She was my first Snapchat.

Fishy’s voice was like the voice in my head—rather than how my actual voice sounds when it’s recorded.

I played the video 32 times in one day. I played it on the metro, i showed it to EVERYONE.

I had a whole strategy in my head for building Fishy as a character. She sings picture books to small children. A new children’s book each day. I could have made a channel introducing children to Snapchat early. Snapchat VCs would have been all over that shit. And we could have been stars, Fishy and I.

In fact, she’s not just a fish. She’s a metaphor for every millennial out there who doesn’t know if they can make it in this knockabout world. She CAN be a fishy. A fishy, fishy, fishy.

I didn’t realize the filters change and go away and get replaced with others. So I got really depressed when I couldn’t make a new Fishy clip the next day.

Finding that fucking level of strong identity is so hard. I don’t really know who I am. But she just goes in there and owns it. With my lips and her body, we could have conquered the world.

I’m a land-based mammal, and she dwells between the marine and digital space. But isn’t that what Sebastien the Crab convinced us we wanted all along?? Under the seaaaaa *under the sea* under the seeaaaa *under the sea*

But “they” took her away with their fucking ephemeral approach to filters and ten-second bite-sized motherfucking bullshit.

My friend Shami said she might come back (filters sometimes do). But I am faced with the strong possibility I will have to reinvent myself as a fucking panda, or an orange vomiting juice, or a dog sticking its tongue out like everybody else. But I am not everybody else. I am different.

Even then, by some magical chance, I do find the panda within … the panda will leave me before i can enjoy that identity.

I spent ten seconds as a fish, and now all I have is to watch that little video over and over again, and dream about what could have been.

Snapchat should fucking realise what they’re taking away from us: our right to fixity in identity.

Life is extinguished in an instant, in the grand scheme of things. But i don’t think we really confront that. Really. For most of our lives. It is only when we confront mortality that we realise the true ephemerality of our own existence.

Content has become ephemeral, but I liked to think we humans haven’t yet. It seems we too, can have our identities unceremoniously stripped away by a digital behemoth. With no known process for mourning. With no psychological handbook for how to deal with it.

I swim around in the bowl of life, regurgitating hashtags and feeding myself on memes.

#Jesuisfishy #MakeFishyGreatAgain #Leavefishyalone