“Right now, you’re becoming the woman you’re supposed to be.”
This is what the app tells me. I hate this App the most!
You know, I don’t even hate Instagram. And I know that if I sense I’m becoming too reliant on attention I just delete it for however long I need and cover all the mirrors in my house, and then everything’s fine again. And I love Twitter, because I love a pointless argument. And I love the Lenovo App that lets me turn my light on and off from bed. And depending on the week, I feel indifferent at best towards the ASB App.
So this App easily comes in last place. Her interface of mostly white and a little blue doesn’t evoke much interest in me. I think the design team must’ve felt the clinical style would encourage trust and assure a user of some kind of twisted legitimacy.
I’ve downloaded and deleted it anywhere between 20 to 50 times. Gone through the clickyclicktaptap trudge through the app store, touch ID for apple ID password, yea, hurry up. Swipeswipeswipe three times across to my third home page, the one designated for apps that frequently get removed and reinstalled. The app graveyard-no, purgatory.
When I first had it, I had a ‘cycle’ under ‘my timings’ that was called Completion. And when I discovered that the cycle was ending on the day I was unexpectedly and unceremoniously leaving the city I had been living in, I decided I was done. My eyes couldn’t unlock from that patch of the screen. It felt too coincidental to just be a coincidence. There I was in the airport lounge, looking like hell, in total disbelief.
Two hours on and still stuck, I pondered how hard it would be to pry open an aeroplane window to throw my phone out into the abyss of the Pacific Ocean. I pictured myself quietly undoing my seatbelt, pulling my body into a crouch atop my seat, and subtly manoeuvring my limbs in a series of uncomfortable shifts and twists until I myself could delicately slip out the small portal myself, careening into the next chapter. The one I was already flying towards at 900 kilometres an hour wasn’t the one I wanted. My phone and I: two distant skydivers tumbling through the heavens. She was going where she needed to go, and I was going approximately nowhere, but at least no longer slave to an AI application on a small brick of metal that mocked what felt like the worst situation of my life thus far.
But I’m not very dramatic, so I didn’t try to jump out the plane window.
I’m actually really reasonable; I just deleted the app. There was, wretchedly, no deleting the information they had given me regarding the troubling series of patterns that it had predicted for my life. This app, you understand, will encourage you to ‘time travel’ into future ‘cycles’ it has determined for you. For example! On this day in 2040, when I’m forty-two-years-old, I’ll be experiencing the last three months of my ‘career expansion’, and I’ll just be on the cusp of a two-year cycle of relationship transformation that will supposedly see me have to finally face my deepest fears about what I truly want from a partner. It is slightly disheartening to discover I will only just be ready to address this dilemma in middle age, but I suppose that’s relatively normal. Maybe my needs will change.
Everyday she sends you a reminder. As I write this, my current cycle is called ‘Finding Happiness Within’ and today she relays that if I obsess over finding a relationship then this cycle will be full of challenges for me. I find that my love life is entirely the contrary– it’s whenever I announce that I’d like to be alone for a long, long time that the opposite occurs. She says it is a test to see how reliant I am on validation from others.
Now, do I want to know any of this? It’s worse than a horoscope. It’s so, so, so, much more dangerous than a likely self- fulfilled prophecy for the next week. Her rude little quips bore and bury themselves into my psyche. I wonder if I have any control over anything at all. In some sense, everything bleak becomes void of meaning when you interpret it as fated. Mental breakdown and devastating loss of income at 32? Yea, well, I knew it was coming, so it doesn’t hit as hard, does it? Or maybe it hits even harder, because I knew about it when I read about it on that app when I was 23 and ignored the impossibly transcendent advice!
In this most recent bout of use, I found her weaselling herself back into my life via the consistent errors of my own big mouth. (Feeling like this is becoming a recurring theme?) I had spoken somewhat sanctimoniously about how I hadn’t had it in years, how it was total bullshit, how I hated it. It’s quite comical how easy I am to see through when I’m preaching.
The person I was telling immediately downloaded it, of course, and requested I do the same. And as someone who lives for an act of service, especially for someone I’m borderline obsessed with, I did it. I peered over and looked down the rabbit hole once more. I resisted because I knew how my own brain worked, I knew I wouldn’t have the self-control to not look at our ‘bond’. It was disgusting how little time it took for me to go from vehemently against the app's very existence to sitting on my balcony, drinking a coffee, neck craned down into the phone, nodding periodically, scoffing from time to time.
