existential crisis/earthly pleasures/online personas
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- #AD The first 500 people to use my link in the description will receive a one month free trial of Skillshare! skl.sh/dakotaw...
in trying to sum this video: blehhhhh online personas and caffeine addiction and brain vomit and earthly pleasures
love,
Dakota x
FIND ME ON:
WWW.NOWHEREGIRLCOLLECTIVE.COM
Instagram: dakota__warren
Tik Tok: sp3llb00k
Blog: www.nowheregirl.space
Spotify: warrendakota15
Business contact: dakota@nowheregirlcollective.com
*my particularly terrible skin in this video was a reaction to something medical! I figure best to normalise these kinds of things rather than deny their existence, and it's all sorting itself out anyway. big kisses to you all!!! scouring the comments for conversation and community hehe
Thank you so much. I find it so bizarre how people shame others for “imperfections” or the way they look as if they themselves were perfect. Like did you forget we’re all human beings who share the same air we breathe?
Anyways, great video! I was really excited to see you post, especially because I found myself scrolling on your old videos and rewatching them hehe
I am 1 hour late, yet an eternity early❤
What do you think of If We Were Villains? People like to recommend it a lot to fans of The Secret History but I wasn't particularly blown away by it. I don't know why that is, and I figure you're usually very good at voicing things I couldn't have realised/thought of myself.
knitting, drinking tea, ready to go insane.
Favorite kind of comment i loved in Dakota content
oh that phenomenon with having other people’s memories as your own happens to me as well!! i once told my mom about this memory i had when i was younger, and when she told me that didn’t actually happen i felt like i was going crazy. eventually i found out that the “memory” was just a scene from a movie i’d watched when i was really young! the same thing happens to me a lot of the time with books as well. i think i also tend to imagine myself in situations so deeply, and absorb myself into things so much, that things i’ve heard/seen/read about stay in my head as if i’ve experienced them myself, and i guess with a lot of those false memories it’s hard to actually remember which ones are false and which ones aren’t
Hearing you talk about how you felt your mother's memories as your own stuck with me. It got me thinking about how intelligent our bodies are, how mcuh they hold on to without us even realizing. Recently I've been talking to my mom about her childhood and the trauma that came with it. There were just so many layers to it, feeling my own feelings of parental abandonment while still holding space for her to talk about hers and understanding that these things don't exist in isolation. Anyways, she mentioned this one memory she had with her mother that snapped something inside of me because all my life I had felt that exact memory in body but I just didn't know what to name it. I realized that what I have been carrying for most of my life didn't even belong to me in the first place. Thanks for sharing the wonderful inside of your brain with us, it's incredible to hear you put words to thoughts and feelings I didn't even know I shared
I love when your videos are podcast-esque 🫶
I once was talking to my closest friend about something that happened to me years ago only for her to get so confused and yell “that’s me! That all happened to me and i told you about it then!” And that wasn’t the only time I experienced that. Memory is such a complicated thing i cannot understand how could the real and imaginary be one like that
i think you are your chosen mask thats always been my ethos, in response to “just be yourself” as a condemnation. i like creating the self over accepting it; i really hate authenticity as an imperative. id be interested to read your essay on the topic of online personae theres so many interesting things to be said about it. it seems like it should be really easy to create an online persona in order to be the most popular (just embody what others venerate) but to simply cultivate the persona to meet approval wouldnt serve as adequate motivation for most to keep up with it id think. people want to wear a mask of themselves/their ideal ego and access themselves through it. really enjoyed this video
to manifest a memory that becomes the crux of who you are is terrifying! it happens more often than not however i like to not ruin it for myself or distinguish it from my subconscious.
I think that Tumblr and UA-cam comments sections are the best places for this sort of discourse. Tumblr especially is sort of nice because it's a bunch of strangers coming together on the internet, and with "friends" on there, I've sort of done what you've said where like I've turned them into a version of something else in my head when I don't have actual confirmation in reality that they are the way that they are. Also I like that you can have a sort of anonymous persona on Tumblr, but there's no pressure. You're just there to be there, and I love that so much.
