Hello hi!
I’m amy and my friends call me yam. I post nice pictures here and talk about my reads here ੈ✩‧₊˚
This little space started when I was cleaning up my files and found a bunch of old drafts that I wrote back when I was younger and more foolish (maybe). Most of them should not see the light of day, but once in a while I’ll post something in long-form here. It’s nice to have a place to write as much as I want about my latest hyperfixation without hitting a ‘caption limit’.
I started out as a studygrammer who was also heavily into journalling. I joined the community when it was still relatively small and had hardly any university students, which made me one of the oldest members. Being part of that community helped me focus and get the grades I wanted, and I got to make so many friends across all age groups. Many of them are still my friends today and we have watched each other grow up, graduate, get employed, find love, go through break-ups, etc. I know there is stranger danger and all, but I’m glad I got to meet my online friends in person and become IRL friends.
After graduating, I found that I had time to read for leisure again so I converted to a casual bookstagram. I gradually lost track of what the latest studygram/ studyblr trends were, or which stationery items were most popular at the moment, or even who accused who of copying. I wasn’t studying for exams anymore, so I felt a bit like an imposter. It was weird confronting the remnants of a community I could no longer call my own, and I was tired of feeling pressured to constantly produce only one type of content, so I culled my account’s following from thousands to a mere handful whose names were most familiar to me. It was a freeing exercise (although I’m sure I aged five years removing all those accounts manually) and the feeling of relief I felt when I saw the numbers go down made me realise that I am not as impervious to peer pressure as I thought. We were not made to have so many eyes on us, even if they’re not actual eyes, even if it is flattering at first. It’s almost as if we’ve put ourselves in a personal panopticon where an imagined (and it is imagined) audience expects us to churn out satisfactory content or we will be punished with an unfollow. There is no way living like this is good for anybody’s mental health.
Spending so many years in an online community has shaped my interests indefinitely. I would describe myself as chronically online, and I am constantly thinking about what’s happening on various platforms and in various blogging communities. There were many things that irked me about studygram which continue to irk me now on bookstagram, e.g. casual plagiarism, the fame-chasing numbers game, and the exploitation of (young) hobbyists for free labour/ capitalist profit. Maybe I can say this only because I have tasted ‘online success’ before, but it scares me how the exact same behaviours and anxieties are replicated across time, accounts, and communities. Why are we assigning ourselves homework in the form of posting regularly on hyper-curated accounts? Who actually benefits if everyone believes that they have a responsibility to continuously create, produce, and market content for free? Since when did building a personal brand become crucial to writing book reviews?
Which is not to say that I will not be partaking, but it is a constant struggle to keep myself in check even after having built a certain level of immunity. For sure, I love my hobby and it still sparks joy. However, a hobby is no longer just a hobby when you’ve done it for years and it is practically a part of your personality and public persona. I find myself tested when I see someone lament about how their account is not ‘growing’ (I hate this term; people are not crops and behind each number is an actual human being) or when I see yet another reel trying too hard to replicate booktok content in the hopes of going viral. The fear of fading away and turning invisible is real, and truly I can empathise. I just wonder sometimes if it’s worth it to do all this work.
These days I post what I want to, when I want to. NGL it’s hard running social media accounts with both a baby and a full-time job, let alone one that is so commitment-heavy. I’ve returned to journalling and blogging for this season, and I will continue to make little vlogs to document my little life. It took awhile but I found what combination works for me. It’s very important to me that I exist outside of work, as visibly and authentically as possible, because sometimes I am made to feel like I do not have the right to. On that note, people who run entire Tiktok accounts about their government jobs with their full names and locations out in the open scare the heck out of me. I simply don’t have balls like that. Respect, and godspeed.
If you plan to stick around, thank you for reading, and I hope that we can be friends ◡̈
