Cringe-alert: My Facebook memories (and maybe yours?)
I whined about some really dumb stuff. Or bragged. Why?
Once upon a time, I often used Facebook to complain. Mostly about dumb things, like cold weather in New York or my heavy-footed upstairs neighbor, Stompy. I also bragged a fair bit, usually about life in Mexico or Austin.
Whining and bragging wasn’t all I did. I wasn’t that awful. My timeline includes a lot of striking photos (mostly of nature) and clever jokes. Still, going through my memories is painful enough that I gird myself before hitting “see more.”
It’s humbling. Humbling to see what I used to share, what I used to consider significant, what I felt was worth the effort of logging on and crafting what I surely thought at the time was clever.
This introspection about my Facebook memories (more on that in a minute) got me curious: Do others cringe, too? Do they hesitate when that notification pops up, worried they’ll dread seeing their memories? Or is it less complicated, more joyous?
‘Those old posts continue to define you’
I turned to—where else—Facebook! to ask my friends how they felt. Only one person said she unambiguously loves her memories (“the older the better!”). Most were less enthusiastic:
A writer, Corey, lamented how it shaped her public persona: “People grow with time and what defines you changes. The web freezes everything so all of those old posts continue to define you to the world, even if they no longer define you to yourself.”
A fellow health editor, Theresa, told me she hides all her memories. “Too triggering.” (Not from cringing at herself, but from loved ones she’s lost.)
Julie, a buddy in Austin, cringed at what might be called “vaguebooking.” “I used to post things like ‘is having a bad day’ or ‘has too much to do’ like I was inviting people to check in on me.”
Kay, the mother of one of my closest friends, dislikes how jarring it can be. “You get no warning, and a memory pops up in your feed reminding you of a person or event that you need to be prepared for to process.”
Chloe, our daughter’s beloved “big sister,” is confronted with her teen drama. “As someone who got their Facebook the summer going from 8th grade to 9th grade, I definitely cringe! I was an angsty teen and often used song lyrics as my “status.”
And lastly, Jaime, a fellow school mom, finds it a consistent source of Mom Guilt: “I definitely cringe at memories where I'm using all she/her pronouns now that my child uses they/them. It seems silly since they obviously couldn't communicate that as their younger self, but it still makes me Mom guilt cringe.”
Yep, it’s all these things for me too—triggering, guilt-inducing, frustratingly persona-defining. And, as I said, humbling.
It’s how I regulated my emotions
I’d also add fascinating, because I can now see how much I used social media to regulate my emotions when I was trying to move past trauma.
I whined to let off steam in a socially acceptable way, and I bragged to overcome feeling insecure (I still brag too much, imho). Rather than talk candidly about, say, my trauma giving birth, it was much easier to complain about pee-covered snow or brag about a work trip to a remote Florida beach.
Who else brags and whines a lot?
I googled the term “bragging and whining” and guess what? You’ll be utterly shocked to hear that teenagers do a lot of both. So much so that two education doctoral candidates published a “brags and whines” creative writing technique to motivate middle school kids to write more in science class.
“Middle school students are notorious for bragging and whining about their lives, so why not give them the chance to use this ‘skill’ in the science classroom with a type of creative writing called ‘brags and whines’?” they wrote. It’s a fun read.
For example, a writing exercise from the perspective of a braggart metamorphic rock:
“All of the rocks are cool, but metamorphic rocks are the coolest—especially we marbles. Marble is more than a name. If you travel around Europe, you will see tons of me. Not just laying around, but in buildings and sculptures.”
Or, on the other hand, a bellyaching Pi:
It is not fair. I am very important to scientists and mathematicians, but get no respect. Calculators tell me I go on and on and never stop. That is just rude! I have been very influential throughout history. My measurement was instrumental in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Do the textbooks ever mention this? No!
“I am the most fabulous whiner.”
Reading these examples made me think of a certain someone who could be described as the world’s oldest middle schooler—a person who self-identified as a “real stable genius,” a person who saw no shame in saying “I am the most fabulous whiner,” which, goddamnit, I hate the man but at the same time I’d totally wear a t-shirt with that quote on it.
That person being, of course, Donald Trump.
Braggy and whiny: Middle schoolers. An impeached president who’s trying to get elected again. And me. Ooof.
In other news: Recent stuff I enjoyed reading
From the Austin Vida newsletter:
Mental Health Ofrenda: Making Room for our Family’s Humanities, Too
An inspiring, semi-bilingual column on the complexities of lingering family trauma. “My mami was our primary caretaker and as much as she gave me love and affection, she also gave me my nalgadas y castigos. As a kid, I thought my mami was just an enojona or too strict. Now, I think my mami was tired and overwhelmed a lot.”From newsletter:
Humanity
A powerful memory on preserving your humanity in times of confusion and conflict. “Sometimes, a lot of times, when I encounter antisemitism, I think about the night drinking near beer with my roommate at Eskan where I was stationed in Saudi and somehow the subject of dog tags came up.”From newsletter:
Premarin is Extracted from Horse Urine, and that's OkayAn oddly fascinating deep dive into the origins of a common hormonal medication for women. “The timing of cold weather in the Canadian prairies matches the best time to collect urine.”
I generally enjoy my Facebook memories, because they remind me of past accomplishments and also past heartaches and all the ways I have grown. But the ongoing braggy/whininess of Facebook is the main reason I can’t stand scrolling through other people’s posts anymore. If I post anymore, it’s generally to get real about something, and those are the kinds of posts I am willing to take time to read (as long as it’s not just trauma dumping).