Last Saturday at the Big House, I saw 

a sea of Maize-and-Blue — as it is often 
described whenever we convene at the 
stadium — complete with bodies packed 
and bleachers stacked in undulating 
exaltation. Hours later, a similar sea 
moving in a much faster fashion rushed 
ashore on the surface of my phone as one 
by one, post after post flooded my feed all 
in service to gameday.

But let’s be clear. Gameday photos are 

never a monolith. They exist in multitudes. 
There’s the tailgate pic at the pregame, the 
pic in front of the stadium, the pic inside 
the stadium whilst standing in the crowd, 
the stadium selfie, and the enduring 
pic exemplifying the view of the vast 
amalgamation of fans, players, stadium 
decorations, 
lights 
and 
iconography. 

Nonetheless, the feed dries. The game day 
hype (temporarily) dies, but I know with 

great certainty the wave will return, not 
just offline, but online too. 

Aquatic allegories aside, it’s no secret 

that social media and our use of it play 
serious roles in our lives. Many of us 
now recognize it as having a pathological 
character 
to 
it, 
as 
exemplified 
in 

documentaries like “The Social Dilemma” 
(2020) and psychological thrillers like 
“Black Mirror.” We can see a common 
critique of digital connection daily as we 
witness more and more the rejection of the 
online coupled with the glorification of the 
offline, leading us to demonize the former 
through our veneration of the latter. Yet 
this precipitous perspective, rooted in 
what social theorist Nathan Jurgenson 
describes in his book “The Social Photo: 
On Photography and Social Media” as 
digital dualism, creates a false separation 
of the online and offline world. This false 
separation fails to take into consideration 
the vastness and variety social media and 
online platforms offer to us as human 
beings and spiritual entities. Indeed, our 

preoccupation with social media suggests 
that there is something profound to be 
found in the digital mediation of our lives. 

Our soul’s desire for life in documented 

form manifests itself in a myriad of means. 
Journals, letters, diaries, scrapbooks 
and social media platforms all mediate 
our 
memory 
and 
lived 
experience 

into a materialized entity. French film 
critic André Bazin, in his text “The 
Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 
likens the documentation technology 
of photography to the embalming of 
the dead. In taking a photo, a formerly 
transient reality earns an eternal quality. 
The moment is not mourned. Instead, 
death is transgressed and the instance is 
immortalized. The past is preserved in the 
present, and what’s fleeting is now fodder 
for the future, forever. Photos freeze a 
place and time into eternity. Evidently, 
our souls crave to make that which is 
transient transcend time and space. 
Yet with our near-omniscient power of 
preservation, this documentary impulse is 

easily exploited, leaving us to ponder what 
is and what is not worth documenting. 
Jurgenson maintains that our everyday 
participation 
in 
social 
photography 

restructures our minds so that our life 
is “experienced in the service of its 
documentation.” With an audience always 
at our disposal, we see the world through 
the lens of others. This compulsion for 
documentation and the making of media 
has heavy implications for our memory. As 
José van Dijik, distinguished new media 
professor, discusses in her book “Mediated 

Memories in the Digital Age,” media and 
memory are not separate from each other, 
but constantly intertwining, as the former 
intensifies, contaminates and even usurps 
the latter. When what we remember from 
the past is primarily based on the curated 
collection of content created for the sake of 
others, we’re left to wonder what that does 
to our sense of self. 

As 
American 
sociologist 
Charles 

Horton Cooley’s theory of the looking-
glass self espouses, we have a tendency to 
base our sense of self on the perception of 
others. Critics of social media claim that its 
performative nature erodes the expression 
of our authentic selves. Success theater and 
status posturing, as Jurgenson describes 
it, do play a role in the cultivation of our 
Internet personas. Yet Jurgenson argues 
that these conflicts between the authentic 
and performative selves transcend social 
media. He believes the assumption that 
the performative self is based on non-truth 
often implies that the authentic self, or the 
act of being true to oneself, assumes there 
is truth in the self to begin with. 

Everyday life, with its persistent 

perception on behalf of others, ensures 
that the self is largely a performance. In 
this vein, it makes sense that social media 
is also performative fiction. Beyond our 
souls’ desire for documentation is the 
desire for performance as well. This does 
not necessarily mean performance in a 
theatrical sense, but much of the soul of 
social media can be found in its theatrics. 
We see evidence of this in the aesthetics 
cultivated in each application, the need 
for evoking imagery that is pleasing to 

the eye, as well as the employment of the 
body as a site for exhibition. As French 
literary theorist Roland Barthes states in 
his text “Camera Lucinda,” “Once I feel 
myself observed by the lens, everything 
changes: I constitute myself in the process 
of posing, I instantaneously make another 
body for myself, I transform in advance 
into an image.” The particularities of 
posing, the postures and the physicality 
involved in creating social media content 
convince me to believe that there is, 
indeed, a performing artist inside of each 

one of us, awaiting its opportunity to take 
the stage. 

