An Introduction to Vulnerability On Main
Why we overshare, why I overshared, what I got from it and what it took from me
“Vulnerability is not weakness. I define vulnerability as emotional risk, exposure, uncertainty. It fuels our daily lives.”
- Brene Brown
Vulnerability, I think, is beautiful. Our vulnerable moments are our most beautiful, our most authentic and the ones that help us to find Our People. Online, however, I feel that this is far less straightforward and that in many ways, vulnerability can be incredibly harmful.
I am a (mostly) reformed over-sharer but only, and this is crucial to remember for this issue and every future issue of this newsletter, only online.
Growing up on MySpace, MSN, etc, meant that my relationship with the internet started from what felt like a very safe place. I had so much I wanted to say, so many thoughts but as a chronically shy kid with an awkward accent who loved to write, I naturally found my place in online communities. I found people with similar interests, similar stories and their friendships kept me afloat. This was, for a long time, a strong contrast to my life outside of my computer and while, in the outside world, my family was in turmoil, I’d moved 250 miles from the home I’d known and the kids in my new school weren’t taking to me, my Online Life was one of freedom of expression, of solidarity and comfort.
This is something that, for one reason or another, I never really left. While I made friendships offline and began to slightly flourish in my community, I still found most of my people online. In fact, at my best friend’s wedding last year, the hairdresser asked how the bride and bridesmaids knew each other and I confessed that, actually, aside from family, the bridal party and every friend I knew at the wedding came from Tumblr of all places. My close friend group all found each other on Tumblr over 10 years ago.
Why was this?
Tumblr was filled with open vulnerability. People shared their secrets, their fears, their pain and even nude photographs of themselves, (“Topless Tuesday”) and all of this seemed completely normal and even expected. Making friends on Tumblr was relatively easy for me because I wasn’t scared of what people actually thought of me or would find out about me because it was all there. Also, unlike the popular social medias today, Tumblr was a relatively hidden community. People rarely used their own names, rarely connected their Tumblr account to Twitter or Facebook and didn’t tend to speak about the website outwith the communities created on it. There was even a (slightly cringe) way of speaking about it offline with people that you thought may be on the website by opening with “I Like Your Shoelaces”.
This kind of no-holds-barred openness combined with my own penchant for shameless vulnerability meant that this soon leaked everywhere else for me. I wrote essays on my traumatic experiences long before I’d begun to process them. I was told when I was 22 that I’d never have children and within a week, I’d written an “inspirational” blog post on why this was okay. It was another five years before I realised that, actually, I did want children. This confessional style of writing isn’t new or unique to social media, of course, but social media encourages it. The flurry of likes, retweets, messages, and shares validated me in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. As somebody who had felt perpetually lonely for my whole life, I suddenly didn’t feel alone at-all. I’d watch the website stats and social media interactions increase and feel my serotonin levels rising.
This wasn’t entirely inauthentic. My words, my experiences and my feelings were very real, as were people’s responses to them. People tend to respond to emotional pieces, especially by white women, with tenderness and empathy. When people mentioned these pieces I’d written in public, though, I couldn’t handle it. I wanted to keep my online and offline selves separate. I hated how raw I felt around people who knew my deepest secrets. I couldn’t place why, after pouring my heart out and being so supported, I felt suddenly strange, as if they’d violated an unspoken agreement to not discuss the things I’d shared online. But, why wouldn’t they? These were my friends, my acquaintances, they wanted to check that I was okay. I hadn’t considered that my words weren’t just entertainment for others and cathartic for me. I hadn’t considered that people would look beyond a screen and reach out to me personally. I hated it.
I chose to still do it, though. I would write a blog post before I’d ever speak to somebody in person. My cries for attention came in the form of carefully written essays and if anyone close to me wanted to know how I was doing, the easiest and best way to find out was to check my social media and/or blog.
It’s incredibly strange to think back on but at the time, it was second nature and I wasn’t alone in this. Other writer friends fought their demons this publicly too. We supported one another but the level of care needed wasn’t something we could reasonably provide. So, we continued wandering the internet with ugly open wounds and beautiful turns of phrase.
It was only in recent years that I realised how harmful this must have been for me.
I realised that so many people knew me better than I’d ever know them. So many people knew my story and not just that, but only the parts of my story that were traumatic and life-changing. Only the parts of me that ached, that were broken. Not the parts of me that were funny, interesting or even frustrating and unlikeable! I started to feel like I was solely a brand of trauma. This isn’t reflected in real life. My friend Lis put it best when she said I’m a “snarky ray of sunshine”.
I started seeing this raw vulnerability everywhere. Mostly women talking openly about their pain on platforms that were never created to support the storytellers but instead the readers. People who were struggling publicly both on and offline becoming memes, brands preying on the vulnerability of people just aching to be heard for curated campaigns, the list goes on. I’ve repeatedly stated over the past couple of years that your pain is not your currency but I think it’s much deeper than this and that’s what I’m hoping to explore in this newsletter. I hope you’ll stay around for the ride.
Next week, I’ll be discussing how some online social justice communities online rely on people sharing intimate details of trauma to validate opinions and experience.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please feel free to share it with friends or tip me with a wee coffee! Thank you so much for reading.