How is ‘the self’ constructed in digital spaces?
“On the internet, no one knows you are a dog.”
This caption originated in 1993 by the New York Cartoonist Peter Steiner. His
statement as a metaphor of online privacy did not only draw attentions to the
relationship between surveillance and virtualisation, however it also addressed into
personalism and social media identities, including self-recognition, self-identity, selfesteem
as well as self-beautification constructed within the networked culture in the
cyber space. (Cavna, 2018) Amongst the rise of social media as a convenient
communication channel for self-presentation and interpersonal interaction within the
globe, the larger society’s orientation towards the aestheticisation influences of digital
culture has shaped a form of self based perfectionism and narcissism within multiple
online platforms. (Hinkson, 2016) The sharing combination of photographs and particular
content between the online users have denoted the indicative of personality traits, at
which their sense of self-concept and self-esteem play a significant part in
constructing user’s digital identity, as to gain ingrained attention to feel valued, cares,
popular, likeable and inclusion beyond the real life.
Estimate the probability of success within the community of user’s social media
platform as the overall viewer bases, image recognition and technological
phenomenons determines photographic aesthetics as the decisive factors of internet
popularity. (O’Regan, 2015) In other words, the key to boost popularity within the
cyberspace are lies in the appearance outcome and quality of media forms, that the
combination of lens image capture and design techniques create the aesthetic forms of
“sensibility”, “attitude” and “tonality”. As a factor that do correlate with beauty
recount to the technical quality of the image, Photoshop, and numerous of application
software as a tool of manipulation of beauty, are now reshaped a beauty standard
rooted in society. Indeed, multiple beautification tools have now opened up a new
technical capability to everyone to embellish or beautify their images and videos, or
even more, it has become a tool that enable user to modify anyone’s facial
appearance or body shapes of the images, so as to transform their social network
identity to another level. (Mulcahy, 2017)
(ntd.tv, 2018)
Instagrammism, Hot Babe & Internet Popularity
Today, many people believe that beauty has fascinated human beings from the very
drawn of mankind. Facial attractiveness is a universal notion that crosses boundaries
in multiculturalism, since there is a high level of intercultural agreement in facial
attractiveness ratings among evaluators from different ethnicities, socio-economic
classes, age and gender. The perspective of aesthetic score is often related to the
sharpness of facial landmarks, image contrast, exposure, homogeneity, illumination
pattern, uniqueness, and originality. Convincingly, bigger eyes, slimmer face and chin,
suggest “cute” or “pretty” to a woman, so as enchanting eyes and muscling man are
tend to describe as “handsome” and “hot” as a norm. (O’Regan, 2015) In which,
philosopher Wolfgang Welsch has stated a notion of the impact of how the new
media on visual culture effects human perceptual system in central to philosophy of
art. He suggests that vision was traditionally favoured because of its hallmarks of
distance, precision and universality. (Pennisi, 1993) Therefore, to apply this visual standard
into technology basis, the high demands of beautification play a significant role in
social media and digital marketing, as well as personalisation and globalisation.
“Once, only the professional Hot Babe adorned all major media outlets; now social
media makes of everyone a Hot Babe, should they be willing.” (Rhizome, 2018) as an
important shift of social media’s image-making power, Hannah Black pointed out that
the rise of social media and beautification software tools has been democratised in
recent years, as all these online platforms provided a free, worldwide alternatives to
every internet-users the means of self-publish or self-promotion online in multidisciplines.
In fact, the evolution of beauty camera and social application software
such as Snapchat, Instagram, have now empowered many so-called “Photographer”,
“Blogger”, “Traveller” or any other distinct cultural identities, with an aim to appraise
themselves to an advance competent position by sharing beautified selfies and
portraits, filtered photography, videography and cinematography. (Scribd, 2018)
“Aestheticisation of everyday life in social media, has leeched the authority of imagemaking
from mass media and from art.” cited by Brian Froitcour, at which his
citation defined a combination of media form and particular content with regards to
represent an online lifestyle addressing to the notion of Instagrammism. As
Instagrammism aesthetics has perfectly exemplified a visual cultural form created by
young visual sophisticated users all over the world.
The neologism “Instagram” implies to styles, aesthetics, filters, as a global design
platform democratised on making good-looking images. Instagram contains over 100
million photo-feeds with approximately over 50 million of photo tags. This
overwhelming phenomenon defined the power of visual voice, visual intelligence and
visual pleasure with the creation of the broader spectrum of aesthetics and visual
identity. The digital transformation through computers and networks opened up an
extensive public access to digital space by making use of cyberspace, as a new form
of communication channel that enable user to expanded horizons of perception and
experience interconnection simply by following other users, including celebrities.
