Speculative Generalizations About What Your Choice Image File Format Says About You
By AJ Pacitti
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You are on a top ten most popular baby names list from 1984-1987. You work in midtown. You have been promoted a socially acceptable number of times. On first dates, you usually say something neutral but deeply insecure, like, “Yeah, all of my friends work at startups,” or “Remember Duke Nukem? Great game. Never played it, but great game.” You once spoke on a panel or to a New School class about ‘culture’ and ‘the media.’
You find Gmail’s “Did you mean to attach files?” notification helpful.
Despite the panel you once spoke on, you’re deeply concerned you will never produce compelling art or sustain a real interpersonal connection. When you get especially drunk, you talk about god, your childhood, or how you want to cash in your savings and go work on a cruise ship.
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You communicate with your hookups via Facebook chat and MMS, exclusively. Your graphic design site is hosted by Go Daddy.
In high school, you drove a Nissan Sentra and identified with the music of Alkaline Trio. You recently ‘got your life together’ and graduated with an associate degree from the New York Institute of Technology. Last month, you secured some freelance work for your uncle’s Oriental rug company.
You commute to a suburb of Philadelphia every other weekend to visit your high school girlfriend, Mischa, and Cody, the son you fathered with her. Your new year’s resolution is to be a better dad to Cody. Last weekend, you took him to a science museum, 3-D movie, or to get haircuts at an old-timey barber shop.
You have a screensaver. It is space-themed.
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Your name is Cheryl, Colleen, or Linda. You have foster children of varying age, gender, and race. They all share one bedroom. You use government-issued vouchers intended for the foster children toward your computer classes at a nearby community college. You often tell the foster children, over single helpings of mac and cheese, “Things will be different when I start my own e-bay business.”
When you have your sister and her husband over for dinner, you talk about “doing right by the foster children” and ask for six thousand dollars.
You email your sister after the dinner from your optonline.net account and apologize profusely. You email her husband and reiterate your need for six thousand dollars.
You never start your own e-bay business.
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You respond to most text messages with “kewl” or a series of unrelated emojis. Left to your own devices, you monopolize conversations by repeating things about “net art” and “nu American rave culture.” You’ve talked about every party you’ve ever attended. The comedic timing of that joke you made about Skrillex is one of your most recent personal regrets. You understand SOPA less than you let on.
Deep down, you hope happiness isn’t a transitory thing and that the people in your life won’t leave you. They continue to leave you.
You keep meaning to find your minidisc player. And to have a space-themed screensaver.