SarahSol Fails

Friday night while out and about, my friend Rebecca, brought up a very relevant point. She asked why I wasn’t competitive, and then I had one of those epiphanies that can only occur in a bar at two in the morning.

I came from a competitive high school where grades were everything. Like any stereotypical small, public school it was a struggle to stand-out while flying below the radar, a juggling act of trying to be special without calling the wrong type of attention on yourself.

We were all under the impression that if you went through all the right motions, you too would successfully matriculate to a good school. The gateway drug to a well-paying job and the pride that comes with knowing you haven’t fucked up in the conventional sense. Of course I went along with it – good grades, swim team captain, student council member, perfect SAT score (ha, only on verbal, I bombed math), and woke up extra early to straighten my hair every day. To quote American Psycho, “I want(ed) to fit in.”

In the midst of all this, I was tirelessly comparing myself to others and trying to one-up my peers to “win” a better, brighter future, whatever that vague promised land entailed. It was exhausting but the only way I could motivate myself to jump over each new academic and social hurdle. (Okay, and I also cheated in French class, but who didn’t?)

After all was said and done, none of it really mattered. I didn’t get into the college I wanted. I didn’t get the boy I wanted. Prom sucked, every damn time. I could go on and on, but I felt cheated and betrayed by the very system I had so very deeply bought in to. It was one of the first times I realized that life wasn’t going to work out the way I expected it to, and my trademark crippling ennui set in. Except I didn’t have a well-stocked bar to turn to, so it was worse than usual.

But then something beautiful happened, I stopped caring. Narcissism and an overabundance of self-love didn’t allow me to stop caring about myself, but rather what other people were doing. So she got into that Ivy? Hope their health center will be well-stocked with penicillin! So he got a fancy new car after crashing his while completely stoned? Cool, maybe I can ride in it. A healthy degree of apathy washed over me, and I hold it close to my heart to this day, in lieu of the pet Manhattan living won’t allow.

I only bring this up because of the way social media is allowing us to compare ourselves to one another in new and horrible ways. Twitter followers, Tumblr followers, Instagram followers – nearly useless currency in a sea of marketing ploys. I enjoy being engrained in this new and exciting culture and have to be aware of it because of my job, but it’s important to not be consumed by it.

At the end of the day our klout scores may determine what kind of perks we’re receiving, but it’s still only a projection. It doesn’t determine our decency as human beings. A few years from now our blogs will probably be only useful in the form of blackmail, rather than these pillars of self-worth they’re occasionally being made out to be.

#meta.