Add a self-effacing caption, and this is basically what social media looks like these days.
Spend even a brief stay on the internet and you'll quickly become familiar with an emerging trope in online expression: people who have "forgotten how to adult".
Sometimes they'll vary it (they might not have "forgotten" how to, but today they don't feel like adulting), but in general, it's all about rejecting the trappings of adulthood in favour of a more "relatable" online persona.
Dinner parties are ditched for Netflix marathons and take-away, #humblebrags are replaced with a studied self-effacement ("I wrote a thing!"), bills and mortgages are put in the "too hard" basket, and the general mood is one of dishevelled introversion.
Like most ordinary human beings, I'm not immune to this - there's something appealing about letting the curtain drop and revealing the reality behind the social media facade. I'm fond of a selfie in the middle of my monthly upper-lip bleaching session, and for many years (though more inspired by new wave superstar Wreckless Eric than wanting to appear relatable) I wore an "I'M A MESS" badge.
Increasingly, though, I find myself uncomfortable with the proliferation of self-effacement online. The crux of this online persona is a determined game of one-downmanship: you ate Burger Rings for breakfast? Haha I haven't brushed my hair for six months! I haven't done my tax return in 19 years! Only my wheat bag truly understands me!!
You could argue that this rise of self-deprecation is a kickback against the relentless grind of late capitalism, an opting out of the expectations that the previous generations set up for us to fail. Locked out of the housing market forever? Oh well, 420 blaze it.
In a piece for The Guardian, 'Anti-social network: how self-deprecation is taking over the internet', Hannah Jane Parkinson explores how this thread of Millennial self-expression has infiltrated the broader cultural conversation.
Parkinson speaks to a social media editor for Buzzfeed UK, who says "The best [memes, jokes and illustrations] and most viral are the self-deprecating. I think this is because it makes people either go 'this is so me' or they tag their best friend and go 'this is so you' or best-case scenario they say 'this is so us' and tag a bunch of their friends so it gets shared more widely."
In an era where "relatability" is currency, it's not hard to imagine self-deprecation becoming monetised; indeed, plenty of meal delivery services already pander to a sense of being too overworked to cook dinner.
But when does a stage-managed sense of self-deprecation become just as disingenuous as the #blessed lives of the Instagram-famous?
The cracks in the latter began to show long ago - Instagram superstar Essena O'Neill infamously quit social media after declaring that the "vibrant visual diary of her healthy and happy life in the sun" was all a ruse; "so not real", in her words.
There's everything to suggest that just as much work can go into framing that witty, off-hand Snapchat shot of your "floordrobe" as went into O'Neill's "Zen" beach selfies.
When the quest for relatability collides with our own successes, it strays into such strained territory that it's like Amy Schumer's 'Compliments' sketch has become self aware; "I wrote a thing!" "For some reason work keep giving me raises." "This is really embarrassing but I just benched 100kg." Is it really mortifying to announce that you got promoted at work, had some writing published, nailed a marathon or succeeded in some other way, or are you just trying to keep up self-effacing appearances?
Indeed, the "human disaster"/"forgot how to adult" persona doesn't seem all that far removed from the dreaded Cool Girl. You remember her, the chick who is hot but who still loves hamburgers and who can drink with the dudes because, unlike Other Girls, she's cool like that.
As psychotherapist Philippa Perry, interviewed in Parkin's piece, puts it: "People find [it] brave and attractive so more people experiment with being 'real' but I cynically suggest that perhaps rather than being 'real' it's just that this type of self-depreciation has been proven to be attractive so it's becoming more popular."
Perhaps I'm just a cockeyed optimist, but I dream of a world in which the "most shareable" content, the stuff that drives people to Tag Their Friends, isn't the self-deprecating "lol my whole life is a mess" stuff, but images of greatness or tales of talent. It might take a few extra seconds to type "this reminds me of you" in the comments section of an article about someone brilliant, but damn it, I'm going to start doing it.
And if you wake up tomorrow and you don't feel like adulting, that's fine: just don't make a personal brand out of it.
