It’s undoubtedly a phenomenon that has only occurred in the past century. The realization that you can watch someone abruptly age out of nowhere. Causing you to stand (though probably sit) there with your jaw open in awe at “the reveal.” On their social media, that is. Because, for a long while (sometimes years), it seems, people are hesitant to post a picture of their “real” selves. The self without filters, the self without armor. It’s a delicate, uncharted matter, to be sure. For, in the past, no one “had to” put some “fixed” image of themselves out into the ether for constant consumption. That “fixedness” also being subject to getting updated semi-regularly to reflect the “most current” (though not necessarily most authentic) version of oneself. And when you drift apart from people (as one invariably does), don’t see them in real life as you once did before, freezing them in your mind as being “a certain way” (read: young) can be easy to do. Makes it easy to forget about the aging process altogether. Until one random day, they finally decide to update their profile picture or post something of themselves from an all too current moment in time. Sans filtre.

It doesn’t matter on what “platform” this update occurs; inevitably you’ll see it somewhere, somehow. And you’ll be jarred. Left to wonder how someone you once knew well (or even vaguely) could have altered in appearance so suddenly. When it felt like just yesterday that you saw them in their “young phase.” What’s more, you’ll be left to question if you, too, look that old. Or appear that different from the last time that they saw you. In your mind, of course, you will tell yourself no. And you might be right. Maybe you didn’t let yourself go so willingly. Maybe you gave up alcohol and started drinking water. Copious, copious amounts of water. Maybe you opted to engage in the low-stress life path of no spouse and no children. That’s why you look better—that’s why they look riven with time. They took the expected course. They let the societal message about getting married and starting a family infect them. And now, showing their age is the price they’ve paid. 

Granted, there might be some instances where people (more than likely women) have chosen to cheat the ravages of time by getting various nips and tucks or some “light” Botox. As though anything about a cosmetic procedure where you inject the same toxin that causes botulism is “light.” But whatever people need to tell themselves in order to justify what they’re doing, they will. That includes evading posting a current or unaltered photo of oneself for all to see. But why not? It’s not as though they “owe” you that kind of, let’s say, precise update. And it’s not really a lie, so much as a “smoothing over” of reality. That’s, ultimately, what social media was made for. But maybe no one—certainly not Mark Z. (who still has the face of a baby’s ass cheek…probably the result of Botox)—could have predicted that its invention would make for such a cruel means to watch time elapse…gradually, then suddenly. As all bad things seem to occur in that manner. And, yes, as we’ve been told repeatedly by a society that makes a large bulk of its coin on the beauty industry, a “bad thing” is being old. Therefore, “ugly.” Hideous. Unsightly. Better off crawling into a hole and waiting to die than daring to parade up-to-date images online. The battleground where the war on self-esteem is always won by the enemy. That enemy being anyone who perceives you. At the same time, you’re perhaps the true enemy for deigning to put your image on display for such consumption. Such judgment. And oh, how ye will be judged. 

Not just for your ostensible life choices (complete with choosing to stay in New York because “there’s nowhere else to go”), but, above all else, your physical evolution. One that you, in your preconditioned state, will not want to reveal candidly in all its “present” glory. For what is the present but a slap in the face to your ego? A reminder that the past has slipped away, and you’ll never get a chance to recreate it, to do things differently. Including taking actions that might have helped you sidestep looking your actual age now. Which, to the casual scroller, you might not…because you’ve willfully deceived them with your app artifice, your clever concealment. Of the truth. For that’s what we’re all trying to conceal…all the time. Not just from everyone else, but ourselves most of all. Delusion is an ointment that should be applied daily, and now can be—thanks to the conceit of social media. That is, until you finally decide to “slip up” and post something honest about yourself. Most impactfully, a photo. Or, worse still, you end up being seen in public by someone with the audacity to point out that you don’t look the same as you do online. The nerve. The total lack of politesse. It’s almost as though people need to be trained in a new offshoot of etiquette; one that pertains to how rule number one of social media is never telling someone that they don’t look how they present themselves on social media. 

You would think that would be implied, but no. There are so many gits and arseholes out there who want to tell you, in person, how you don’t measure up…in person. Which gives you all the more reason to never go out, to never engage (save for what’s called “online engagement”). To avoid reality at all costs. Because in said reality, you might be accused of the one thing you never thought you could be: being old. Irrelevant. Obsolete. As obsolete as Facebook (unless you’re “elderly”). As obsolete as TikTok will be, another ephemeral platform that will serve as nothing more than a means with which to date a generation. A generation that has it far worse than the previous one in terms of documenting so many, many embarrassing things. 

On the plus side, perhaps the environment won’t be hospitable enough for the next generation to live long enough to come of age, see what the previous one’s online behavior was and then endlessly mock it. Thus, environmental (ergo, human) collapse serves a two-fold purpose: 1) avoiding ever having to lie about aging through dishonest online representations and 2) never actually needing to lie about your withering appearance because you won’t have the “luxury” of living long enough to do so anymore. A Logan’s Run scenario incarnate, if you will. And perhaps the intensification of the Anthropocene era is the only way social media can lose the war against reality—when too much reality finally overpowers everything.