It's especially bad for me because I'm seeing filters everywhere, not just online or in videos or things on my phone, but everywhere, like in real life.
I'm talking about how I'll get on the bus and look over to the woman next to me and she's crying. She's fully sobbing, tears running down her cheeks like this filter here, and her mouth grotesquely stretched downward. And she sees me staring at her and I try to look away but can't. It's such a good filter, so convincing, yet, of course it's not real.
Then there's a man standing up next to me, same thing. His face is unreal. I can see a second face over his face as he talks on his phone, again, tears streaming down doubled-cheeks, mouth like a wretched, awful upside-down grin, and when we lock eyes I can't tell what he's thinking. I only see the filter.
And everyone on the bus is the same! All these horrid faces bawling and wailing in exaggerated sadness, but it doesn't end on the bus. I see it everywhere!
Every day. Every day, the same filtered faces, the same comedic sorrow. So much sadness if there's any at all! I don't know! Everyone I see shifts beneath their filter faces, shifts with emotions too obscured for me to understand. I don't know what people are feeling, what they're thinking, if they're looking at me, or even responding to me. They're all just awful, crying, two-faced monsters! They're all filter.
So, I don't know. I smile. I smile as hard as I can because what else can I do? And I hope they see my smile. I hope they see how hard I'm trying to show my real face to them because they maybe they'll show their real faces to me! I really hope they see my real face because when I look in the mirror, I sure don't.
Every author worth their salt wanders through the realm of schizoid delusions from time to time, it’s one of the necessary steps to reach a final product.
First you outline.
Next you start on a rough draft.
Then we read our rough draft and go on a vision quest rivaling a sizable dose of LSD as we debate if we’re really authors at all. This inevitably leads to oscillating between convincing ourselves we’re the next Hemingway and feeling like we’d fail a 7th grade creative writing class.
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u/intellectual_printer 1d ago
These filters are getting out of hand...