Snapshot – Zannier Alejandra

And it’s not just about the looks. People actually expect their date’s personality to perfectly match their profile. A life in twenty-five words and five pictures. A snapshot of an infinite, moving cosmos.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I look at my friends’ social media and pretend they are people I’ve never met. If all I had to go by were these collections of images and opinions on display, who would I think they were? In my imagination, the snippets take shape, conjuring up something that resembles a person. But the result is never quite right. That’s the problem with snapshots, they’re paper-thin and distorted by light.

Four young girls are sitting in the corner of the club. I can tell they are from outside the city. They’re too dolled-up for a weekday, wearing shoes never intended for public transport. Plus, this club stopped being trendy about six months ago. So my twenty-something colleague tells me.

This was probably their idea of a cosmopolitan night out on the town. And, judging from their bored faces, it was falling short of expectations.

A minute later, one of the girls pulls out a phone and they bunch up for a group photo. Mouths open in soundless hoots of excitement, drinks raised, arms up in the air. This is the image her friends back at home will see; four girls having the night of their lives.

As soon as they snap the photo, they slump back on their chairs, joylessly sipping their drinks while looking around disappointed.

I wonder if they’ll consider the night a success on account of taking that one picture.

Photographs used to be just that: static images of something deeper and more complex. Then they evolved into a secondary world. We have become a generation of people split, trapped between two parallel realities—the one we must endure and the one we can curate. A temptation always lurking, to let go of our true existence in favor of the museum exhibit that has become our online life.

With every new guy I meet, I have a choice. I can show him the well-lit snapshot, hiding all blemishes and cracks or I can invite him into my museum’s basement where I keep all the hidden treasures, incomplete masterpieces, and broken art. Most people I meet nowadays want to stay in the cozy reality of feeds, profiles and snaps.

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  1. Symran says:

    Very well written. Really enjoyed it 🙂 hope you’re doing well Alejandra!

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