Molly

Once I watched a trailer, I knew I had to have it right away. I’d never needed to pressure-wash the side of a house myself; I was unaware that there was a whole genre of A.S.M.R.-adjacent YouTube videos dedicated to such activities.

When the World Feels Messy, I Turn to PowerWash Simulator

Virality treats humans like fast fashion: algorithmically generated products to shove onto all of our screens at the same time, on which we then spend enormous sums of money and attention before ending up in the literal and/or figurative landfill.

You are safe where you are, but you are not getting what you want. If you go after what you want, you will have to create a safety that can travel — one that can get bumped around and sleep in odd places and get crafty when the first of the month rolls around. You will, in other words, have to believe in the home of yourself.

“You can have anything you want but you can’t have everything you want”

The internet has also made us all acutely aware of crises in the world. We're bombarded with a firehose of information every day as algorithms amplify the most inflammatory and disturbing content. There is no going back to the pre-2016 state of ignorance that many people, especially upper middle class white people, were immersed in.

What’s happening outside your window is real; a feed of the people and subjects algorithmically determined to validate or anger you is not. I look out mine and see my neighbor on his roof. I see him there often, like he is today, watering his plants. We can do more than touch grass—we can get outside and help something, anything, grow.

Now that we’re on the other side of these consequences, I can no longer kid myself. It’s time to stop ceding our humanity to these platforms. It’s time to invest back into IRL community. It’s time to stop 24/7 scrolling social media—you will not find the answers there.

This quest also addresses a very contemporary phenomenon: nowstalgia. We strive to preserve the present at all costs, but in this obsession, we miss the essence of it. By framing and filming, we’re already living in the nostalgia of a moment we haven’t taken the time to feel.

In this world where we seek to immortalize everything without ever knowing what to hold onto, this Polaroid invites us to reflect.