i watched this in two sittings, had two mugs of masala chai and a conversation with a friend in between; it feels on brand somehow. memory and dreams and things really are so strange -- I have a project i'm working on, and its basis is a sort of mythologising of my mother's childhood memories, but i don't think i could ever recall it as my own because it feels so far away...anyway, love these types of videos of yours a lot
Dakota, I LOVE what you've spoken about here on the online persona. I've thought this for years! I deleted social media a few years ago because whenever I created an online persona and then failed to live up to that character I would have a mini identity crises. Instagram in particular, it encourages you to have this flat two dimensional way of being, like this is your style this is what you like and dont like etc etc quite objective whereas human beings are COMPLEX we change our minds we contradict ourselves we sometimes feel like this aesthetic whilst simultaneously another, our soul is compromised of infinite ways of being that just cant be translated onto a social media platform
From hearing you talk about memory and its complexity you would love Proust, even if you don’t read him now because he is Proust you need to at some point or just start slowly and don’t worry about finishing anytime soon and read other books beside him.
about the topic of stolen memories of sorts, i have lots of this experience since i was a child and it still drives me mad too. one i remember most is how i could’ve sworn i had a tuberculosis when i was 4-5, and i believed it all my life. so i wrote that down in my uni papers and my mum was so shocked when she read it. she said my grandpa was the only person in my family to ever had it. i mean i should’ve probably realised it wasn’t real bc i never rly showed any symptoms anyway but still it felt so real. maybe it was bc i WAS misdiagnosed with some lungs disease at that age that i had to be on medications for a whole year for an illness i never truly had, and i went to a hospital in the city my grandpa lived in. but still, it’s insane how it took me well over a decade to realise that it was not my own memory or experience.
The conversation of the facets of the self is so intriguing to me. I’ve come to the conclusion that the self is not singular, it spans countless years and situations, growing and changing and even shedding with life’s conditions, yet some parts always staying rooted in yourself. As with a tree, one leaf doesn’t make the whole tree but it certainly doesn’t discount its overall importance. I think it to be like in Hinduism, where there are vast amounts of Gods and Goddesses which all encapsulate one, main God. All the tiny aspects of you build to create one. And, unless you’re purposely trying to be someone you’re not online, that persona is likely just another facet that makes up the bigger picture, therefore also you. But I’m also a naive 19 year old, so what do I know?😂 Love all your videos btw❤️❤️
the part at the end when you were talking about the thoughts you shared not feeling sacred anymore even though you know that's just a mental blockage, thank you for putting words to that! i think so many of us feel like we can't share because then someone else knows something that has been so dear to us, almost making it not dear to us anymore. but maybe it's even more special when we have others in on our little mind journeys
I think a mysteriously semi-autobiographical novel would be great. Thoughts can bleed into memory and it all becomes a fictionalized persona. That Dakota can be anyone and anything you want
I feel incredibly understood by the way your mind works. It's all so fast, all or nothing, a million pauses to talk about something else that get your attention and then back to the 'original track' of this talk. I am a writer myself and I have never felt so understood by someone, relating to my art and my creative journey. Finding you was like a gentle cuddle on a warm early spring day, laying in the sun. You gave me so much to think about, Dakota, and maybe I don't even have the right amount of knowledge of the English language to have this confrontation with you on this topic. But I will, someday, as well as I will have more 'logical' thoughts on the topic. When I do, I'll come back here to tell you what I think. Until then, thank you for making me feel seen and truly, I mean TRULY, understood. It feels so good to not feel like I'm the only one who has such an active and messy and wonderful mind. From writer to writer, keep being just the way you are. Can't wait to read those journals of yours one day. Loads of love,
Giulia.
I have two memories of what happened the morning my wife died. It is impossible that both occurred. The memories were mutually exclusive. I am reminded of the film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa. In it, he describes the memories of a single event from the point of view of five different people who witnessed it. At times, they seemed to be describing different events. I’ve read articles that say the police frequently find discrepancies in eyewitness accounts. As to persona, I think that we create new personas all the time. You present a different persona to your parents, say, than you do for your siblings, and that persona is different from the one you present to your friends, etc.
Well actually mixing memories and stories and dreams is something that has been happening to me for as long as i can remember. When i heard you mention it i knew exactly what you meant. Don't worry Dakota darling every esoteric girl goes through this at some point of their life.💖❤
i loved this so much dakota, i could watch you go on and on about these topics, and any topic really, for hours. good luck with figuring out the part of your novel!
i've always thought of art of a sort of complex and forever interchangeable result of the catalyst of events of ones life. Its so fluid and subjective and personal to one specific person's beliefs and experiences at its core and yet its a sort of representation of all these elements in such a pure form, therefore becoming a new entity born out of the artist. So to me, while the art can become its own source or entity (especially in being published and shared) , there will always be that inextricable core that birthed it. I think thats what makes consuming real art so eye opening , it expands the mind by being exposed to this otherness that maybe we can never truly understand in term of its creators vision...