Turning the lights up on this stage 

allows us to see that there’s always more 
than meets the eye in every social media 
photo, video or post. All content invites us 
into a world of imagination and mystery 
— hallmarks of the soul, according to 
Jungian psychotherapist Thomas Moore. 
Social media carries with it an infinity 
of imaginative elements. As French 
philosopher Georges Bataille believed, 
any accumulation of knowledge is also 
an accumulation of non-knowledge. A 
single post contains as much ignorance 
as it does insight, if not more. Jurgenson 
notes that there is an obscenity to our 
online personas in the desire to reveal and 
expose details of our everyday lives, but 
also a seduction in which we “strategically 
withhold knowledge to create magical and 
enchanted interests.” One photo, tweet 
or status update can raise a continuum of 
questions — who we’re with, what we’re 
doing, how we’re doing and where we 
are — all centered around the object of 
interest. We become intrigued and seek 
to intrigue others in the details of our day-
to-day lives. Anyone who has ever had a 
crush on somebody knows the feeling of 
going to the profile page of their newfound 
interests and marveling at the mystery 
inherent in the media. Our souls have 
strong desires for attachment to people, 
places and objects; social media allows 
us to preserve our attachments with very 
little effort. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
Wednesday, September 15, 2021 — 7

YOUR WEEKLY

ARIES

Your ruler Mars shifts into your 
love zone – expect more passion, 
but potentially plenty of anger 
too.

AQUARIUS

GEMINI

You’ll enjoy the edgy feel to this 
week, and you’ll love taking 
chances – but your recklessness 
may be cause for concern.

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORN

SCORPIO

CANCER

Mars’ arrival in your family zone 
drives you to seek solutions to 
lingering issues, but be careful to 
do so tactfully, not aggressively.

TAURUS

A new drive for health and fitness 
this week is likely to succeed as 
your willpower is exceptionally 
strong now.

VIRGO

PISCES

LIBRA
LEO

It’s an extremely busy week, but 
there are optimistic signs 
regarding job interviews, 
promotions or other success at 
work.

Read your weekly horoscopes from astrology.tv

The arrival of Mars in your money 
zone is very motivational, so this 
is a fantastic week for business or 
for side hustles of any kind.

Mars’ arrival in your sign brings a 
boost to your assertiveness and 
confidence, and an all-round 
feel-good factor – but be careful 
with the chances you take.

Don’t be surprised if you feel less 
sociable than normal as Mars 
begins to transit your privacy zone. 
Enjoy your own company.

You have lofty humanitarian 
goals this week, but it’s important 
not to overlook your existing 
commitments to work and family.

Mars’ arrival in your career zone 
stirs up your ambitions, but you 
may be questioning the 
authenticity or value of what you 
do.

Mars drives you to increase your 
knowledge, but actually, you 
already have more skills than you 
realize, if only you look within. 

Don’t let vague fears and worries 
hold you back this week. Mars 
creates possibly too much 
self-analysis in your life.

WHISPER

“Ugh.”

“I’ve never heard of that 
brand...”

“Christmas but make it Fall.”

Second-guessing my future

I haven’t sat in a class like 

this in almost a year. One of 
my professors is talking in the 
front of the classroom about 
something — I’m listening to 
his voice but he’s talking too 
fast for me to follow. The lights 
in the room are dull but loud, 
nurturing a slight whining noise 
in my ears. 

I actually like this setting: 

the familiar musty smell of an 
old building, the act of sitting 
next to strangers and the faint 
noise of the fluorescents. Even 
though none of these things 
are enjoyable by themselves, I 
like it because it makes me feel 
normal, as if school is finally 
becoming what I expect and 
remember it to be. 

As much as I enjoy the 

normalcy of it all, I can’t help but 
feel a little uneasy spending all 
of my effort trying to understand 
what people are saying. We 
started syllabus week in some 
of my classes by going around 
and introducing ourselves: year, 
major, hobbies. Most people are 
sure of themselves — they’ve 
decided on what they will focus 
on, a decision that will tell them 
how to navigate the rest of their 
years here as well as help them 
make plans about their post-
university future.

