In Class Writing | Who are you?

Prompt: Who are you to yourself? Who are you to advertisers? In one paragraph, freewrite a response of ~400 words.

Brian James Delahunty. That's my name.

Brian James Delahunty doesn’t exist. He’s a concept. Everyone who knows of me has a Brian

Delahunty in their head. Each version of Brian out there is slightly different. Though no one is

more accurate than another, some more closely resemble the version of Brian that exists in my head.

“Brian James Delahunty doesn’t exist. He’s a concept.”

The Brian that I know is probably a bit more complicated than the Brian’s that the people around me know. After all, I know all of my own deepest insecurities and I was there for all of my greatest accomplishments. I was there when I was picked on in middle school, and for my first kiss, and I was there, fighting, in Children's Hospital Oakland.

WHO AM I TO ME?

My time in the hospital is always something I feel obligated to mention when I try to define who Brian is. I guess it just feels like it's the kind of thing that would be inappropriate to leave out. Being forced to fight your way back to health, and to try to come to terms with the fact that you may never be the same again is the kind of thing that changes someone, after all.

Even though he was stuck for a long time, the Brian I know has started to grow past that

experience. He’s built strong relationships with friends and family that he values more than

anything else in his life. He’s driven, compassionate, and wants to see those around him

succeed. He loves to lift weights and he has his sights set on big endurance events. He’s also a little lost. He wants to make movies but he’s afraid to pursue a risky career path. He doesn’t

know who he really is, or what he really believes. The Brian that I know is a pencil sketch

waiting to be filled in, and he’s okay with that.

WHO AM I TO THE AD MAN?

Who is Brian to someone who doesn't know him? There is a Brian that exists in a Facebook*

data center somewhere. His IP address and login info indicates that he grew up in a small town in West Marin. From looking at his pictures he seems to be a white cisgender male who likes to travel. His “ad interests” indicate that he might buy a product associated with “Muay Thai,” “Kettlebell,” Hamster,” “Agricultural Machinery,” or “Mortgage Calculator.”** He doesn’t interact much with political content according to Facebook, but Google’s data indicates that he spends a considerable amount of time watching center-left aligned YouTube personalities. Some of these Brian’s are better calibrated than others with respect to their ability to describe my actual behaviors and sustained interests. Facebook, for example, is way off base. I do not plan on taking out a mortgage for a Hamster farm any time soon. But such is life. Every model of Brian, even my own, is destined to be nothing more than an approximation.

*Technically Meta now, but the new name doesn't have the same effect.

**These are actual ad interests pulled from my Instagram account