As I use Facebook and Twitter more, just like on Myspace, some are noticing that I don’t smile in my pictures. This is intentional.
I’d like to think that anyone with anything to say about it is concerned about my happiness or at least the expression of it, but I know the truth is doubtful to be anything like that. That’s something people say to girls who don’t smile because a care-taking instinct kicks in that makes their frowny demeanors infectious and spread negativity that they kindly seek to stop.
For someone like me, I think they comment on it out of criticism cuz they think i’m being a pretentious douche that takes himself too seriously or something. Ironically, that’s kindov the point.
Kindov, because I don’t want to come off douchie, but idk that I can deny there is some pretension going on in my decision to not smile in pictures I post to social networking websites.
My life rulebook is that life is a stage, everything is a comedic script, everything is art. My texts are opportunities to find something funny in a situation. My thoughts by myself are opportunities to analyze artistic deconstructions. My interpersonal interactions are opportunities to perform, and so on. That doesn’t mean any of those things are fake or that I’m acting some kind of part – it means that I would be acting if I was suppressing instead of activating that sector of my brain at those times.
So I’m going to explain my social media life-art to you all, with full knowledge that it may very well produce a groan in the style of “oh give me a friggin break”, the way people who don’t have as artistically active brains as I do often state.
I don’t smile in social media for two reasons:
1) it’s the only outlet where my monotone quarter of my personality can have any representation.
2) Contradiction Art is my favorite & its an opportunity to display it.
So like all things I do, it’s 50% my base animal-brain nature + 50% my creative “lets do something with this boring world” human mind.
I love subtle contradictions in art because I love things that throw the brain for a bit of a loop, which is the essence of laughter. As I’ve noted before: All humor stems from incongruity. When the brain expects a zig and experiences a zag, it automatically and involuntarily produces a “funny” response, which is also why we use the word “funny” to mean “peculiar”.
Not smiling in 90% of the images that represent me on social networks is a peculiar representation for a comedian. Especially someone so high-energy and spazzy as I am. That’s exactly what I love about it.
On Myspace, I loved posting my fruitcake weirdo videos on a profile where all my main pictures and 99% of my album pictures were dour, 18th century style photograph portraits because the people who know me as a hyper comedic personality are thrown this radically different representation of me, and the people who are just meeting this mature and manly/very serious male model are rudely-awakened by this manchild clown.
That’s funny to me.
Not so much “ha ha”. but I like it. I like it because that other part of me is me but just a me that is not turned on all the time and thus not represented.
I’m actually very Batman-style brooding, serious, thoughtful, and mature-for-my-age (in thought) and always have been.
I’m also very Joker-style hyper, unserious, shallow, and immature-for-my-age (in behavior) and always have been.
Representing that in some way is a self expression I find enjoyable.
So that’s why I don’t smile in my social media pictures.
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