My ‘friend’ who worked in the high court offices across the street had opened his blinds that day for the first time in a while. (I have a theory that he eventually tired of seeing me naked?) I should have yelled across that I was about to make a stupid decision, and could he please try to catch my phone and take care of it for a little while if I threw it across the street to him. I should have promised I would wear clothes more often and get up earlier so as to not drive him away next time, if he would just please, please help me out this once.
I didn’t, I just critiqued what my App wanted me to consider about our ‘bond’. Anything listed as a frustration I contemplated for about 10 seconds before disregarding as irrelevant, situational, biased, stupid, dumbest thing I’d ever read in my life. A tab listed as ‘life changing’ that informed me of our positive, progressive, aligned destinies, was established as an absolute undeniable fact in my mind.
Frenzied assumptions about myself came crawling out from my memory. The phrase ‘impressionable in love’ plastered itself to my forehead– inside and out. Where did that come from? Why that specific wording? Oh, that’s right. An even more questionable platform. There’s this…oh my god. There’s this Comme des Garçons perfume quiz. I am actually not even sure of what the goal of the quiz is. It’s either telling you which of their perfumes you would suit best, or which one you are- which is just an entirely unhinged representation of the irreversibly blurred lines of marketing, consumerism, and individualism. On what is potentially the single most thunderous and dramatic format for a quiz of all time, I was told I was ‘impressionable in love’.
“Reveal your true artistic self….”-the text that invites me in. Suddenly I’m in a black hole that unashamedly expels ominous warehouse sounds and creepy scratching noises- Comme then asks, no demands,
“SHOW ME THE OUTLINE OF YOUR INNER FORM.”
I’m sorry, are you selling perfume to me or attempting to purchase one of my necessary organs? I am reminded that the experience is best with headphones. I hesitantly agree to the inner-form-organ-harvesting-contract and another aggressively overly designed page presents itself. In each corner of the screen, a shape. A square, a circle, a triangle, and a pentagon. Well fuck you, I’m not a square. I think about it for too long. The ‘music’ reaches the end of its loop and stops abruptly before finding itself at the beginning again. Ok I’m kind of vibing with this pentagon. Oh no, you can’t just click on it, you have to drag the cursor across to it.
Your shape is pentagonal, graced with rigour and organisation, you have a thirst for knowledge, a mind continuously expanding, allying nature and modernity.
Please, baby, relax.
The second demand is even more intimate than the last: MAKE ME TOUCH THE APPEARANCE OF YOUR SPIRIT.
Wood, skin, rock, or vapour?
I had always imagined that the appearance of my spirit was a vodka soda.
I’ll go with skin.
You’re made of skin, of an emotional and expressive nature, you’re a symbol of unity, you represent communication and the link between the internal and the external.
Things get really crazy when: MAKE ME HEAR THE RHYTHM THAT FREES YOUR TRUE SELF!
Construction, a heartbeat, rain, or sub-bass.
Again, I’d prefer like, an Azealia Banks track or something?
You sound like a heartbeat, blessed with an unparalleled sensory sensibility; you’re all feelings and emotions. Unique and alive, you sense and feel.
Things are getting progressively vaguer while also becoming freakishly specific. This continues for a few more questions until- God bless- my scent is revealed, and I can move on with my life on the hopeful consideration that I am not haunted day in and out by the ‘experience’ I have just endured. Wonderwood. Who cares.
They just had so much to say about what this all meant about me. Deeply aware and idealistic. A wide consciousness and great knowledge. A symbol of rigour and organisation. A serenity of soul brings protection and safety to those around me. I am difficult to unhinge. I appreciate the wealth of feelings and their nuances.
When you put it like that, when you write it on paper, I sound incredible until:
Impressionable in love.
Tab closed, screenshot deleted, any previously acquired Comme perfumes in the bin.
Impressionable in love? What does that mean, you freak? You literally don’t know me.
Unsolicited, uninvited and unintentional self-reflection.
