The Folklore we Create

I have heard many things about my grandmother throughout the years, yet I felt like I never really knew her, like there were parts missing from the stories. Even though 2018 wasn’t very technologically advanced, I did know that they had social media. So I decided to look her up on Instagram first. Lately, some social media sites had begun erasing accounts that have not been active for years, but luckily I found her. From the images, I could tell that she had accomplished many things, but what stuck out the most was how she seemed to always be around people. There were many images of herself, and she always looked happy. I was curious to know what her friends were like, so I clicked on photos that they were in to see their social media. Some pages were very artsy, but the majority of images were almost, selfish. The feed was composed of selfies and group selfies, there were few images that didn’t include my grandma. I knew that she wasn’t a selfish person from the stories, and I also knew that she was very intelligent. Yet, none of the posts showed that side of her, or of her friends. I began to wonder how my grandmother’s society even thrived if everyone’s main focus was around themselves. I realized that I was making these accusations when I was only looking at Instagram, an imaged based social media site, so I hoped to find my grandmother on Facebook. I had hoped to find written posts about her life, updates or even posts about the current situation during her time. What I did find were more images, almost the same ones that were already on her Instagram. She had very little to say, and I didn’t find any posts about her opinions or even just what was going on her in life. I did find a few links that she shared that were videos of American Idol contestants or just funny videos, but nothing very interesting otherwise. My grandmothers society seemed to be very self-based. In her friend’s feed and her own, any picture posted almost always had to include themselves. None of my grandmother’s friends wrote posts either, and my grandmother didn’t seem to have a blog either. When I really began to think about it, I realized that her culture seemed to just surround images. The captions were always short, but it was the visual that counted the most. Her personality through her images told me that she was a fun, happy, and beautiful person, yet the images her friends posted told the same story. Yes, they did different activities, but every page I went to seemed to be a copy of all the others. I closed my laptop, feeling as if I knew even less about my grandmother. I didn’t know her hardships, I couldn’t find academic achievements or papers she wrote, and I didn’t know her opinions or thoughts. Her entire generation seemed to make sure that the image they wanted to show was there, and nothing else. It seemed as if her society was also connected through social media by looking at the dates of the posts, but it made me wonder if they were too connected. I reopened my laptop and found a video that my grandmother shared on her Facebook. It was a video of a couple of girls at a baseball game, not watching the game, but taking selfies instead. It wasn’t just my grandmother and her friends, it was her entire generation. Her society was disconnected from the entire world around them, they would rather post about an event than actually experience the event. It was repulsive to think about my grandmother being one of the girls in the video. It was as if her society’s intention was to create cell phones to stay connected to people, yet they used people as an excuse to stay connected to their phones. In my world today, phones were still used, but I didn’t want to believe that they were used as much as in my grandmother’s generation. I always looked up to my grandmother, but now I didn’t know what version of her was really her. I then turned off my phone and laptop, because for the first time, I didn’t want to use them ever again.