What do you see?

This is Prom weekend.  Tomorrow is the Big Night.  Girls will spend ungodly amounts of time and money on hair and make-up, just to look special for the Most Important Night of their Lives.  People will get drunk and fuck.  Gossip will flow Monday morning.  Who wore what, who danced with whom.  I, of course, will not be attending.  Prom is just another thing in high school that I will ignore, but will serve to remind me of the surreal time-warp of Senior Year.

However, my somewhat sad social life isn’t what I’m irritated about tonight. 

I spend a lot of time on these entries, believe it or not.  I type and erase and type and erase until the finished product is shiny and consumer friendly.  I come off as mildly intelligent and somewhat articulate.  Which is, of course, the goal of this whole endeavor.  Just another way of showing off.  Really, though, what is the point of the online journal?  Some claim that it’s to “Let [their] true feelings out”  or “express [themselves] openly.”  These people usually have very artistic journals, heavy in dark colouration and complex graphics.  Often, complicated and impossible-to-read templates are used.  The entries are “dark” and “morbid.”  Entries about eating disorders and self mutilation and “fucked up” family lives and “backstabbing” friends and “ignorant therapists.”  But really, what’s the purpose of these journals?  To show off.  To showcase their lives for everyone to see and envy their drama, their bravado.  Their deep and meaningful lives. 

I am a shallow person.  This I cannot state enough.  I keep this journal out of sheer egotism.  I like to see my life chronicled out, almost like an autobiography-in-progress.  I enjoy seeing my intelligence displayed before the masses.  My “deeper” entries are only a farce-their only purpose is to show my command of the English language.  My day-to-day entries are only an excuse to parade my life before a plethora of cyber-critics.  How do I compare, avid reader?  Do I enthrall you?  Would you rate me a perfect ten? 

I am, despite my best efforts, only human.  As such, I have an innate urge to prove myself to be the best at something, anything-in short, to draw attention to myself.  This journal, this waste of time serves only one purpose, the same as any other such journal-attention.  To know that one person-one random person out of 6 billion-has read MY work, has read MY life…it is the true reason why I maintain this.

And of course, the reason for such attention seeking is simple.  As people, we want to feel we have purpose.  A reason.  We want to affect the world somehow and-by God-we want to be remembered when we die.  What better way to reach the world than through the internet?  What better way to fill the vapid nothingness of our lives than to write about ourselves so that others can admire us?  Envy us.  Mock and demean us.  Who cares.  Attention is attention and a whore takes anything for the right price.