Hello, world!
So Christmas is fast approaching and it seems there is all the more reason to post selfies. And hey why not- post away it’s the festive season. Everyone is glittery, jumper-ery, somewhat Christmassy and I love it.
So I ended my last post discussing the Instagram identity and narcissism. Yeah, yeah, yeah vanity and all that jazz.
So, according to Elle Magazine, research that took place at Buffalo University found that women who base their self-worth on their appearance are most likely to post selfies on social media as a form of validation and a seeking of approval. In 2012, the creator of facebook Mark Zuckerberg said that social media will lead to “the empowerment of the people”. But what is social media really doing? We seem to be picking ourselves apart and finding flaws in every minute detail. Is social media causing us to fall down a rabbit hole of self-doubt?
Claremont Mckenna who wrote a thesis titled “Why don’t I look like her? The impact of social media on female body image” disclaimed that the ubiquitous and enduring nature of social media has a bigger impact on body image than any other medias. It is important though to remember that humans have always been self-critical and sure, we have always cared about how we look. But the use of social media has definitely heightened insecurities and David G Schmult says this is dangerous, “What other people see as unique or interesting we often see as flaws”. And while it is normal to enjoy receiving compliments and positive feedback, the use of social media for validation is unhealthy and scary. Instagram gets into your head. We sit at our phones and wait for the likes to mount up. Some of us even delete a photo if doesn’t get enough attention.
Collating and curating the social media identity extends way beyond selfies, Instagram allows us to put out a “perfect” front for our “perfect” lives. In a way, we begin to create our own personal brand, our own personal magazine. A personal magazine meticulously curated on things we like and moreover things that we think we should like or things that we think other people think we would like. Confusing right! Confusing and almost bizarre. Instead of posting a photo of yourself because you simply want to share it with your followers, it becomes a post that simply demonstrates your own personal brand. Essentially we are all pros at self-marketing.
We spend so much time creating images we find most attractive, we sort through hundreds to find that perfect image. Yet we don’t necessarily grasp that everybody else is spending a lot of time doing the exact same thing. After spending hours labouring over our own pictures we begin staring and analysing other carefully curated and often filtered images that we assume are real. The more we do this, the more distorted our perception becomes and soon we believe everyone else’s lives are way better than our own.
“Instagram is exclusively image-ridden but don’t let these images crack your mirror” (Slate Magazine)
Take the responses to your posts with a grain of salt and avoid falling down the rabbit hole of comparing yourself to others through the lens of their social media. Remember everyone posts only the best, leaving out the unsavoury moments. Our existence is not measured by a number of likes, we have value as human beings and whether you get 1000, 100 or 11 likes, keep that picture up!
Having an authentic profile apparently gets you lots of followers. Does it ?Authenticity is the core of social media culture, phrases such as “Be yourself”, “Do what you love” and “Love yourself” are all too familiar. Technology reinforces these ideals, with most platforms requiring or at least encouraging users to have their real names and a single identity across profiles. This contrasts to the early days of the web, where there were greater options for anonymity. In a review commissioned by the UK government, Daniel Miller noted that
“The Internet initially appeared to expand the field of anonymity, which meant people could explore new forms of identity, shift identity, or secure multi-identities with relative freedom. By contrast, Facebook has been associated with not just the loss of anonymity but as a threat to all aspects of privacy.”
And though authenticity is very much promoted and endorsed on social media, we are still aware that many of profiles are manipulated or crafted or perhaps performative. In 2014 artist Amalia Ulman produced a four-month performance that was distributed across her Instagram. Amalia Ulmun created a fictional persona who’s story unfolded in three different sections. She presented herself as three different girls, ‘the cute girl’, ‘a sugar babe’ and finally a ‘life goddess’. She said the idea was “to bring fiction to a platform that has been designed supposedly for authentic behaviour, interactions and content”. The idea was to explore how women present themselves online and the piece was titled “Excellences and Perfections”. Ulmun conducted the piece by arranging her posts in an order which would make sense as a believable narrative.
The final post of the project was posted on the 19th September 2014, where Ulmun had reached almost 90k followers. It was only then, on this date that she told her followers that her whole life was a performance, a work of art rather than an actual record of her life. The posts featured her “moving to New York”, “getting plastic surgery”, “self-destruction” and “breaking up with and getting a new boyfriend” etc. Her changing episodes were to represent the fluid nature of female identity and the way female identity is perceived online, specifically Instagram. Ulmun used hashtags to fit in and gain popularity, her work sets the idea of gender as performance in the context of how we reward and value images of women online. By knowing what people want to see Amalia Ulmun’s idea was a success. She relied on familiar narratives and characters and it’s as if the more someone performs according to desired behaviours, the more attention one receives.
It is obvious that the reward process is a fundamental element of the social media business model. The internet today gives us opportunities to represent ourselves online through “standardised templates that continue to convert aspects of our identity into a single category on a drop down menu”. Websites such as Facebook and Instagram rely on selling our personal data and information. And these drop down menus are an important tool for understanding data capture.
The web is full of these repetitive characters, behavioural modes and narratives, it really is hard to escape the Instagram mould. Amalia Ulmun has been described as “The first great Instagram artist”. Her performance was interesting and speaks volumes.
So there we go, I have discussed the IG identity. Our online identity is powerful and it’s interesting to think about our mass consumption of social media and how it is affecting the way we present ourselves to the world and if we even are presenting “ourself” or someone the world thinks we should be.
Our online identity is powerful and it’s interesting to think about our mass consumption of social media and how it is affecting the way we present ourselves to the world and if we even are presenting “ourself” or someone the world thinks we should be.
That’s all folks,
Stay leafy
Ella xxx
Links:
http://www.elle.com/beauty/tips/a2531/how-instagram-is-ruining-our-self-esteem/
http://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/g9367/instagram-self-esteem/?slide=1
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/social-media-shots-affect-body-image-because-we-only-show-our-best-side-20161218-gtdsa7.html
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the
_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html
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