Articulation

Catching Fog With a Net

By: Jaime Church

I always wonder if it is better to speak directly and without embellishment, such as Ernest Hemingway or Fred Rodgers, or to speak with all sorts of diction and cadence and descriptions that have a world of meaning in themself, such as Virginia Woolf or Greta Gerwig. Can you communicate more efficiently when you simplify the message, or can you communicate more deeply when you jumble the feeling into a whole mirage of ideas and sensations? Is the message in what you say, or the way you say it? The idea or the medium? Of course, the medium is the message seems to be plenty true. But in the year 2025–and please excuse me if I come off a little cynical or downtrodden–but mediums that encourage simple or trustworthy content seem to be few and far between. Of course, we still have books and music and the slow food movement and reusable bags and such. But that is not what we consume. Or at least, it acts as a candle next to a field of blazing stadium lights. Yes, there are some forms of slow, intent, genuine mediums of expression that are alive and well in 2025. But eating one carrot is not enough to mitigate a whole cake. Does that make sense? I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou with this train of thought, honestly I’m not. And I know nothing I’m saying is anything that hasn’t been articulated before, so please have patience while I re-invent the wheel. 

Walking the line between being realistic and being positive seems to be an extremely hard task. And sometimes, relief can only come if I am half satisfied with my attempt to articulate what feels to be an awful realization about the future. That realization being, there is no room for having sad thoughts. Everything is too fast and I cannot keep up. Not only can I not keep up, I am bound to bring others down with me. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. But what if I can’t join them? Let me revisit my worry about the available mediums of 2025. Obviously social media is up there. But beyond that, there are more worrisome facets of our daily life that rarely get talked about. Either because they are uncomfortable, or because we don’t recognize them as a problem. And because we don’t talk about them- at least I rarely meet people comfortable talking about them, they just get bigger in the corner of my eye. If you attempt to articulate something, and you get it wrong, you seem to be worse off than if you had never bothered to think of it at all. And it is an awful feeling to feel wrong about your feelings, is it not? But feelings are not suited for most short-form content. But short-form content is all that we seem to have. And I know this sounds depressing. And once again, I’m not trying to be performative with some of these thoughts. I am very embarrassed to share half of them, in fact, for the fear that what I say does not resonate. And of course, my resume does not have tangible evidence to give these thoughts validity. I am supremely aware of that. But I want to share them anyway. 

Short-form, impersonal content is very common because it is very easy. I am not here to demonize short-form content, nor am I here to stand on an anti-social media soapbox. And like I said, nothing I am trying to say is novel or unique. But it is personal and relevant, and therefore worth mentioning. I would like to mention a sobering realization that I have had this year that I think is relevant, although an uncomfortable one. I have realized, (at the ripe age of 22,) that the majority of my friends, specifically my male friends, are addicted to porn. I have felt very silly for quite a few months as I’ve done my quiet calculations on human relationships. Most of my sums are very negative ones, and I’m working on that, but part of working on that is expressing them. The future doesn’t have a lot of room for long form content that is personal, because there is no obvious need for that. Or at least that's how it feels. I plan to write a satirical essay demonstrating this idea soon. But for now I am taking the Hemingway approach and just stating the story plain and simple. I say there is seemingly no need for this sort of content, because it lacks the necessary requirements to reach any sort of meaningful audience. I mention the sobering realization that most my male friends are addicted to porn, because it demonstrates the logical remedy for a common problem. Note that I say remedy, not solution, because they are two very different things. Writing, especially mine, is not sexy. Most books or movies that aim to communicate the reality of long-lasting relationships aren’t. To outsource such a deep, innate, human urge to another form of easy, short form content is something that I do not take lightly. And this thought in and of itself is not fun or light or nice to think about. Because if you’ve got the remedy, why bother with the solution? It is not easy and therefore not worth working towards. Most of it is quite sad to think about. Many of us are very sad people. And I don’t say that to blame anyone or be unnecessarily blue. I say it because it’s okay to say. I do not take any form of addiction lightly and the point is certainly not to blame or judge anyone that has one. This is just another piece to the puzzle of attention and intimacy that I want so bad to articulate for the young audience of 2025.  

I know I’m being stupidly repetitive in a lot of these thoughts and the central idea is wandering all over. But I think the thing that really gets me down sometimes is that nuance is drowned in consumption. If we have phones for entertainment, TV for socialization, treadmills for exercise, porn for sex, AI for work, what good am I? What good is any human? Our best will never be worth discovering, because that would take time and commitment to improvement in a way that these mediums don’t require. And on top of that, it’s embarrassing! I have no real solution other than writing the problem down. I’m not hot enough for a tik tok, and even if I was, the medium would directly contrast the message and then everything would be awful. So all I can think to do is write, even though I know it’s about as useful as latin carved into marble. So thank you for reading, if you are.