I’m still a little confused, 

though. Not about college in 
general — I feel like I’ve been 
here long enough to be able 
to outline what is going on 
socially and academically — 
but about my future. Last year, 

when I entered the University 
as an undeclared freshman, 
my advisor encouraged me to 
think about what I wanted to 
do in the future and reflect on 
what I enjoyed in the present. I 
listened to her advice and even 
followed it, but I struggled to 
engage when I asked myself 
about my future and even my 
likes and dislikes. 

It seems a little pathetic to 

admit I hardly know what I 
enjoy and what I don’t. Do I 
like this because I am actually 
interested in it, or is it just easy? 
Is this actually easy or did they 
just grade easily? Am I actually 
good at this at all? What if I get 
to the higher levels and start to 
hate it? But do I even have to 
like it at all as long as it pays my 
bills?

I’m 
paying 
tuition 
and 

striving toward a degree, but so 
far I have no idea what I’d like 
that degree to say. I’ve always 
been indecisive — sometimes I 
close UberEats because I’m too 
overwhelmed by the number of 
choices I have — and a part of 
me feels like my time is starting 
to run out. I have to declare by 
the end of next semester, but I 
am as lost as I was in freshman 
year. 

My major and my future 

plans come up often at my 
family dinner table or during 
family FaceTimes. When I click 
on the group call notification, 
I prepare myself to hear the 
question: So did you decide what 
you’re going to do? I’ve never 
been able to form a concrete 
response to this; the questions 
of the future still seem so far 
even as they draw nearer. I am 

the type of person who takes 
things as they come, someone 
who doesn’t necessarily plan 
ahead. Even writing follows 
that process for me — I never 
know what my endpoint is, but 
my words figure themselves out 
along the way and everything 
eventually turns out to be 
passable. I am waiting for the 
pieces of my life to fit together 
in the way that these sentences 
do so that I can eventually reach 
some epiphany, some sort of 
push towards figuring out what 
I want for myself. “I’ll figure 
it out eventually,” has always 
been my motto, because things 
usually do align properly for 
me eventually. But the truth 
is that I want too many things 
and sometimes see too many 
possibilities, obfuscating the 
goals 
that 
I 
am 
searching 

for 
until 
I 
am 
completely 

overwhelmed by them. 

It’s not just the possibilities 

that are so unnerving to me, but 
also the uncertainties that they 
all carry. I wish I could watch all 
of my possible futures and then 
choose which one suits me best, 
like reading the walkthrough 
for a video game. Should I 
follow my love of writing? 
Biology? Academia? I can’t ask 
Google what choices I should 
make to create the best ending 
of my life. We’re all oblivious 
to the future, but sometimes I 
feel like I’m unaware of my own 
thoughts. 

Worrying 
about 
the 

future 
and 
its 
ambiguities 

obviously won’t go away once 
I decide what I want to pursue 
academically. 
My 
indecision 

won’t, either. And yet, that task 

of narrowing things down feels 
so integral to my ideas of the 

future. I know, technically, that 
I can always change my mind 
and that I can choose so many 
different things for myself after 
my years here are over. I know 
that I’m still young and that I 
have time to explore the world, 
myself and my interests. But the 
things that I know to be true 
can’t change the way that I feel 
right now. My logic is betraying 
me. In the long run, time isn’t 
running out but in the present, 
time is slipping away. Though I 
have a whole life ahead of me, I 
only have two years of college 
left. I can’t exactly imagine a 

life outside of the structure of 
academia, so it feels like there 

are only two years left to figure 
my life out. 

My anxiety about timing 

should push me to try to 
discover what I want from 
myself, but every time I look 
inward I get stuck in the same 
positive 
feedback 
loop 
of 

knowing I need to think about 
my options, worrying about the 
consequences of making the 
wrong choice and then shutting 
down out of sheer worry and 
frustration. I’ll enter my normal 
and 
easy-going 
state 
until 

something flips the switch on 
the anxiety again: a question 

from one of my family members, 
my friends talking about their 

research, mentions of LinkedIn 
connections. I feel so utterly 
behind from the rest of my 
peers mostly because many of 
them seem to have everything 
planned out. 

I’m told by my family that I 

need to take a more active role 
and start to push outwards 
instead of reflecting inwards 
towards myself, which is what 
I usually do when I’m confused. 
But even that leaves me at a loss. 
Push out towards what exactly? 
If I knew, I wonder if I would 
second-guess myself out of the 
answer.

Design by Megan Young

SAFURA SYED

MiC Columnist

Social media[ting] the soul

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

KARIS CLARK

MiC Columnist

Design by Janice Lin

