Dear Diary: I Am An Auto-Voyeur
Auto-voyeurism is a muscle that has been working under your skin since you made your first social media account
Sashawne Smith
It took me two decades to commit to writing a diary. But I don’t call it a diary. I call it a journal—obviously.
I bought it, accepting it as the apex of self-care rituals that had been marketed to me because sometimes, taking the synonym placebo works. Label the act of writing about yourself, your thoughts, feelings and perceptions of life, as journaling doesn’t feel nearly as crass or juvenile. Label the three-page word vomit you write at 12:23 pm as “morning pages”, and the accomplishment is as instant as it is gratifying. The only problem is that for all the needed acceptance and gratitude journaling can foster, none of it negates why I failed to keep one before this.
Plagued with anxiety that a family member would one day stumble across it and learn about my tendency for cuss words and judgemental storytelling, I convinced myself that it wasn’t worth the risk. I would start them sporadically between 11 and 17. Then, like clockwork, after three entries in a miscellaneous notebook, I’d rip all the pages out and shred them until the words were unrecognisable. Even when I could overturn that anxiety and write, another voice would breeze in to remind me that my life—even at the height of my teen years—wasn’t all that interesting. It wasn’t, so I was right, but two things can be true at once.
Maybe I'm getting more sentimental as I get older, or perhaps it's programmed into us the moment we swiftly leave our teen years, but I mourn those destroyed pieces of writing. I yearn more and more to know how I would’ve framed those years. To have evidence of my younger voice—the slang I used, the callous or careful way I interacted with my environment —that I can no longer recall vividly. The idea that keeping a record of life only made sense if it was stimulating to others robbed me of (moderately) accurate nostalgia.
I still suffer from those worries, but rather than forgoing the act altogether, it forced my hand to write for the audience I was so desperate to avoid—I became a victim of auto-voyeurism.
Derived, in part, from the Margaret Atwood quote: “you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman, you are your own voyeur," auto-voyeurism is the self-censorship employed out of desperation, a necessary lens to navigate the act of viewing we undertake as social media users.
The hyper-awareness that there will be a gaze filled with perception bearing down on you as you scribble is not simply limited to a male one. It is that of a mother, a sibling, or a distant cousin on your father’s side. It’s being plagued by the imaginary thoughts of a stranger. Would they find it funny? Dramatic? Lacking substance? Would they tut at the scribbled slant of my handwriting? The spelling mistakes?
An auto-voyeur caters to a fantasy they have created for themselves at the expense of preempted judgement from others. They subconsciously wonder if it's possible to distil your personality into a consumable page of pen and ink and come across as personable. Relatable. Comedic. Intelligent. Because these traits are internet currency.
And when you consider all these things at once, what room is there for why you started writing in the first place?
What happened to creating a space to be unabashedly yourself on the page, if nowhere else, for your own sanity?
Auto-voyeurism is a muscle that has been working under your skin since you made your first social media account. Finally, you’ve gained the credits needed to graduate silently and relentlessly with every curated Instagram or TikTok post, Pinterest board or tweet you’ve ruminated on. The branding fairy has encased your body like a cap and gown, distorting your self-perception. It whispers in your ear and tells you you’re unmarketable until your fingers itch with the need to commercialise your personhood.
It’s not like we are unaware of the consequences of auto-voyeurism because if not, authenticity wouldn’t be a buzzword used to uplift our latest content creators or bash the fallen ones. Inherently, we know that these platforms reward us for capitalising on our relatability. And the moment the opportunity for financial and social gain is intertwined with a space that encourages you to be yourself, it is corrupted. We are encouraged to perform for audiences we might have before we have them. In the equation of every action (or reaction) you make is an extra set of eyes and ears focused on what is palatable.
When I started my first journal at twenty, I lived alone and wrote for a faceless audience I couldn’t predict. So I policed my personal expression in the pursuit of polished verity just in case it might one day be capitalised on.
Suddenly raucous, the crowd all begins to jeer: Capitalism! Boo! We hate Capitalism!
Why? Because somehow it's always there, at the root of everything—twisted like the Overcup Oak.
On a good day, it isn’t hard to grasp that there are ways of being authentic without exploring how it might benefit us materially or socially. It’s not news that there is merit in allowing yourself to appear half-formed and lacking polish. But knowing and doing are (to our collective shock and horror) mutually exclusive.
As I write, I try to recapture the flagrant earnestness that made me uncomfortable enough to destroy all written evidence that I had thoughts and feelings as a teenager. I am attempting to be 100% truthful, aware as I am that in three months, I will re-read a series of paragraphs and be horrified by my histrionics. I do this partly because I am terrified of the limitations and warpings of memory, and I don't trust my brain not to erase the actions I no longer align with.
But mostly because I know it will be good for me.
I strengthen the hope that acknowledging the voyeur means that I can learn to shun it. Eventually, somewhere down the line, I might also drag that anti-capital rawness from Moleskine to my overall existence. The only way I get the full reward of writing is to encourage that rawness. To engage fully.
No frills. No omissions. No performance.
And even if I do log into my Twitter account right afterwards with my dancing shoes laced back up. Accept that duality until we grow beyond it.
Because we must grow beyond it.
