This is the beginning of something.

My influence stems from the central force of my life. I must recognize and nurture my roots. Now is the time for the ascension of personal responsibility. I am a global citizen, and realizing such has forced me to recognize my place in the grand mechanism of the contemporary world. How can I expect the world to be creative if I, as an individual, do not create? How can I expect the world to change for the better if I, too, do not change for the better?

I have never been one to make New Year’s resolutions, but the timing of this realization is fitting. I have begun my attempt at living a genuine life by cutting myself off completely from Facebook. This is not the place to detail the purported evils and pitfalls of social networking – indeed, my reasons for departing from the realm of online interactions are, for the most part, personal in nature. To put it bluntly, I am simply tired of living in front of a screen. I no longer wish to fabricate the narrative of my lifetime online: meticulously tagging photos of myself, describing my interests, providing vast amounts of information to be mined by advertisers – all this, and for what? The fact of the matter is that I know very few people who use Facebook as a tool to get to know each other; it is instead used as a tool to further the cult of narcissism that plagues my generation.

Ours is a culture of regurgitation. Speaking in terms of the American aesthetic, historically one may identify certain cultural movements that have extended their influence into the realm of design. Such cultural influence has ceased, however, as so too has cultural growth. Take a look at the clothing, buildings, and automobiles of the last fifteen years – has anything really changed? More often than not the answer is no.

American culture has been allowed to settle into the angst of post-modernism, desperately afraid of what might come next. We seek pacification in the form of rediscovery, not in creation. Vintage is in, and vintage is counterproductive – no matter how charming. Rediscovery is not the arduous process it once was – one need not scour antique shops for a piece of history anymore; rather, one need only have access to a computer with an Internet browser. The phenomenon of “reblogging” (or “retweeting” or “reposting”) speaks highly to the pervasiveness of devalued accessibility: what we find online we can make ours with the click of a button – the responsibility for active creation is shirked in the face of a cultural tendency towards a “finders-keepers” mentality.

I do not mean to sound overly apocalyptic. I recognize that the Internet is a potent and powerful force in the modern world, and I further recognize its capabilities as a platform for genuine discourse, interactivity, and creation. It is with this in mind that I forge forth: I hope to create a positive online presence, which does not rely on the regurgitation of information, art, or ideas and in turn rebels against the cult of narcissism.

My ideas are my own, forged by the active process of critical thought and deliberate consumption - I seek to moderate the influences I subject myself to so as to stop the flow of needless chatter. In refraining from consuming the reprocessed, repackaged, and regurgitated cultural memes of my generation I hope, too, to cease contributing to them.

This is not revolutionary. But it’s a start.