Confronting, yes, but it’s not such a stretch. I have found myself making some considerable compromises in my life for a relationship. But like, aren’t you supposed to? Is that not the excitement, the very spice of life? Are we not supposed to like, try? A shocking lack of compromise and dependability on my part in my first relationship has led to a subsequent desperation to make up for this. It shouldn’t be an offence to be sincere in all you want to give. And it shouldn’t, really, be offensive to be told you are impressionable in love. Only if you google impressionable, the first ten or so People Also Ask are along the lines of:
How can I not be so impressionable?
What does it mean if you are easily influenced?
Why do I get manipulated easily?
How can I not be influenced so much?
It isn’t lost on me that the literal definition of impressionable is ‘easily influenced’. But you should be allowed to define ‘impressionable’ how you wish. You should be able to define most words how you wish, if you ask me, but most people would disagree with that. This rollercoaster of advice/types/categories/reads all come careening back to another quiz. The Classic! The starter quiz. The Five Love Languages. Words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, and receiving gifts. I like all of them, but I also just love love. Acts of service falls high on both my list of what I present to others, and what I deem valuable to receive.
Back on the more negative side of the argument, the Evil App tells me I tend to idealise my partners. As opposed to what? For what reason would I rather live in an inner world in which my person is not the perfect person? My idealised person says, “Come over.” I say “When?”
There’s no question that there’s a willingness to do so, only an indication that I’d like another guideline on another of their preferences, so as not to inconvenience them with an inappropriate visiting time. I’m not quite sure it means I’m there at the casual whim of their beck and call. First, I must assume the shortcomings of myself before the shortcomings of the other person. Does this echo insecurity? Does this imply that I think lowly of my own intuition? No, it just reflects the high standards I hold myself and others to. I simply yearn to find someone whose intentions and actions and thoughts about things are something I’d actually like to emulate. To be impressionable in love can merely mean I see the person of interest through a rose-tinted window. Wishing to see the best of them, I press my face against the glass. My cheek smooshes and folds until I lose sense of balance. I fall over for their flaws and pick myself up at their insights. It seems, upon first hearing, like a legitimate concern or critique to be deemed impressionable. Yet the opposite is connotative of an apathetic mindset, one that is not willing to be morphed, remoulded, enchanted by the beauty of others. One that is placid, even stoic when the gift of growing is extended in front of them on an open palm; not seeing it for the rare opportunity that it is. The ability to allow people and experiences outside of ourselves to shape us is a skill.
But I rate overthinking highly. Feeling compelled to spend time ruminating on the same thought until it makes sense is not synonymous with worry or anxiety. It’s ok. You don’t even need to find the missing link that allows the clutter and sounds to conveniently organise and harmonise themselves. At the worst of times, I desire to be nothing but a host body with only a monkey clapping cymbals inside a cavernous, empty brain. These surgical quotes served to me on the Apps can enthral and preoccupy me. Primarily, they serve as a diving board which I clamber up the ladder to and use to jump to my own conclusions. Compelling or not, these evaluations I find myself reaching hold a far vaster depth and merit than any regurgitated, generalised quasi astrological information spoon fed to me. Maybe this is the strategy!
Besides, I will always possess knowledge about myself that the Apps can’t tell me. Just like they hoard intelligence about me to load up and shoot out in a daily reminder notification, I conceal details from them for my own future ammunition. They don’t know I would love to be someone's surrogate someday. (Don’t think I’d make a particularly stunning mother, just have a strong compulsion to be pregnant and give birth.) What extent do they believe they have power over me? I am autonomous in so many ways. They don’t know I’ve had an Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream tube rotationally in my possession since age fifteen. They don’t know that I only ever remember my dreams if I first wake up between the hours of 5–6am and then drift back into sleep land. They don’t know that I might dip out of the office to the bathroom and do a face mask in about ten or fifteen minutes.
If you want to punishingly magnify both your perceived and claimed strengths, you may consider venturing to the Johari Window. To begin, you will select five or six traits you think you possess the most out of a possible list of around one hundred. Then, your friends, family and the guy from the cafe who always makes your coffee will do the same thing for traits they apply to you, without seeing the choices you made. The material then presents itself on a table categorised into Arena (Known to Self + Known to Others), Blind Spot (Known to Others + Not Known to Self), Facade (Known to Self + Not Known to Others) and Unknown (Not Known to Others + Not Known to Self). This, in my opinion, is actually a pretty gorgeous way of collating anecdata. The more people you find to participate in your little narcissistic venture, the better. The broader the scope of impressions. Twelve people have assessed me. Not all of this dozen’s opinions are held in high regard, but ah, I digress.
