I am a modern girl and it is just as hard as Fox News is telling my grandpa it is.
Every person is a modern person, I know this. But I am a modern person with plastic in my blood. I’m a modern person who for some reason knows, in depth, the disappointing political leanings of pop stars. I’m a modern person who has to look at aesthetic Instagram infographics detailing the end of a livable planet in between photos of a childhood friend’s wedding. She looks so beautiful, I think. How did they afford this, I wonder. I’m going to miss rivers, I despair.
Actually, there is a version of the internet I am already nostalgic for. I liked watching my dad’s buddy document his crumbling marriage post by post. I liked for a “tbh,” sweet, desperate requests for connection, I anticipated confessions of love in Messenger. I liked seeing what everyone was up to—the glossy veneers, the obvious cracks. I have an aunt who made a Facebook profile for her husband. She would post pictures of herself, then her “husband” would express his undying admiration. Then she’d respond as herself with a barrage of emojis, and back and forth—a disturbing experimental performance piece for a limited audience, a poignant critique on domestic relations.
I hardly see any unhinged original content anymore.
Today’s timelines are all purged of cryptic messages to baby daddies with three likes and 24 comments. We had already strayed from God’s light, but it’s worse now, or at least, less personal. The only content you might see that’s not what some researchers call “content with the intent to sell”—an ad—is content with the intent to enrage. Yes, the internet is getting worse. “Curdling” is how Jia Tolentino describes it.
(I didn’t read her book but my friend did, and she sent me a photo of that paragraph. Thanks Erin.)
Newspapers used to control the ads, somewhat, that accompanied their content. Now online publications sell space, and that space gets filled with what algorithms guess will appeal to you based on your shopping habits and some information you willingly gave away when you took a bullshit internet quiz years ago, in the years of the lesser evil internet: “Which Disney Princess Are You?”, “How Boring Are You In Bed?”, “Which Disney Princess Are You And What That Says About How Boring You Are In Bed.” Anyhow, lately, I find myself reading the news—“Musk kills foreign aid”; “Trump deports protected citizens”—and embedded in the article, wedged between devastating paragraphs, a flashing box reads: Dermatologists HATE her, how you can make your wrinkles DISAPPEAR OVERNIGHT.
And that’s a lot to take in. At once I have to comprehend that children are going to die of achingly preventable illnesses and my algorithm overlords predict I’m old enough to be profitably fearful of aging. I have a whole collection of these. “Government removes CDC files”—flashing box says I can lose weight with chair yoga AT ANY AGE. “Program for students with disabilities cut.” Flashing box says she took a swig of olive oil before bed and you won’t BELIEVE what happened next. “Administration plans to defy court.” Flashing box says ATTEND TO YOUR APPEARANCE OR YOU MIGHT DISAPPEAR.
Our brains don’t stand a chance. Evolutionarily, my skull houses the same hardware, the same model, from the 1800s. And constantly, as if I stepped out of a time machine, I am bemused, bewitched, bewildered, by any and all moving pictures. I will watch them all. How to style your toddlers’ hair? No kids, but yes, I’ll watch! Gasps of movies I’ve never seen, under fuzzy filters to avoid copyright issues? Yes, please! Buff guy grilling meat in the woods? I’m a vegetarian, but whatever, I’ll watch. People building things I won’t build, people assembling outfits I won’t wear, I’m paralyzed by overstimulation, and the only break I know how to reach for is more stimulation.
I keep this in mind when I’m teaching English composition and a room of 19-year-olds who paid to be there—thousands of dollars they mostly don’t have—are inside their phones. They hear me say, “Please remember this is a phone-free class, please remember I am a human being, please.” They smile at my theatrical pleas. They stay on their phones. They are under a spell and I am, too, all us, our still-yet-early-edition brains subjected to relentless moving pictures. I cannot compete with moving pictures. Nothing can. I circulate the room, I approach a student on his computer, I beg him to engage. His eyes fixed to the computer, he says, “I am,” and I say, “No, you’re taking a quiz for your business class, I’m watching you do this, you’re still doing it.” He finally turns to me, delivers a cold, flat, factual, “I’m multitasking.”
Multitasking! All of us Sisyphus with so many boulders, always multitasking.
It is very hard to be a modern person.
Do you remember when your rich friends had a computer room? Now every room is a computer room. I think, sometimes, that I am a computer room.
I house all this technology I don’t understand and I’m such a sucker for nostalgia. I try to keep it in check because I know every time period before this one, going back to the beginning, offered its own fresh misery, miseries beyond my comprehension. But, indulge me, I recently rewatched Anne of Green Gables and for a second, I felt envious. A plot refresher for those uncompelled by female protagonists: a late 19th-century orphan girl charms her way into a home in rural Canada. I’m a modern girl so I have to ask myself all these hard questions about partnership and procreation. On this warming planet, inside this widening wealth gap, the question is not just “who” or “when,” but “why.” And if I lived in rural Canada in 1880, all I’d have to do is wait for some schoolteacher twice my age to find me unthreateningly smart, pretty in a homely way. He’d talk it out with my dad and then I’d never have to make a CV, never have to figure out how to report my 1099. I’d just pop out kids until a few of them survive into adulthood, pop out kids until Puerperal fever or an unwashed hand gets me.
But I’m so modern.
How modern are you?
I’m so modern I’ll never die, because all my microplastics are unionizing. Soon I’ll be an AI-powered macroplastic.
I’m so modern.
How modern are you?
I’m so modern, I’m keeping up with the trends and tuning in to the experts. I watched the first 20 minutes of the scary social media documentary and promptly set three-minute time limits on my apps. Now, when I’m home drunk after a night out, I can’t look at the faces of beautiful strangers for very long. Narcissus at the pond, I just stare at photos of myself and my friends, enamored, amazed. This is better, I guess.
I’m so modern.
How modern are you?
I’m so modern, I thought really hard about what I want out of relationships. I read (skimmed) the books. I had long conversations. I’m so modern, I practice ethical non-monogamy. I’m so modern, someone by the username “Big Dick Daddy” liked my boyfriend’s online dating profile. I don’t know how to compete with Big Dick Daddy. Big Dick Daddy, if you’re reading this, please don’t take my man. Please don’t take him just because you can.
I’m so modern.
How modern are you?
I’m so modern, my friends and their friends are having babies in states without abortion rights.
And I’ve been so scared for her,
and her,
and her.
But they bought Maggie’s good bones and this act, I’m gathering, is their declaration—world still, I love you. With big and little acts of belief and bravery we all say, world, still, I love you. We’re sharp, modern girls. We are rocketing farther, faster, than we can sign the consumer agreement form we haven’t read. We negotiate. We recognize the wonderful: meaning we see it and accept it as true. We acknowledge the terrible: meaning we see it and must do something about it.
One friend, who just delivered, is lucky, she knows. She has good insurance. She’s smart, calmly navigates all the paperwork needed to be safe and stable.
After giving birth, she got two bills in the mail—one for her, deductible mercifully met. The other bill was for the baby.
Her baby girl was billed for being born.
Welcome baby Mei. Life’s a party and these days, they’re charging $7,000 at the door.
Welcome baby Mei. We love you. Having entered immediately screaming and in debt, you, too, are a perfect modern girl.
Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick teaches creative writing and English composition at Northern Arizona University, where she is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction. She is also a journalist focused on public health, homelessness, and fringe cultures. Her work can be found in USA Today, The Register-Guard, Seattle Times, The Oregonian, The Indianapolis Star, Oregon Public Broadcasting, The Colorado Springs Gazette, and others.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header image by Dedraw Studio, courtesy Shutterstock.
