I was a little jarred when I listened to Taylor Swift’s new single Look What You Made Me Do. Sure, it was catchy, but in the middle of the song, there is a line where Swift says “The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Because she’s dead.” It seemed Swift had just disowned all the past versions of herself. Considering that Swift has been one of the highest profile celebrities since her hit Our Song in 2007, it’s a bit shocking to think that the artist wants to renounce all of her past.
Swift has led an enormous amount of her life in front of the camera, whether it be one of Vogue or of a paparazzi’s, and most of us have seemingly grown up with her. We’ve lived through all of her countless times falling in love, feuding with fellow celebrities, and all the other classy drama that People Magazine and TMZ have brought to our attention. With the rise of social media over the past decade, it seems more and more of us are living online, on camera, and on record. This whole death declaration thing with Swift has got me thinking. In a world where practically all our life is preserved in a tweet, Facebook page, Tumblr post, or an Instagram, is it possible to really forget your past? Our social media platforms serve an archive of sorts—proof of our previous bad decisions and various juvenile phases. Although we don’t have it as bad as Taylor, each year it seems that more and more of our private lives become accessible to the public. Even deleting or editing something does not guarantee that it is gone. People can retweet, repost, and screenshot. Most of the time you aren’t even alerted if they have.
Of course, the life we seem to lead, judging by our social media presence, is not always true to our reality. How many photos did we have to take before getting a bikini pick worthy of a post? How long were the drafts of a caption we struggled with writing until we found one that sounded just casual enough to be witty and cool at the same time? But even these pseudo-realistic posts can prove troublesome. If our life on the screen seems so much better than it is in the real world, how can we ever be expected to make honest connections with people? While it is important to keep our online profile seemingly polished and put together, faking a life can almost be as bad as oversharing. The ideal solution is to find some happy medium between the two, a censured but still honest representation of ourselves.
If it did nothing else, at least Swift’s Look What You Made me Do can serve as a good reminder to think before you share. It might be beneficial to go through an internal checklist before posting something online:
What will I think about this post a year from now?
Would I be embarrassed if my family found this photo? If an employer saw this?
It doesn’t take long to think twice before you hit post, and doing so could save you lots of trouble later down the road.
The old Taylor might never be really dead, but by being conscientious about how much of our lives we broadcast online, we can make sure that our embarrassing moments and mistakes don’t live forever.