Here’s how it goes: 

I’m feelin’ fresh, hot, ready to party. 

I post a selfie to my Instagram story. 

I rewatch my own story every five to ten minutes for the next 4 hours. 

In completing this compulsive ritual, I remind myself how hot and cool I am. 

I feel relieved, safe, content with my image. I’m on a roll now, high as a kite on my secret self-obsession. I can’t believe how awesome I am, I think everyone deserves to see more of my awesomeness, they need to see how care-free and cool I am. 

I post a photo of myself in a cropped top and skinny jeans to Instagram, and maybe a sly, vaguely flirtatious selfie to snapchat. 

I’ll be the first to admit it: it feels good when people I don’t even care about send me a response saying, “flame emoji flame emoji flame emoji”. I forget to practice my own private version of self-approval because I can seek it out so easily on social media. It’s almost like a drug, an easy fix to a way larger problem of feelings of inadequacy and attention whoring as a result… ANYWAY. The kind of approval I get on social media is never satisfying. 

On the one hundred and third time of watching my own story I get a sinking feeling in my chest. 

I start thinking how my whole account, my whole image that I am trying to put out into the world, is lame and pathetic and not even really me. No one understands me and no one ever will. Also, why won’t that pimple just go away already? Does she think its lame that I am posting about Doja Cat’s ass? Am I late to the party on this trend, god forbid it? My caption is the most self-absorbed, idiotic thing I have ever read. Quick do something, they’re gonna know how much of a loser you are and how much attention you really want. Quick I only got a few likes, let me just change it to a few emojis, since emojis are a way less exposing mode of communication. I could use an emoji and everyone will just read it as whatever they want to read it as. It has nothing to do with me and therefore is safer and less embarrassing. 

I change my caption to three innocuous but cute and harmless yellow emoji faces. 

Now they’ll never know how much of a loser I am. Foolproof plan. 

I wake up the next day thinking that I should just delete the whole post. 

But what if they look at my page and see that I am insecure enough to delete something the day after posting it, how lame would that be. No, to delete would be akin to social suicide, I convince myself. Fuck it, the only option left is to delete the whole app. 

I delete the whole app. 

A few days later I want to show someone something I saw on Instagram. Oops, silly me, guess I’ll just HAVE to reinstall it! Just for a moment! Okay now let me see here, what did I want to show you anyway, and why am I scrolling through my own posts to find it? 

Wait how funny is this, I need to post a story about it to prove my sense of humor to the world…