Memories on social media

or “The importance of living in the moment and loving every second of your life” or “Time is a trick”

Nowadays, I log into Facebook only if I want to check our local group on what’s happening in the neighbourhood. I’m not proud to say that it’s usually related to the noise that bothers me, or something else I’m grumpy about.

But every now and then, Facebook memories that pop up out of nowhere completely take me by surprise.

For context, I’m 32. If you know basic maths, you’ll easily calculate that 14 years ago, it was 2008, and I was 18. That was the year that Facebook took over, and became even more popular than MySpace (sorry Tom).

And for my generation, at 18, that meant our life was on Facebook — 100% of it. Privacy still wasn’t a major concern (at least not publicly), so we shared every single life event, to a point where ‘life event’ became a feature, so you could announce the bigger ones louder. Moving countries, getting married, starting a new job… everything was there. Not to mention the dreaded relationship status (who else remembers when you meet a guy and look him up on Facebook, only to get disappointed that he is “in a relationship”).

Because of this lack of filter (including the Instagram filters), whenever these memories pop up now, the standard feeling we get is cringe. We were younger, and a bit more honest — mainly because influencing, curating your feed and branding yourself…