The good thing about drinking is that it tastes great and makes you feel good, and the bad thing is that it makes you think about your ex. I carry around a little wooden lockbox of feelings and the key to it is a high-alcohol saison or a Manhattan poured by a bartender who thinks they’re doing me a favour.
I was still in the throes of getting over her, and I was in my unlocked state, at another bar after meeting the kind of friends who have two drinks and then go home to be in bed by 10. Somehow it seemed important to see the whole thing at once, to make sense of it. So I took out my phone and started writing the whole story of my ex and me. I typed out all the highlights on my phone and posted it on my favourite social network.
Normally, this would be an insane thing to do.
But the social network in question here was Peach. It is a small, cute social app that exploded in a burst of popularity one Friday in early 2016 and then evaporated about a week later. Or, it almost did. A small, dedicated group of users just stuck with it, and inexplicably, the tiny team who run it let it stay up. If I had to guess, there are probably a few thousand people on it. Generally, everyone agreed not to talk about it publicly, but now its future is in question, so the rules have changed.
There is something about the app that appeals: its soft pastel colours, or surprisingly charming features that would be cheesy elsewhere, like letting you post good morning or what movie you were watching. Most of all, there is no central feed. Instead, you have to click on each friend’s individual profile, which, first, limits the number of people you want to have on it, and second, makes things weirdly intimate, confessional, like you’re really writing to yourself and other people just happen to read. Of the odd mix that makes up my friend list of about fifteen—a couple of IRL friends, a few pals from Twitter, and a few complete strangers in another country—most use it as a sort of ongoing diary for the things you can’t say elsewhere, a release valve from the glare of Twitter. It is the sort of app where you talk about having a headache, the fact that you’re horny, a memory you have of your father that still fucks you up, and of course, pictures of your dog, mostly to a cobbled-together group of people you’ve never even met who, for some unknown reason, have all agreed not to judge.
So I wrote, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. My therapist had little more to offer than saying I should move on, and I had already exhausted my friends’ patience for listening me talk about this woman. I sat there and typed until I was too drunk to write more and then I spent the rest of the weekend periodically picking up my phone when something else occurred to me. There was nothing bitter in it, because I have no reason to be, but every major thing in the decade-plus-long saga, I wrote, and when I was done, a friend said: “I hope you saved it. It’s a sad tale, beautifully told.”
I’m still not sure why I did that, or why I, a 42 year old man, still confess crushes, or talk about my obsessive, deferential relationship to beauty, or why it fills me with joy when people I don’t really know post about their successes or happiness. Maybe it is a proxy for the kind of intimacy others can take for granted: some people have partners with whom they share everything; others have those kinds of deep, roiling friendships that fill me with envy; and others have the group chat. Me? I have Peach.
I am the sort of person who is hardly guarded on social media. I type all sorts of dumb shit into those vacant white boxes. I once tweeted that having no intimate relationships in your life is like being scraped raw from the inside. One person responded by saying “I think we should be pals maybe?” and when I told another friend, she almost curled in on herself with embarrassment for me. That is the risk and reward of public confession—some people will find it achingly human, and some will feel a mix of pity and revulsion.
But there is more at stake in the public sphere of social media than embarrassment. Discourse moves along rails, and things that rattle and judder off them can bring all sorts of consequences. It’s not, as some stupidly assert, that you can’t say what you want anymore. Rather, if you don’t have the words or haven’t built up the goodwill to dabble in heterodoxy or just the plain ill-thought-out, you can find yourself becoming a lightning rod for an issue much bigger than you. You can confess in public but boy do you have to be careful about it.
The ex in question and I sort of reconciled about a year ago, and have now settled into a slightly awkward if deeply comforting friendship. I tell her I love her without blinking and she does too. There is a kind of rawness to it that is discomfiting yet reassuring, like the shudder of stepping into a hot shower on a cold day that ends up leaving you warm to the core. That’s the thing, though. If you want to allow intimacy to flourish, you have to get naked. I mean, don’t do in public, obviously. You just have to find the right place.
Each comment or response costs a tiny ETH fee of 4.0E-5 (about 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency), payable from your Metamask.io wallet (the wallet is free, and takes just a moment to add to your browser). This system helps protect Popula conversations from trolls, fakers, Cambridges Analytica and other malign influences.
If you haven’t got any ETH yet and you’re a Popula subscriber, please write to hey@popula.com with your subscriber email address and MetaMask wallet address, and we’ll send you a little bit to get started! It’s pretty easy and a lot of fun to use, Yay.
If you’d like to learn more about cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and how Popula is using these new technologies to help protect speech rights and the free press, please visit our FAQ page.
We’re having trouble checking your subscriber status. Try refreshing the page.
Welcome! To leave a comment, you’ll need to log in, and also have your MetaMask wallet ready with some ETH cryptocurrency available.
It’s easy! Just visit metamask.io to install an in-browser MetaMask wallet. If you’re a new subscriber, write to hey@popula.com for $2 in free ETH crypto!
Thank you for being a Popula subscriber! As a subscriber, you may leave comments, but you have to be logged in as commenter here first. This is an additional login—the login for your commenting privileges—and you’ll stay logged in after you log in the first time.
We’ve sent an email to your registered address at … with your commenting details. Please follow the directions in the email to open your commenting privileges and then come back here to leave your first comment!
Thanks for registering! Please log in and you can get started commenting.
You need to connect to the Main Ethereum Network before you can leave a comment. Click on your MetaMask icon so the window pops up, then select ‘Main Ethereum Network’ from the network-chooser dropdown at the top.
You’re logged in and ready to leave comments! All you need is a MetaMask wallet and a little ETH cryptocurrency, just like with our microtipping system.
If you know what MetaMask is and have it installed, activate MetaMask and refresh:
Each comment costs 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency to post! Just write your comment and click the green button. Thank you, Popula subscriber, for joining us in the new world of cryptoeconomics! Please don’t forget to set your wallet address in order to receive tips on your comments.
Alas! commenting is not yet available on your mobile device. Each comment costs a little ETH cryptocurrency to post, and for now that requires a regular computer.
So please go to your laptop, install the MetaMask browser plugin, and hold forth!