My Arena: Confident, Idealistic, Independent, Knowledgeable, Observant.
My Blind Spot: Bold, Caring, Dependable, Complex, Powerful, Organised, Silly, Witty, etc.
Somehow, I have managed to evade a Facade.
Johari and Nohari are the inverse of one another. So if you are a little masochistic and wish to ponder your many, many faults, you can traverse over the road to the aptly named Nohari Window. Which I am sad to say means you will have to choose your own worst traits and then be subjected to what all your friends really think about you, too.
By some divine blessing, when I enter the URL to find mine, it takes me to a dead webpage. But I recall most of my statistics looking something like:
My Arena: Selfish, Loud, Overdramatic, Chaotic, Boastful
My Blindspot: Insensitive, Impatient, Smug, Irrational, Cynical, Callous
My Facade: Intolerant, Foolish
Perhaps an activity best completed when you and chosen participants are not physically in the same room as one another in order to avoid things coming to physical blows, or alternatively, painfully uncomfortable silent tension.
If you are thinking all of this just sounds like repetitive exercises in vanity— you’re not wrong. Remember, though, that just about all of these Applications and Services are manufactured for specifically that. My understanding of Instagram, by the way, is that it is designed purely for false presentation, conceited content, and other stupid algorithmic nonsense. If you operate on it any other way than for shameless advertisement of either your looks or your ‘incredible life’, then I’m afraid you may be misunderstanding the very intention of the app. Instagram is for superficial W’s, not real ones. As a teenager I began exclusively posting photos of myself on my page. And at this point it is possibly my longest running commitment to unashamed self-encouragement. Additionally, my longest running joke/ performance.
This may seem irrelevant, but I think it is definitely all connected. I just can’t hear the tune yet.
There is only so much you can take onboard from this plethora of material about ‘yourself’. Room for growth or nuance is not allowed, contradictions reign supreme and three hollow words strung together by a machine- or an uninspired copywriter- will trigger a response so unreasonable you may be staring down at a $278 perfume nestled into the excess plastic at the bottom of the rubbish bin. How long can you keep absorbing this futile language before you are truly just a sponge to any data presented to you? At what point do you completely desert ‘person who reads things for entertainment’ and simply transform into a floppy multipurpose cloth that has been used to clean up the kitchen bench a few too many times? The one so dirty that even a round through the washing machine couldn’t sanitise it; make it new again.
The links and similarities between what all the platforms have to say about us aren’t necessarily useful. They draw from the same basic maps of the stars on your birthday, at your birth time, to amalgamate some reading. Just the same as Insta taking your search histories to advertise you products. Which is accurate and inaccurate at the same time– they always taunt me with reformer pilates machines that I’d adore to own, even though I could never afford one. While it is all a little undeniably dystopian, if you choose to perceive it as a chance for expansion rather than a looking glass, it’s just another game- like your crossword, or your Sudoku. On one hand I am impressionable, and on another I am callous. Fuck it, let me roll the rice and claim both.
Thankfully, I’ve done enough cognitive behavioural therapy and relentless self-therapisation to be able to wander the valleys of my tragic mind sensing opportunities for deliberation and reflection. These winding valleys take me to great plains where my hands can quite literally pick the flowers I want to take home to arrange into bouquets for display and toss aside the ones that I can see are already beginning to wilt. One day I will happen across a desert where a single orchid grows, and I’ll consider why it has presented itself to me and what value it carries. Seas of data and prospective information aren’t necessarily there to be swam through; this would feel like begrudgingly dragging our feelings through a pool of wet cement.
Ummmmmm, maybe I literally am becoming the woman I’m supposed to be?
There was an option to run a bond with a public figure or celebrity instead. Rihanna and I actually have a Karmic Link as Past Life Lovers. She feels that I sense her potential, and I give her more confidence. We have great long-term potential and a unique connection. Our mutual attraction is a force to be reckoned with. Alternatively, when I’m struggling, it just seems like she doesn’t get me! Sometimes I wonder why Rihanna is so hard on me. It’s okay though, because our communication patterns are flawless, and we’re on the path for a long, fulfilling relationship.
10.08.22
B.C
xxx
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