Sean Äaberg

THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 11

Added 2024-07-02 18:14:27 +0000 UTC

I came up in the zine world, specifically the International DIY Punk scene, but my zine was always personal, a per-zine as they would be classified later. Having the zine be my main artistic vehicle & it being my public face led me to develop a working persona. Who I write as isn’t very different from the isolated me, but I do maintain or acknowledge that difference because public life is one thing & private life is another. The public display of one’s life anticipated Reality TV which anticipated the 360°, 24-7 social media landscape we have today. If you want to go back further this is an extension of Warholian art or the Punk “No Separation Between The Artist & Audience” ethos. But, not everything needs to be or should be shared. I can remember a lot of perzines & percomics where the author did nothing but gripe about their boring life. Seeing people give big stage smiles for their highly curated, monotonous life is similar to me. This is adding nothing to the equation. Not everyone has something to say. We are drowning in too much information & yet people are as alienated & ignorant as ever. It takes the kind of separation of persona & self to use these platforms without it taking a toll on you, because it’s draining. Being accessible to anyone on whatever platform is draining. It’s damaging for adults but it is especially damaging to kids. I’ve paid a lot of attention to the way our kids interface with social media. They watch. They consider anything about them online a form of doxxing. I’ve been publicly online, using my real name since 1999. But I do this intentionally, I have a public face, I have a private face.