Recently an instagram star, Essena O'Neil announced that she would be 'quitting social media'. Essena explains how instagram, and social media in general, showed her life as something fake and unrealistic. This perception of the 'dream life' that she was living was something fictitious. Essena describes how she would spend hours trying to look flawless in a photo, and would take 1000 photos, just trying to find the perfect one. This idea of showcasing a perfect life and being flawless is something that we see constantly in society, especially with the increases in the amount of social media. With all these social medias, we are able to edit, filter, like, and comment on other peoples posts. These features allow us to appear differently than we would, and to give others an aspect of 'support' or 'approval'.
Van Dijck says that "connectivity derives from a continuous pressure from both peers and technology-to expand through competition and gain power through strategic alliances" (21). This statements correlates to what Essena is saying. For instance, social mediums, such as Instagram, flourish upon the pressure from peers. For example, you would not post an ugly, or imperfect, picture of yourself on instagram. Instead, there is a pressure from your followers to post a perfect picture to gain likes and positive comments. By posting beautiful pictures, there is always competition between follower; to post a better picture than them, to get more likes. Through gaining more likes, you are gaining more popularity, which also coincides with Van Dijick's theory. So in conclusion, I do agree that Van Dijk's message correlates with what Essena is saying for the most part. On the other hand, Essena vows that she will quit social media, which she does not. Instead of completely quitting social media, she has a website which she posts on.
- Larissa Pencak
Hi Larissa, I thought your post was very insightful and I liked how you concluded with the point that Essena has not lived up to her vow to quit social media. Though Essena is creating awareness around the issue of the inauthenticity of connectivity culture, which is a key theme in Van Djick's theory, she is still technically participating in the technological platforms of social media that distort reality and tell us what is and is not acceptable. This leaves me with the question: Does it suddenly become acceptable to use these resources that distort our reality when we're using them to create social change?
ReplyDeletehey Larissa, i enjoyed reading your blog post. I think you made a great point about posting only great pictures of ourselves on social media rather than posting realistic pictures, because ugly pictures would not get the same amount of likes as the pretty ones.In fact there is a celebrity named lena dunham who had been criticized for posting pictures that are to authentic on instagram. i find it interesting that it is expected that pictures on instagram are to be edited, and not a reflection of reality.
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