Page 2 of Filter This
Ali shielded the late afternoon sun from her phone screen. @MamasMiniMadams was wearing a different dress from earlier – Do people do outfit changes at Holy Communions? – and was being fed champagne by a Carter twin while the crowd whooped and hollered. Wow, that escalated.
‘Here’s my mum and dad!’ @MamasMiniMadams indicated an attractive couple in their sixties slow-dancing among the chaos of the kids, all high off their tits on giant doughnuts, and their tipsy, well-heeled parents.
Everyone looks so polished. Ali glanced down at her own grungy tee and faded jeans. And not just the people – their whole world gleamed. The clip ended on the Carter Twins being urged to ‘Take it off’ by a rowdy crowd. The Aperol Fizz had evidently gone to their heads.
Absentmindedly, Ali checked Instagram on the app store. ‘Like, capture and share moments …’ announced the app description. ‘Express yourself by sharing your day, the highlights and everything in between.’
Highlights are pretty thin on the ground for me, Ali thought ruefully as she hit the Download button. A few taps and she’d set up a new account – @Ali_Jones. She hit the camera icon in the top left corner of the app and glanced around the car park, checking she was alone, before holding the phone up to her face. It was like a mirror. She could see her tired eyes and the beginnings of a spot on her chin. Behind her the sign read ‘Ailesend Dementia Care Home’. She swallowed – Insta-grim more like.
She messed with the little buttons on the bottom of the screen. One gave her kitten ears and heavy eyeliner. Another bathed her in a celestial glow. The next button set off a beautiful wreath of pink flowers blooming about her head. Her blotchy skin was transformed. She still looked like herself, but as seen through a prism of perfection. The filter showed blooms at the edge of the frame, obscuring the sign just past her right shoulder. She turned her head this way and that but neither her flowers nor her new-found perfection slipped even for a second.
She snapped the picture.
It looked good.
1
‘Get up!’ Ali was startled awake by Liv huffing at the door. ‘It smells like underboob sweat and curry chips in here.’
‘Name a more iconic duo!’ Ali shouted, grinning at her housemate’s retreating back as Liv stalked back down the hall towards the kitchen. Ali shook off the fug of sleep and was hit with the fug of … well, herself basically. Sitting up slightly, she took in the room brimming with shite, a pale January morning leaking in around the brown velvet curtains, and then noticed a deeply unnerving, moist sensation.
‘Ick … what the f—?’ Her left hand felt weird and she realised she’d fallen asleep with it partially submerged in a tray of curry chips, while in her right hand was her phone, of course.
‘Gah.’ She carefully retracted her hand and held it aloft, away from her and the, admittedly, already fairly gross bed sheets.
With her right hand, she hit the Home button and impatiently keyed in the security code (all the same number for ease) and assessed her updates since she’d last checked at about 1 a.m. Three new followers, 180 likes on the #selfcare yoga post she only dimly remembered putting up last night and one comment from Dee, which basically didn’t count. Dee was a sweet girl from the wardrobe department at work, but she just didn’t seem to get that she and Ali were not friends.
Ali threw the phone to the end of the bed and flexed her fingers. ‘The phone claw’ Liv called it whenever Ali complained about her stiff fingers.
‘Is it a sign that perhaps clutching your phone in a vice-like grip while sleeping is not the healthiest of behaviours?’ asked Liv in the voice she used when she was pretending to be joking but was, in fact, deadly serious.
Liv had taken up sending her links to articles like ‘How to Break up with Your Phone’ in the last six months. To prove a point, Ali had begun to make a big deal of leaving her phone charging in the kitchen at night. Though this display of abstemiousness had necessitated the purchase of a decoy phone with matching cover. Expensive and probably indicative of an even bigger problem that Ali didn’t feel particularly keen to explore further. And anyway, decoy phones aside, her Instagramming was a fairly innocent little pastime.
‘It’s not a big deal,’ she’d argued with Liv only the evening before as they watchedCold Case Filefor the umpteenth time while Ali absentmindedly stroked the phone like a beloved pet, one eye on her feed and one eye on the TV. ‘Instagram is pretty and it’s fun.’ It was also something that seemed to be paying off, however slowly – she was closing in on nine thousand followers. The same could not be said for her attempts at playwriting since finishing college, which had just been wall-to-wall rejection and left her feeling utterly worthless.
