stories and reels and copy-cat posts and "hey I want to say that joke, too!", as the grown-up version of those sing-songs, or those repeated hopscotch games, or games around the campfire: a kind of social media game of chasey, where you never end up catching the person who started it all off.
More and more social media seems like an all-in adult version of children's playground games, where nobody's ever out, and where the game — and the joke — just goes around and around and never gets old. That new catchphrase that would run around the playground for a week or so before it's replaced by another?
That's pretty much it.
It's almost charming how nobody comes for the poor sap who is repeating a meme that is now probably 24 months old.
"I don't know who needs to hear this …"
Instead, everybody lets them have their go, like the kid who never could jump correctly into the skipping rope.
Down the scrolling rabbit hole
And there's the bossy kid who always wants to tell you how you're doing it wrong: honestly, if one more woman wags her finger at me while telling me I'm tucking in my shirt wrong, so help me.
And why do so many Gen X women post so many videos of themselves gazing blandly at you while the scrolling text blathers all the misery in their lives: bad mothers, awful husbands, terrible illnesses. Can't you give me something nice to look at while your life story implodes?
And while I'm at it — what's with the flax aprons, rusty old equipment and too-small bowls of so many Instagram recipe posts these days? Am I seriously supposed to believe that Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring has come to life and is cooking Chicken Korma for me? Do you think seeing onion grated on an old, corroded tin is a vibe? It's a potential toxin.
And sorry, no — I don't want to read twenty paragraphs to find the name of the beach you say I can never guess.
What I've learnt on social media
Here are some other play-ground truths I thought I should check out for you before you head down the next rabbit hole:
- No, I'm never going to stay at that $800-a-night boutique hotel in Puglia. Stop showing it to me.
- And OMG — not everyone is a narcissist! Sometimes people are just arseholes.
Also, If you want me to believe that you're secretly recording that "toxic date" — you know, the one where he asks you "how many men have you shared your body with?" — then you're going have to come up with a far less impressive-looking video than that. That guy was toxic enough to notice you'd left the motor running.
And how come that wealthy daddy's boy who's forever tantruming about not getting the service he wants always seems to have someone secretly recording him? So odd.
Also, if you think I'm going to subscribe to your channel in order to find out the name of the movie you've just posted a 45-second clip from when I can just Google the names of the cast members I can see, you're an idiot.
(Also — yes, I do love that $500,000 Bulgari ring, truly. It's beautiful. Give it to me.)
And you strange American CookTokers: keep telling yourself whatever you need to think about that block of orange cheese in the middle of that tray of uncooked pasta.
(And OK — maybe a lot of men really are narcissists …)
I do find myself wondering if that gorgeous little girl with the eyelashes who is constantly filmed saying all those impossibly adorable things is going to grow up to murder her mother …
I also find myself thinking that I want to run away with the Notorious Foodie and have him rub that lobster bisque sauce all over me.
See how bad this stuff is for you? First it's a video of cute baby watching her mother snore, next thing you're running away with the lobster linguine guy — and before you know it, you're a toxic wife. The playground was an awful lot simpler.
This weekend sex, music, dolls and love. Which sounds a bit like TikTok, really …
Have a safe and happy weekend and to round out OzMusic Month, two powerful First Nations voices — Emma Donovan and Kee'ahn and a soulful anthem to take us towards the end of 2023. And a new start in 2024.