Nonchalance, the act of casually behaving in an unconcerned fashion, has taken over our lives. Perhaps more correctly put, the act of striving to look nonchalant has. Trying one’s hardest to appear as though they are not trying at all has become a foundation of our sociability, climbing to prominence online in recent years. I know we are all probably tired of hearing how fake social media is, but I think there is a developing constituent just as bad as the photoshopped bodies or “picture-perfect life” personas we have been continuously urged not to fall for. This lies within every photo dump, story or unseen chat we are to be convinced was spontaneous or unimportant to the poster. In reality, having a presence of any kind online has become anything but effortless, and so, we have entered what I would describe as a faux-nonchalance epidemic.
Instagram is the primary perpetrator of this development. Photo dumps, collections of often unrelated photos from one’s camera roll, have taken over the app since 2020. From their inception, dumps were a way to take selected photos, organize them precisely and post them as if they were just any set of recent photos on a user’s phone. A New Yorker article details the “desperation” to “carefully achieve something haphazard-looking.” The piece goes on to quote certain online instructors, who explained that, “compared to your usual pristine spread of food, there’s more nonchalance to an image of half-eaten dinner,” and another advising how to caption a post, saying, “if you’re feeling particularly enigmatic, go for a single emoji.” While the photo dump is certainly a fun way to post a recap (trust me, I am a victim to them as well), it is a clear indicator of the “casual Instagram” we persistently try to attain, despite going back and forth on whether the selfie should be the fourth or fifth slide, and if the bookstore one should be the penultimate, or if that should be reserved for the one with the painting and if the caption should have an emoji in it (and which one) or not.
Beyond posts, nonchalance continues to be chased after. A classic example would be the notorious half-swipe on Snapchat. The app allows users to hold down on an unread chat, swipe halfway across the screen and look at a message without marking it as “opened” or read. This is often done when one wants to see a message before preparing a response to send later on as if they were doing so directly after seeing it for the first time. On Instagram, there is a similar automatic setting that marks a direct message as “Seen” once it is opened; however, there is no half-swipe equivalent that can be done. Correspondingly, one either gets lucky by seeing an entire message in a notification and prepares a response that way, or they let it sit in their inbox before they feel they have it in them to respond after first seeing it. Obviously, this is not always the case — some people are comfortable with responding normally. However, it is known that responding can be burdensome when leaving someone on “Seen” at all or for too long is a faux-pas in itself.
Fakeness is just an aspect of social media — it’s programmed into how we have adopted these platforms. But what makes it worse is the ongoing attempt to make it seem as though that is no longer the case. While I cannot speak for everyone when I say that posting online can be a very calculated and somewhat exhausting procedure, I truly believe it has become almost impossible to be fully careless when engaging or posting. Anyways, next time you see that photo dump on your feed or the response to your message in your inbox, I hope you think to yourself: “God, this is so effortless.” Pay it forward — make those hours someone spent on it worthwhile.
Ellie Collins, FCRH’28, is an English major from Wilmington, Del.
