I have been on the internet since its inception, and I have been a consumer of media since I was a 12-year-old putting together my TeenWorks binder. I noticed when YM magazine started calling a boyfriend “beau” and I witnessed the transition into “bae” in the 2000s. I’m not a linguist. I just pay attention.
I was a digital marketer around the time storyteller became a buzzword in the early 2010s, seemingly in an attempt to distinguish oneself against the increasingly noisy internet where anyone could say anything. Suddenly, storytellers appeared. You weren’t just a blogger anymore. Now you were a storyteller. You didn’t just speak or write your truth, you were a storyteller. As if calling yourself one made you any more worthy of telling stories. And for the rest of this post, storyteller will be read in italics to convey just how douchey I think it sounds.
I really hated the term for a while. As I have grown, I have learned to examine my anger and frustration because it usually has something to teach me. Plenty of other buzzwords have entered our vernacular in recent history, and none of them bug me the way storyteller does.
I decided to sit with it for a while after I mentioned it to my therapist. We didn’t expound on it, but she gave me a little bit of a sideways look when, while telling her one of my stories, I used the term storyteller, quickly following it up with my disclaimer about not liking the word. I could tell she had questions, but that wasn’t the point of the story and she’s a goddamn professional so she knew it wasn’t the time to unpack that.
After examining my feelings a bit, I realized the reason the term grates my nerves is because back then, I wanted to be one of them. I never wanted a platform for any material gain. I am uncomfortable with attention. I get my feelings hurt when people hurl harsh words at me through their keyboards. I don’t want to be seen. Yet, I want to tell my stories. I want to share my hard earned wisdom. I want to pass on what I’ve learned to help make life just a little more manageable for those who are coming after me. But because I wasn’t brave enough back when “storytellers” were first carving out their spaces (that’s right, quotes and italics this time), I didn’t share. I suffered from the common ailment known as too much give a damn. I worried far too much about what other’s might think of me.
Too much give a damn affects a number of people, causing them to keep their art, their passions, their expressions, also known as their stories, to themselves. Currently, I carry a healthy amount of give a damns. I have stories to share with the public, stories to share with a select few, and stories to keep for myself, and I make these decisions without concerning myself too much what other’s will think.
I share my thoughts, my truths and my stories. Not because I’m a storyteller, but because I am a human being and we are all storytellers. Storyteller (not to be confused with storyteller) is not a title given to a select few, and it is not a label we can simply claim as our own, giving the implication that some of us are not storytellers.
Whether it be through speaking, writing, acting, painting, dancing, drawing, teaching or any other form of expressionism, we all have stories to tell, and all our stories are worth telling.