And the whole idea of a persona - i think its too frowned upon... I've always found there to be some beauty and complexity to having different personas, how we chose to portray ourselves often in a subconscious sense, I think its apart of personhood and bending and shaping oneself to express oneself in a new light and to different people to share our ideas and experiences is so so interesting. (all to an extent while of course preserving your "true self" and values is essential and I look down upon its use for manipulation!!)
Anyways this video had me pondering on these topics :)
This is very interesting Dakota, I like the way you think and how you make me think about all of this more deeply. It's very true what you say about people having a specific personality that they show to the world and a version of themselves that's hidden, that no one knows about. This video was so comforting!!
wow Dakota yet another video that is so inspiring. As a teenage girl who has huge dreams of putting my art into the world and growing as a creator, you really empower me! I loved this video, because as someone who just put out her first blog posts (to 5 loyal subscribers), I have been thinking about persona and how I can make my art reachable! thank you for your words!
I think about these kind of things all the time. Look at the transitive and intransitive dimensions, I learnt it in a sociology lecture I think about that often ❤️
my childhood memories are muddy and few and far between, mainly i think from how i truly just spent my entire childhood maladaptive daydreaming, being off in my own world unless something monumental or particularly exciting was occuring. my memories are very sensory. i don't remember what my kindergarten teacher may have said, but i do remember how my denim jumper felt against my skin.
when i think of authenticity i’m always drawn to fear.
I love the idea of personas and performance art as an art form where the art and the artist merges. I love to think that we can exist in a perpetual creative work by romanticizing our existence until the point of insanity, that is, until the distinction between art and artist fades away, and we find the power to curate, create, and enjoy our lives in our own creative terms.
The concept of persona is something that I think about a lot as I concern myself greatly with the idea of the "true self". Is my true self who I am when I'm not trying, or is it something to aspire to based on what you want to be? Do we make our true selves or are they made by the people around us? I feel great fear and discomfort when I fear I am not acting as "myself" would, and I spend much of my time looking down on myself like a third-person omniscient narrator asking: am I living up to myself?
I imagine that having an online persona would complicate this feeling, as other people hold you to a certain standard of identity, or selfness, that they have patched together from various posts and creative outputs over time. How maddening it is to be perceived by not just yourself but an infinite other!
i love listening to thoughts of other overthinkers because i feel less insane... also i love smell of church i never thought of someone using it as perfume
I’m writing my own book about grief. It’s a story, pure fiction, but it has enough of my own thoughts and beliefs that sometimes I feel as if my character is living for me. As I’m leading my characters through these healing conversations, sometimes I refer to them as if they are my friends talking to me. I say, “My friend said…” and then I’m so embarrassed that my characters aren’t actually real I don’t feel I can correct myself 😭
As for personas, I have this theory that it’s not possible to be completely authentic. We are always in a state of influence, and it’s worse with social media now. We are all being influenced and created by the people and things around us, and that’s one of the greatest and worst parts about being alive. So if you take on the memory of something, I believe it’s because our consciousness is so formed by that information that it blurs the lines between the internal and the external.
Lots of rambling and typing and hopefully that makes sense 😂 basically, we just have to be our almost-authentic, self-curated (as in curated for only yourself) selves and be kind when we accidentally become other people
You're so lovely Dakota, thank you for making such engaging content
I totally get that about the forming memories around things other people have told you - it happens to me so often its hilarious. I am also the kind of person to put myself in people's shoes. ALSO the story about 'soup' I totally have done that to one of my friends as well and get the two versions mixed up. glad to know its not only me
This video honestly made me feel a lot better because I'm going through essentially the same thing/something similar 😂❤
your thoughts on publishing memory and journals deeply reminds me of audre lorde's and ocean vuong's manipulations of the autobiography genre (auto fiction and autobiomythography)... you don't know which scenes have truly happened for the author, but at the same time, truth isn't really a factor (at least for me) readers take into account when being invited into conversation... not sure if this is a fully formed thought for you, but I am deeply excited for your projects!
