New years eve 2016
I pull on my black and silver party dress, steal some of my mum's sparkly grey Avon eyeshadow and smear it over my eyelids. Serve of the century, in my 13 year old opinion.
I barrel down the stairs toward the echoing wall of family chatter, music and chortled chuckles. Sitting on the floor, next to the dimly lit Christmas tree, I promptly take a selfie with the blue WKD my mum let me take a sip of. To show everyone how cool I was of-course. I pull my best duckface and decide it's a keeper.
Post to story.
Save to memories.
Since then, my life has been documented on snapchat endlessly. I hate to admit it, but it's true and I know I'm not the only one. It had the filters, all my friend's, their stories, our group chats, and best of all, an unlimited digital memory bank for all my photos and videos. Why would I go anywhere else? My snapchat memories contain my formative years. My first love, and heartbreak, laughing fits with schoolmates, bad dates, weddings, house parties, starting college, meeting my best friends, losing others, getting my cat, graduating university, an entire pandemic, my first flat, moving back in with my mum.
I treasure the recording of each and every one of these moments, and yes, you can call me cliché. I am the one with a phone out at every event!
(But always remember, moderation is key to being a mindful baddie)
But in my defence, through personal experience in a variety of scenarios I've seen how confusing, how degrading it can be to have to mourn your own memories, to misplace chapters of your own story. So why wouldn't I record every moment I can?
After one decade, seven addresses, one diploma, four relationships, one degree, and countless nights out, I had accumulated over 15,000 photos and videos on there. Or 24.9GB for those who can quantify a gigabyte in their head.
That's basically 500% of my allotted storage, and after seeing that number I had two thoughts.
Where will I put them all?
Do I have a snapchat hoarding problem?
Of course, to live in the past is to neglect the present. But to know your past is always in a little file waiting for you, makes the present a lot more comforting.
With snapchat limiting their memory space, I think this was the push I needed to rifle through my digital piles of beloved junk and really reflect on the memories I keep, and the (hopefully) many I delete, because printing isn't cheap.
Snapchat was my, and countless other's, introduction to modern AI. And for the first time, it wasn't scary, it wasn't bent on taking over the planet, it wasn't a big red eye on my wall, it was a cute dog nose on mine. Through the lens of snapchat, we as a generation have not only watched, but probably helped AI become the colossal creature it has. Taking over the internet, an estimated 50% of media online is artificially generated slop, trained on our art, writing, pictures, videos, studying scans of our teenage faces with a silly dog nose. All to regurgitate the same media in our faces, packaged as "the future".
The internet as a whole has evolved into such a different landscape compared to the one I entered at 13. Now it feels like almost every platform is subscription based, and if it isn't, you best believe they will psychologically torture you with never ending repetitive ads until you do subscribe to their premium gold magic diamond AI+ version.
And now I need to pay for the privilege of keeping my memories.
It makes me miss when the internet was a physical place, it's a memory I've been hearing and thinking about a lot lately. The lost art of the study; taking a break from reality to sit in the study on the immovable computer to work, post, or just chat on the internet. Then, and this is the amazing part, you get to leave.
Modern personhood is as inseparable from the internet as the body is to water. It's unavoidable, it has our bank, our diary, our search engines, communication, timesheets, doctors appointments, everything is on this damn phone.
My snapchat memory has acted as a catalyst for me, in a world of digital uncertainty, where the internet is getting too big for it's boots, I'll be taking a small step out of the study, holding my new leather photo album.
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