The Death of Jekyll and Hyde

I have long since deleted Snapchat off my phone, but the other day they emailed me: “Desi, Remember This?” 

The memory that Snapchat imposed was from 2021, five years ago. The unease I felt is not at the marketing strategy — rather at the realisation that I had forgotten the memory. The memory was of my friend and I on a weekend trip at school, one of our many ‘us’ against ‘them’ moments on the bus back to campus; being jostled around on highways and dirt roads as our peers blew mango smoke under the seats. I only remember this because I sat with the photograph and reconstructed our entire bus journey until I was sure I had the memory again: but did I? I was disturbed by my own forgetfulness. I had a joyful Mr. Hyde inside of me, a self that I do not identify with, rearing up its head. The forgotten self has returned! I do not know if it is genuine remembrance, or details extracted from the photograph, because a photograph is the evidence that something happened, not the memory of experience.

I remember expressing, on the bus, gratification for the present with my friend. My life discarded, in favour of circling the drain with embarrassment's greatest hits. Even this event, which I consciously tried to preserve, photograph, and remember, slipped from my mind. I did not remember my joy until Snapchat prompted me with the photo, and I had to solve the memory’s mystery from the evidence I was given. The persistent digital archive and algorithmic curation has blurred the distinction between documentation and memory, and the algorithm decides what of your past is returned to you, inevitably influencing your current and future self. 

Do I remember anything that has not been photographed? I think I do: waking up next to my boyfriend, the mad dash between the pub and the 601 queue when it is pouring rain, the way the sun hits my eyes when walking to my seminars in Castle House. But how long will I remember for? 

Because a photograph is not a memory, neither is the archive, nor Snapchat’s ‘Memories’. Snapchat has named their archive feature Memories, which collapses the distinction this article attempts to make. There could be no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the 21st century: Mr. Hyde would have a finsta! He could not disappear, because there is little option today to keep things unarchived. 

On the flip side, forgetting is part of maturing. The ability to outgrow oneself, to morph, change, and learn is powerfully human and necessary in the transition from adolescence to adulthood. We used to have the ability to outgrow versions of ourselves that became less vivid with time, as our newer, more relevant selves, form. This is not to say that the violent child must be immediately forgiven, but holding our present selves hostage by our past is no way to live. And we must live. The uncomfortable truth is that forgetting is necessary for growth while remembering is necessary for accountability. Technology preserves the memory but destroys the forgetting, turning subjective experience into objective record. 

Self-reflection is essential to growth, but being algorithmically prompted by Snapchat to revisit a stale version of yourself is not reflection —  because Snapchat makes that important leap for us, deciding when to resurrect something from the past. The machine chooses the memory, and its choice is based only on what exists in the archive. Reflection cannot be passive. A photograph of someone crying could mean grief, happiness, exhaustion, relief, drunkenness, or none of the above. The algorithm has no idea what the photograph meant to you; it only knows that the pixels exist.

The problem with this documentation is that it appears to be definitive. The danger is not exactly that we archive too much, but that the archive might teach us what to remember. Our technology erodes the distinction between “who I was” and “who I am”. We forget versions of ourselves in order to become who we are meant to be, and digital archives prevent some of this forgetting, often for better. When the algorithm comes in and reintroduces those past selves, the technology is not preserving memory. It is participating in the construction of your identity.

Illustration by Alice O'sullivan