Ruin Your Mid-Twenties

Social streaming, also called life streaming, is one of the best ways to absolutely obliterate your circadian rhythm.

Start because you are lonely. Like cosmically lonely. Like you talk to the kettle lonely.

Start because you moved to another country and suddenly your accent is either charming or exhausting and you cannot tell which yet.

Start because you are stuck in a flat with someone who broke your heart and you need witnesses in case you dissolve into mist. Maybe you want to pretend everything is somehow ‘fine’ like you’re winning this break up. After all you have friends, he’s getting stoned in the room you used to share.

Bonus points if you manage all three at once. Not many can. It takes talent. It takes stamina. It takes a kind of unteachable delusion. (send a S.A.S.E and you can take delulu for youlu as a correspondence course)

Have a five year out of date phone with the camera quality of a potato that has been dropped down the stairs. This is important so that when you finally upgrade after making money, friends will tell you they can tell you have been crying less. Or more. Either way they will say they can tell.

Do things for the plot.

Always do it for the plot.

Stay up too late. Stream when you should not. Cry on camera but pretend it is ironic. Pretending everything is ironic. Even if you’ve forgotten what Irony actually is thanks to Alanis Morrisette.

Wear lashes you cannot see through. Commit to bits you cannot escape.

Finally move back home and sleep on a friend’s pull out bed. (Just friends. Very just friends). Any guy you date will remain suspicious until getting laid seems like a shoujo power dream that requires three emotional arcs and a beach episode, you did love beach episodes. If you’re lucky you’ll pretend its dating and your mojo is back. When it folds in a week you can write it off like Dallas did with “JR’s coma dream season”

Watch years fly by in real time. Blink and suddenly it is winter again. Sink loads of money into clothes you will wear once. Buy fun gimmicky games. Host theme nights no one asked for. Dress up anyway. Stream anyway.

Think you made friends. Learn pretty quickly most of them think you are weird but possibly rich so they let you hang around like a decorative object. Keep smiling. Keep streaming. Keep going because stopping would mean sleeping at normal hours and facing your thoughts, which feels frankly extreme.

Reuse and refine skills you learned as a teen, after all choir and piano lessons had to come in handy, right?

1.Singing in your bedroom like it was a stadium tour.

2. Tarot reading you picked up because you wanted to feel chosen.

3.Comedy you developed as a survival mechanism at the lunch table.

These are easy fallbacks, though no guarantees in this post or in life

Comfort skills. Muscle memory talents.

Just remember you have to have learned the skill years ago or else you will fall directly on your ass in front of witnesses who have screenshots.

However, if you find you do not have secret hobby based skills, if you were a late bloomer or tragically earnest or too tired to cultivate a personality back then, do not panic.

Just get drunk and stream anyway.

Be charming in a blurry way.

Overshare accidentally, it works better if you’re femme presenting.

Laugh too loud at your own jokes. Say things you will delete later but that will live forever in someone’s camera roll. Call it authenticity. Call it a bit. Call it performance art.

Promise yourself you will be more professional next time.

Never be more professional next time. The watchers love you anyway.