I find the separation of the art and the artist conversation so difficult because while what you said is absolutely true and the artist is not the art I find the opposite can also be true. As artists I feel we give so much of ourselves to our creations and sometimes that phenomenon is so intense that we give away parts of ourselves or somewhat merge with the products. All that to say I find that sometimes the artist and the art can be one while other times there is that “normal” and probably healthier distance which leads me to wonder if, in the more extreme cases, the art and the artist should not be separated but if that is the case then there is absolutely no way for the audience to tell when that is. I hope my extensive rambling at least somewhat made sense
i think the idea of personas is a very interesting topic, and not just online personas. for so many year i had this persona i put on, always happy and always friendly, i watered down my personality and changed myself so much to become perfectly likeable to people in my school. but then behind closed doors i was completely different and i would shout and yell for no particular reason and it all felt a bit dorian gray for some reason. i think i drove myself a little mad.
but then i kinda had a moment where i broke; my old friend group dissolved and i got a new girlfriend whose friends i could be much more real with. but im never quite sure who i really am. i often wonder if i warped myself so out of shape i cant return to that little kid i was. but now im alot more natural and the people i tried so hard to please seem to prefer me like this anyway?? though i dont spend that much time with them. but this whole idea of personas kinda messed me up a bit. but it gave me something to write poetry about so hey thats a perk!
also not me trauma dumping 😬 its fine it was relevant...
Watching this while drinking miso soup and eating apples and truffle cheese. I giggle every time you say something my mind has been taking so seriously lately.
Since you like memories and diaries, have you read Patti Smith and Annie Ernaux? I love their books!
i thought this was so interesting. i dont think i have much to say but i was fascinated that about how the way your memory works. i wonder if all writers feel that way
"I invented a mega cappuccino which was a bowl full of cappuccino" 😂♥️ I love you Dakota. I guess I invent mega soup every winter which is eating it directly from the cooking pot cause it is how much my immune system needs to recover 🙃
I just commented this and a min later you started to talk about soup 😂
Fascinating video, Dakota. Thanks for sharing... Curious to see what arises from your thought processes! When you publish I hope I can find it...! Best of Luck & prayers...!
Can’t wait for your book, i love supporting passionate creators like you, i got your first book although it costs so much to ship it to my country 😂i feel every other writer that is coming up with books are all money grabs these days
What do you think will be your go to hobbies and habits in London this Christmas? Any particular foods, books, music you will be indulging in especially?
I just wanna say that this whole video made me feel normal??? I too regularly have existential crisis because I think thinking about everything is both fun and stressful!! But I see personas as a real part of ourself as our "true self". Forgive me because I'm not the best at articulating my thoughts but I'll try my best. We change how we act no matter who were with may it be friends, family, and co-workers. In my case at least, I act in a way that will elicit a positive reaction like you said. Sometimes I have to suppress parts of myself, other times I feel safe enough to barely hide anything but these personas I've created are still me. The words, actions, and thoughts I have around these people are still my own and as real as any other thought if that makes sense. I wouldn't say that there's a "true me" because these different personas make up me as a whole you know? Sorry if it's just rambly nonsense I'm working on my sentence construction skills but yeah TT
Early! Love you Dakota
Love the yapping
Please start a podcast I love listening to you ramble
I feel like I am often like soup to my friends
I'm here for the megacapuchino concept with decaf
i think about personas and if it originally stems from the fact that i was not loved as a child, or loved how i wanted to be loved i put this on for what, for people to love me. but why. the love of yourself is good enough right? it’s just a thousand words a minute running through my head about this topic
I'm an addict in recovery and caffeine is a drug! No need to minimize it, you don't sound juvenile or silly. The withdrawal from that amount of caffeine cold turkey can be similar to other harder drugs because your body is dependent on something that it isn't getting any more. I'm glad you got through those two weeks!
Jia Tolentino speaks about those topics in "Trick Mirror", and also Jenny Odell in "How to do nothing". Maybe you like those readings.
You're stories have just reminded me of the book 'the unchangeable spots of leopards' by Kristopher Jansma. The narrator in this book is so used to altering reality and changing stories inside his head that even he gets what's real confused sometimes. This might be worth a look...
my siblings and i take on each others' memories and we are constantly fighting about whose is whose! hahaha
Ughhh, I'm an SVT girlie too and I just can't quit coffee. I totally get it.
back from a long youtube break… and wow- you’ve definitely picked up an accent living overseas. it suits you!
i've done the memory thing with my partner before! thankfully one time he did it with me too so i was able to be validated! (and once again with this video! lol) so there's 2 more examples!
no i understand what u mean ! the artist creates art ! which, may not be a biography but his personality is there !! so that makes the artist’s art his. because all the ingredients that were needed to create the art was indeed within him.
I think Patti smiths year of the monkey is similar to what you describe as a mix between fiction non fiction surrealism / dreams etc x
year of the monkey is my fave patti smith and it’s one of her most underrated works !!!
loved ur lil damson madder project though!
Quitting a coffee addiction is not a pleasant experience at all lol.
I love the taste of it but it got a little out of hand at some point in my life. I was drinking more cups of coffee than cups of water every day. My average was seven cups of coffee a day, and I really enjoyed it. But my psychiatrist told me to quit cold turkey because I was having constant anxiety attacks and my meds were not going to un-do what that amount of coffee was doing for me.