After Liv had ambled off to bed, Ali’d lain alone in her room with the phone propped on the pillow facing her – the stories of beautiful girls with perfect lives washing over her – when she’d felt the familiar spike of upset puncture her trance-like state.
Emma O’Brien, a fashion blogger from Cork, was getting ready for the Rebel Gin event – an event Ali hadn’t been invited to. I have the same amount of followers as her, Ali thought, peeved. She hit Emma’s smiling profile pic to bring up the girl’s account. ‘Hmm – 11K followers. That’s up from a month ago …’ An hour passed and Ali, completely engrossed in a deep Insta-dive on Emma, had barely noticed. That was when she’d gone for the chips. And bought the wine.
‘It is Tuesday after all,’ she’d reasoned when her body veered almost of its own accord towards the Esso garage for a bottle of white. ‘I’m days from cracking 9K followers – that’s worth celebrating.’
The wine had stirred a bit of optimism (the first few glasses always did) and that’s when she’d put out the yoga mat, crystals and candles for her #selfcare post and slurred out a few thoughts in the caption about looking after yourself and practising mindfulness.
Now, remembering the optimism of the previous evening, Ali retrieved the phone, reminding herself that one of her #goals was to be more mindful of the good things and three new followers and 180 likes is no bad feat. Consulting the time – 7 a.m. – she soothed her mounting anxiety: lots of people would be barely up yet. Speaking of, she needed to get going. She had to have coffee with the mothership, Mini, at 8.30 before she needed to get into the TV station for work.
Ali was a production assistant onDurty Aul’ Town, the top and only soap opera in the country. When she’d taken the job to get a foot in the door, as her drama-studies tutor in college had suggested, she’d assumed it would just be short term while she figured out her plan. Then quite rapidly three years had slipped by and she’d gotten no closer to the writers’ room, and the more time she spent adjacent to a career in TV and theatre, the more she wondered if it was what she really wanted after all.
She hauled herself out of bed and sat on the side, carefully avoiding the now empty bottle of Sauvignon lolling on the floor and setting the chip tray down alongside it. She frowned at her greasy hand, holding it away from her before wiping it on the carpet. The carpet’s minging anyway, she figured.
She hit the search function on Insta and entered ‘S’, prompting the app to supply her with the name ‘Shelly Devine’. Ali opened the profile (Shelly Devine, 255K followers: Happy wife of @DivineDanDevine, mama to @BabyGeorgie, Loving the journey but the juggle is REAL!) and checked on the last post. The picture showed a pristine Shelly with soft dark waves cascading over her shoulders captioned:
That fresh hair feeling, Thanks @BinnyK @Copenhairgen #FreshHairDontCare #blowdry #feelgood #selfcare #haircare #influencer #iger #dubliniger #dublinigers #dubiger #dubigers #shellyisdivine #BlowinOutTheCobwebs #LolAtLife #lovelife #TakeMeNowMrDevine
The post, barely an hour old, already had 5,736 likes and 54 comments. What must that even feel like? Ali wondered. She hit Home and opened the Notepad app, selecting one of her docs in progress, ‘Shelly stats’. She updated the info then reverted to Instagram, liked Shelly’s selfie, added ‘You look amazing’ and hit Post. Ali slumped back against the pillows but then, feeling troubled, abruptly snatched up the phone once more. She frantically unlocked the screen and brought up the post of Shelly’s irritatingly immaculate face again. Hunched over the phone, Ali found her comment and hit Delete. She retyped ‘You look amazing’ and added seven exclamation marks and a heart-eyes emoji. She hit Post again and settled back against the pillows.
Ali scrolled through Shelly’s feed absentmindedly while she engaged in a few minutes of deep, gut-churning loathing towards Shelly Devine. Ugh, she’s so basic – why does everyone love her so much?
Ali frequently wondered who the 255K followers even were. ‘Who even likes this? It’s so vanilla,’ she raged as she scrolled obsessively over coffee, lunch, dinner and on her pillow at night.
