Essena O’Neil is the18 year old who came to fame within the last month not due to her popular Instagram account like most would think but instead her online posts about exposing the truth. Her mission was to share her stories exposing how she came to fame on Instagram and everything she had to do in order to make these photos. Essena explains, “I was addicted to what others thought of me, simply because it was so readily available. I was severely addicted. I believed how many likes and followers I had correlated to how many people liked me. I didn’t even see it happening, but social media had become my sole identity. I didn’t even know what I was without it “(BuzzFeed, 2015). She wanted people to think she was perfect and thin because that was what she was told would make her popular and “liked”.
Van Dijck argues that the concept of neoliberal economic principle is the thought that “connectivity derives from a continuous pressure from both peers and technology- to expand through competition and gain power through strategic alliances” (21). This statement perfectly illustrates what was happening in Essena’s life and her reasons for quitting. The pressures brought on by society and technologies do correlate to displaying an unrealistic display of her life. She had to starve her self and spends hours taking hundreds of photos in order to find the “perfect one”. Essena perpetuates her reasons for quitting being that social media is a fabricated platform that tries to draw in followers by misrepresenting the truth of these people and products being advertised. This goes perfectly with the neoliberal economic principles with how the online world is in fact a fabricated form of content and competitions between other online celebrities.
I agree with Van Dijck’s frame work showing that social media is unrealistic fabrication of real life. It is the creation and design of these sites that influences the audience to use these sites in articular ways. Instagram pressures some users subconsciously to post the perfect image because you only post one picture at a time and that picture represents you to all of your followers along with anyone else on the platform. With all of this being said I can see why Essena is coming out now to tell the truth about why she feels like she was falsified through social media is as much her fault as it is the CEO’s. She cloud have spoken up, not manipulated the images or share them across the platform. Everyone on this platform uses it very differently meaning that their are simply to many people producing wide ranges of content meaning that Van Dijck’s frame work does not relate to everyone. But in this case it does relate to Essena.
I agree with you that Van Dijk's framework cannot be applied to all social media users since it is a generalization. Many people use social media for multiple purposes including advertising, promotion, showing their talent, etc. Although, I agree that Essena is a perfect example to demonstrate Van Dijk's perspective by using social media to represent unrealistic images that were falsified and manipulated. I think that it is unfair of Essena to blame social media and corporations for these pressures. I like your point about Essena being able to speak up and rise against these pressures although she allowed herself to succumb to society's pressures to become "perfect" and idealistic.
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