I had THE WORST headaches for two weeks straight, I felt like I couldn't function as a human.
Now I drink it again, just one cup a day, two if I'm feeling like it, but I'll never go back to my seven-cups-a-day days...
I too fell off my bike into a rose bush when I was a child, leaving thorns down my whole left side. I don't even know your mum yet am now wondering if I'm borrowing her memories also. I sat on the kitchen counter while my mum tweezed out the thorns.
I had this odd intuition to start drawing at the beginning of the video and randomly chose to draw a moka pot so when you started talking about coffee I gasped out loud.
i think it's interesting that there are many people who separate the artist from the art. i feel like appreciating the piece of work is okay but to make purchases that will eventually make those artists rich even when they are shady, problematic or are just downright evil is well... something i guess. excluding art and artists' from thousands of years ago because well, they wouldn't actually benefit from it directly... but we're close to 2025 now and everyone is entitled to their own opinions. because we eventually have different perspectives and values
for me as for a person who a lot of my time have spent on listening reading watching and imagining, writing, conceptualising something the boundary between by your mind created things and real ones is vague a bit. i perfectly know that my perception is a complex of that background and sometimes it’s more related with human made but imaginary stuff.
may be scary if you drown in but if you have a hooks from mater world and some people around who tell you that wasn’t for real or bro go sleep i guess it okay. like big imagination is a weight ye
sorry my english
you look beautiful, dakota!
I love Perfumer H, I ran out of their Bergamot and I’ve desperately wanted to get another bottle
❤❤❤
Also, everyone presents a different persona to different groups of people, someone will not be the same at every single occasion, so we change what we present to each person, therefore no one gets our whole. But then, who are we? How are we a whole if we don’t present ourselves as a whole?
Im curious about what you think about multiple emerging aesthetics that people cram themselves into, do you think that's kind of a facet of their own persona or it just strips them of their individuality all together.
I’m great at riding bikes, i have that with driving a car
Coffee is harder to quit than all other drugs (including cigs and drink), in my experience
omg i used to have a friend just like soup and i felt the same way as you
I don't share my scents, it's me , it's part of my impression, my aura, my conquered existence
About the art and the artist thing
I have been thinking about moral consumption, and if it does apply to artists who are problematic in a way but do make ground turning works, does that amazing art inherent some of the artist's characters? probably yes, and yes "the artist and the art are intertwined but they are separate things" I understand that but the art can't exist without the artist.and a work of art can lead the artist in some kind of a way ,iam just yapping
This is a midnight comment from someone who can't sleep because they drank coffee because it was a social bonding behavior in a gathering
ou may appreciate "Truman Capote and the Swans" aTV miniseries dealing with truman's relationships with several NY city society women (Including Babe Paley) . Truman was very close to these women and he published a story using intimate discussions and there a was a big social scandal. One aspect was a rather predatory view of writers and are we all as predatory as some would believe? I everything grist for the mill or are some things best left private or is everything fair- game artistically?
The creator creates because wants to show something great, something divine, god like. Doesn't want to feed the wallet, and anyway how. Defending freedom is not important, so the value of culture is diminished in the eyes of the people. So the consumers disappear and what remains is that the creators look at the other creator, the social shaping effect of art is slowly gone. But the creator will continue to create because is resistance.
As an Arab girl, I can tell you that your pronunciation of oud is right except that there's a sound at the beginning of the word which is "ع" that does not exist in English.
❤
“The only thing that matters is art?” I guess I’m curious about your precise meaning there. Like, do you believe that in a Nietzsche or Oscar Wilde sort of way? I’m not even saying I disagree. But if art is meaning isn’t that just a tautology for the good, true, and beautiful? (Because art depicts all these things?) I guess the difference is that art can only be human-made? But you could argue nature is art. I don’t know.
Lol, I know it was unintentional, but you kind of accidentally captured (imo) the entire contradictory dichotomy of mankind by asking these extremely deep existential questions and having these musings about identity and persona.... while also at the same time occasionally going, "Oh and this is my favorite lipstick!" 😂 Not saying that to be negative or anything, I actually think it's beautiful that us as people can have these two different extremes at the same time.
As if you were sitting in the bath or on the toilet the whole video
i have a close friend i hate so much, but i’ve realized i know more about her than myself in a lot of ways. but she’s become a character, filling out checklists of personality traits everytime i hang out with her. i can’t stop thinking of her that way anymore. it’s hard to listen to her speak.
first! lit!!!!