There’s a line from author Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom that has often played on my mind when I meet somebody new. It goes something like this, “I never know where I am with people who give me the larger truths about themselves, but not the every day.” And while it’s often easy to share our larger truths with somebody you trust, I find myself reaching out to strangers, finding solace in anonymity, or comfort in being vulnerably honest with a community of people from different corners of the globe.
An Internet community, known as The Artidote uses the combined might of their Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook presence that holds a plethora of poetry and literature attached with visual pieces of art that is sometimes inspirational, often heart-breaking, but mostly honest and relatable. Founded by Jovanny Varela in May 2015, the writer/ tour guide in Munich, Germany has now become someone akin to a keeper of secrets. Many people confide in him, including this writer, through a series of Snapchats that discuss revelations, ranging from sexual assault, depression and anxiety to self-harm and everything in between
Sharing stories
“I stopped taking my meds so I can stock-up and overdose…tomorrow is the day,” reads one of the Snapchats on The Artidote’s story with the photograph of a girl covered by the time filter that flashes as 3.27 a.m. Within minutes, The Artidote’s Snapchat story is filled with comforting messages of strangers across the world, urging her that she has something to live for. There’s now an update from Varela that implies that the messages worked, and that she’s decided to get professional help before doing anything drastic. The 3.27 a.m. user of The Artidote is an example of one of the first lives saved by the community. A few months later, a young girl from Delhi found support in a similar manner.
In 2014, Varela used to be a co-curator of a wildly popular social media page – the Berlin ArtParasite – that featured in my daily dose of inspiration before I went to bed. But a year later, Varela went on to found his own platform – The Artidote that now has over a million followers and receives 1,500 snaps on an average day. “The Artidote was born out of that painful but necessary need to shed old skin when one wishes to evolve into a next phase of growth,” explains Varela in an email interview that turned into a conversation than a simple QnA.
It was Varela’s idea of SnapThoughts, that has set-apart The Artidote social media community from being just one that shares art. Five months ago, as I scrolled through my Snapchat feed, I came across a post from Varela that read, “What time is it there and what are you thinking? Be vulnerably honest” I paused…ready to pen down a multitude of thoughts that you usually brush off during the day, and soon realised, that I wasn’t alone in the exercise. “I came back to the app with hundreds of ‘snapped thoughts’ in my inbox,” Varela writes. “These were moments and emotions in time, creatively captured across cultures, religions and lifestyles.” Varela found it especially beautiful to receive similar thoughts from two seemingly completely different individuals across the world.
Having grown up in a family that thrived on the magical realism of rural Mexico, and had a rich background in storytelling, Varela’s emotional connect with stories, thoughts, and personal-self is what shaped him. He moved to the U.S. in 1997, without speaking a word of English, and turned to art, a more universal language, to begin expressing himself. “I remember wanting—sometimes needing— to share and transfer what I was feeling to somebody else in order to and gain a sense of belonging,” Varela recalls. “Fast forward 20 years and that’s what I'm facilitating in 2017: a space to empathise, bond and heal through art and storytelling.”
Hope floats
But being the receiver of such heavy thoughts, some life-threatening, is no easy task. Varela has to constantly be on the lookout for red flags, confessions by rape survivors, or people undergoing depression who want to end their life. “I know that art, a quote or a Snapchat story is not going to cure a mental illness and it’s something that only a trained, mental health professional may be able to handle,” admits Varela. But he also believes that a support group can mean the difference between breaking or persevering. “So that's where hopefulness enters the equation. I shared their stories with my community on Snapchat not knowing what would happen but expecting the best,” he elucidates.
Through SnapThoughts, Varela plans to create a sense of empathy and self-awareness amongst strangers. Breaking stereotypes about race, religion, and gender. Very recently after Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban,’ Muslims from across the world sent in instances of how they’ve been singled out as a community, or the way they’ve been perceived by others without reason. “What makes SnapThoughts is that the snap contains a photo that captures the literal perspective of the individual (their external reality), overlaid with text that captures their thoughts (internal reality),” says Varela who also believes that this helps with identifying with the person rather than judging them baselessly.
Varela hopes to compile SnapThoughts into a book someday, since there's a large demographic that doesn’t use Snapchat and can benefit from a collage of multi-faceted expressions captured in a raw, honest and modern way. He also believes that talking about issues of mental health and illness in a supportive and positive space, can help detach the stigma one has attached to it. “There's a new generation of people growing with the understanding that as carefully as we need to tend to our body when it gets sick, we must also diligently tend to our mind,” he says. Hence, The Artidote’s tagline that reads “Mental Health Over Every Damn Thing” seems only fitting.
· The most viewed/shared photograph/ piece of writing on any of The Artidote platforms (258k shares on Facebook) is about a girl who was blamed for putting her school in jeopardy because she said no to a boy who asked her out several times. He eventually threatened her with a gun, and she was accused of having ‘deserved’, it.
· Most SnapThoughts submissions are from India, Pakistan and the Philippines.
· Varela delivered a TEDx talk in Bulgaria and the keynote at Harvard University this April. He used these opportunities to call for Artidote Meetups, where members of the community were encouraged to form relationships in real life.
· In India, organisations such as InnerHour (theinnerhour.com), YourDost (yourdost.com), and ePsyclinic (epsyclinic.com), have online chats and therapy sessions for people who need advice or guidance from experts through the Internet.
Follow The Artidote on Snapchat andInstagram @theartidote
