^ What.

It’s a common experience for people who have Facebook: you log on one day, only to find that an old post from years ago has resurfaced (usually thanks to so called “friends”) and is recirculating in its original, embarrassing glory (although there are ways to prevent that from happening, apparently). Personally, when I scroll back to 2009 and read my old “statuses” I have a hard time identifying with the person who wrote them. Or even, like with the cryptic and eloquent passage above, what must have been going through my head when I clicked “post.” While “you know its kind of pathetic when you get slurpees so often that the clerks in 7-11 recognize you…” might have seemed like an appropriate public update for 13 year old Leigha, present me is relatively hesitant to post anything at all.

However cringeworthy, there is something distinctly unitive about laughing over our old posts and pictures with others and bonding over how much we’ve changed (or haven’t) over the years. The documentary Mortified Nation explores a variation of this process, yet through an incredibly private medium: the personal journal. 

Enduring the technological explosion, diaries have remained a place where individuals are free to explore their emotions, confide secrets, or even just  jot down the mundanities of everyday existence. For those who keep a diary or journal, or have in the past, how violating would it feel to have those entries publicly voiced? Mortified Nation provides a look into a stand up comedy show hosted in multiple cities across the United States, which invites members of the community to voluntarily take the stage to read diary entries from their adolescent years. People ceaselessly reinvent and reimagine themselves over time, which adds to the hilarity of trying to reconcile one’s present self with the one that might have been presented by a Facebook status, or diary entry, from years ago.  Dr. Dan McAdams, chair of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, states in the documentary that “ a major way that people understand themselves is through stories. We all create narratives for our lives that give our lives a sense of meaning and purpose.” It’s important how, by claiming the embarrassing identities and documented events of the past, people are able to build identity through exploring the significance of their experiences. In her blog post “Who is Reading Your Diary,” Adèle Therias applies to journaling what Miller and Shepard determined as the “exigences fulfilled by the personal blog:” the “need for self exploration and the desire to form community,” both purposes that are realized for those participating and attending Mortified stage shows. People “[form] community” through the speaker-audience bond that is created over the humor and empathy over relatable or even shared experiences and emotions.

Ultimately, is sharing embarrassing stories a more a personally directed endeavor, or is more driven by the desire for outside validation from an audience?