Julian Raymond

Last week, Cross Campus began its return to poster-child vibrancy, grass replacing what was once frozen mud. I decided then that it was time to begin planning the perfect cross campus picnic. I pictured the image in my head: fashionable friends in floral print and skinny chiffon scarves, clutching books of 14th century poems and “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf, vegan Tres Leches cupcakes from Claire’s Corner Copia, a spray of flowers from Annette’s Humanities Quadrangle collection, a picnic basket — I’d find one in time, somehow — complete with my suitemate Cory strumming a cover of “Sweet Sir Galahad” by Joan Baez on his acoustic guitar. I pictured writing the article — an excuse for sun-soaked fun despite looming deadlines — and detailing the memory as precisely as possible, with a picture attached from the picnic. In the depths of Bass Library, I calculated the perfect date, time, guestlist, location on the grass and cupcake order from Claire’s while texting my friends: next sunny day, cross campus, let’s go. 

Across the table from me, my friend peeked at my budding Pinterest collection — titled “cross campus” — and paused. There were already pictures of picnic blankets, floral print shawls over tiny black tank tops, flowers poking from behind pierced ears and a wrist stacked with bangles like the ones in my dorm room. Whispering over my laptop — much to the chagrin of the graduate students sitting next to us — she told me what I’ve heard so many times before:

“God, you’re such a Pinterest addict.”

In 2023, I was interviewed by Pinterest’s research and development team. I’m not sure if the non-disclosure agreement I signed was binding, or if it’s expired by now — they do that, right? like fruit? — but I’m pretty sure this will be fine. Before the interview the team had gone through my boards, my activity on the app, my six-year-old account, my “get out of the flop era” board with seventeen sections and over six hundred — I’ll stop. 

I’m obsessed with it. My screen time isn’t bad, only forty minutes on Monday (if you don’t count the everpresent tab on my computer open to the website). I went through a dark period of iPhone storage where every time I went to take a photo, I got booted back to my settings with a storage measurement in the decimal values. I had to delete Snapchat, then TikTok, then Instagram. Two months in, I was deleting contacts and never once considered axing Pinterest. I had a million excuses, and I still do, for why I needed it like a puppy not yet weaned from its mother.

The truth was that I was concerned with image. I spent the last four years in early morning watercolor workshops, intensive art programs, nude figure drawing sessions — they really do help with anatomy — and pulling reference images for illustrations from Pinterest. I knew the one thing that every artist does: whatever you do, it always looks better when you have reference. A fun spring break could be synthesized from a sequence of five reference photos: girl on beach towel with silver bangles, a shirtless brunette with a six-pack, Hugo Dacquet with a Piña Colada in Seychelles, two friends passed out on a plush chaise lounge and a disposable camera picture of Manu Rios in Mexico. I titled the section “spring(break)” on my seventeen-section Pinterest board. 

It’s not that I needed the Pinterest curation to have fun on spring(break), but I still felt compelled to make it. It wasn’t about convincing other people I had fun or that I looked great with a tan — not a single one of the digicam pics of me shirtless in Maui were released to the public — but I think it was, in some ways, about certainty. I could be certain I was having the most fun on my trip if I arranged it like an artist composing a scene, pulling references from the greatest collection of images known to man: the Internet. I could be certain that my venture into cross campus was the best cross campus experience if I orchestrated it to the maximum of my ability. If I didn’t, I’d run the risk of having enjoyed it slightly more if I’d taken the time to plan out my outfit in advance, or staked out the picnic area to test the dampness of the grass and the firmity of the dirt.

I’ll admit, that last bit probably sounded strange. I wouldn’t really go to that length. Not usually. Not unless I was seriously hellbent on the event being absolutely perfect, when I’d make a full Pinterest board instead of just a section of one. Any adult whose brain matured before the invention of the iPhone probably thinks I’m insane. They’ll turn this article into a Channel 4 segment against our generation: “Social media turns kids’ brains to goop! They just don’t know how to live anymore!”

If I did all this for the sake of impressing others, I would agree. I’d accept the obvious solution to my social media-induced ailment: stop caring what people think. Be yourself. Live your life. Follow your heart, and the million other romantic clichés. I should stop treating my life like it’s something to be consumed, like it’s something I have to advertise and make more palatable. I’d get that, if it were just about Instagram, about proving to other people that I live a life that I don’t. 

But it’s not. Life is something we consume. I’m the one eating every slice of my life, experiencing every stale minute and tasting every cream-cheese-frosted moment that people on the outside — be it pedestrians or the 40-year-old father of two who is somehow always the first to view my Instagram story — just watch from afar. Why shouldn’t I make my life easier for myself to swallow, with silver bangles, “Sweet Sir Galahad” covers, Virginia Woolf frosting and a six-pack on the brunette I have to see reflected in the mirrors of the Bingham bathrooms?

Instagram Reel philosophers ask whether or not I’d still want to hang dried flowers in my room if I was the last man on Earth, if nobody else would ever see it. My answer is yes. I can picture it now: the countryside flattened by nuclear devastation, not a soul left on the earth, save for me in my reinforced steel bunker, with flowers in my room. Over my radiation suit, I’d probably take the risk to wear potentially irradiated necklaces, maybe even take some polaroids of mutated deer I found pretty — in a warped “Fallout 4” kind of way — and tape them to my wall.

Wanting to make your life beautiful is far from a flaw. Arranging things — whether it’s a picnic on cross campus, a spring break trip, or the clutter on your desk — to make them prettier and palatable is human, not a post-social media mutation of mankind. I’ll accept the criticism that, maybe, it’s vapid and shallow to be concerned with images, to get pleasure out of a life that’s easy on the eyes, as long as my critic lives as an ascetic, holed up in a brutalist prison cell with no decorations, no artwork and definitely no flowers taped to their wall.