In addition, the various choices of filters, editing tools, “ig-story" selection insinuate
the psychology of self-recognition and identities which is reflected a medially
constructed reality. (Mulcahy, 2017) Instagrammism, the subtlety of this boundary itself is
an essential terminology to delineate the visual cultural identity today. In other words,
among the interface of art and culture, design and technology, society, algorithm,
computer science, and social intersect, Instagram as a computer art subculture
specialises human personality and characteristic. (Scribd, 2018)
(Newmuseum, 2018) ‘What is more important in this style - design or the camera?” Lev Manovich draws
an outline on Instagrammism and mechanisms of contemporary cultural identity
between photography and design. (Manovich, 2018) He questioned, whether a “good
photograph” should be simply taken by a smartphone, then edit afterwards by
arranging the objects, the space and orchestrating colours, textures, contrast, filters,
structure, layout, saturation, fading, vignette, tilt shift; or using a professional camera
with the right lens, right angles and capture moment, and discreetly calculate the time
and space in shooting. Whether the content or the image is the key to gain
popularity online? Whether beautified or original filter-free portrait is more attractive
as to gain better attention? (O’Regan, 2015)
Convincingly, with a project titled “Excellences and Perfections”, the Argentinian-born
artist Amalia Ulman produced an Instagram performance exposed the flaws in selfie
culture. (Rhizome, 2018) At which, Amalia used her social media profiles to stage a fivemonth
scripted experience inspired by extreme makeover culture. By casting herself as
a semi-fictional character based on popular images, the resulting work gained her a
large amount of fans and Instagram followers. She concluded that authenticity is a
central idea in the culture of social media. The images that Amalia posted on
instagram are excessive, however her sharing story is also believable, is familiar, to
the readers. (Newmuseum, 2018) Furthermore, Amalia replicate the narrative conventions of
her privileged feeds with a careful use of captions and hashtags, and consideration of
the pace and timing of uploads, so as to the discerning inclusion of realistic intimate
or emotional content. All these sharing common characteristics are framed as a form
of “sharing economy”, at which the business of linking and liking on social media
invites every user to share their feelings, their life, their thoughts, their interests,
preferences, as well as photographs, articles, web links, other social media account,
email, or even their own portfolio including their personal information. (Scribd, 2018)
To address Lev Manovich's theories into Amalia’s particular project, assuredly, design
plays a better role, instead of camera. In short, a sense of intimate is necessary in
order to gain popularity on social media especially on Instagram. (Rhizome, 2018) Give an
example, a good self-portraits should have indirect lighting and blurry or
monochromatic backgrounds that help keep the focus on the person. Good beach
photos often include silky-looking waves, a trick achieved through slow shutter
speeds. In consequence, strives to improve image recognition by breaking down
photos into visual vocabulary, many user edit their images by multi beatification tools
then apply the best filter to merge the colour and contrast of the image. Or even
more, people who were not satisfied to their appearance or body figure of the
photographs, they now have the full control to re-size their body shape as well as
modify their appearance to any level they attempt themselves to look like. As to
satisfied themselves from abstract qualities of symmetry and form to ideas of creative
expression and pleasure. (Scribd, 2018)
Online Dating: Beautified Profiles & Identity
“Now the problem is that everyone is required to be a celebrity.” Amalia added. In
the past, only photo editors or graphic designers in the study field of entertainment
industry were required to be proficient and skilful on beautification editing programs.
Nevertheless, since the beautification tools became fully democratised, everyone can
simply change their appearance on images, recreate another personality which can suit
to the story they made up, with the goal to become a minor celebrity. Anyone can
shape into any other identity by changing the way they look and the way they
perceived. (Krombholz, Merkl, Weippl, 2018) “I think in general, people with low self-esteem
tend to be more concerned about their image on any media and they become more
carefully craft it in order to project their best identity,” said Dr. Shyam Sundar, codirector
of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Penn State. Siting photobeautification
to social media identities and personalism, internet dating is another
pertinent subject research matter for judging and analysing photographic aesthetics.
Frankly speaking, many online dating users tend to beautified their profile pictures in
order to get more “matches” from the dating sites or dating apps. Based on a
research paper “Swipe, Right? Young People and Online Dating in the Digital Age”
written by Kyla Flug, her research indicated that high amount of users, especially
young adult users beatified their profile pictures and personality, exaggerate their
physical attributes and personal interests online. (Flug, 2018) Moreover, high percentage of
users applied a range of online strategies such as data collection, demographic
information retrieval, and misrepresentation to create an unrealistic online identity to
gain a higher chance of likes and matches. In terms of “Catfishing” as to lure other
users into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona, there are pranksters
using a false identity, fake pictures, and invented biographical detail to trick other
users to believe the pranksters are real. (Krombholz, Merkl, Weippl, 2018)
As a matter of fact, humans have an ingrained, primal demand to feel valued,
inclusion, and to be central of the attention. The impact of this amorous and
technological phenomenon brought in the larger culture where people participate in
shapes to their own identities and self-recognition. Nevertheless, there are users who
are unsatisfied to their own appearance and self-abased, thereby they made up a
completely fake identity to interact with other users. In order to strengthen their selfconfidence,
more and more online users get addicted or over-dependent to algorithm
beautification camera such as Snapchat, and Snow. (O’Regan, 2015) In which, Snapchat
features decorative and beautified filters, enable users to take picture or video
themselves while the filters are slightly elongates and chisels user’s face, automatically
increases the predicted attractiveness rating of the face. (Talbot, 2018) Snapchat, or other
beauty camera programs, firstly identify a variety of predetermined facial locations
and compute a set of distances between the face angles, then automatically modify
the distance vector of the face in the direction of the “beauty-weighted” subtle
modifications to the original image. (O’Regan, 2015)
(Julia, 2018)
Snapchat: Algorithms Beauty & Geo-filters
Snapchat as an algorithm base of beautification software, sees the beauty in
photographic portraits as the art of the selfie is ever evolving. The Snapchat camera
and filters are very useful and welcome addition to the ever-growing arsenal of image
enhancement and retouching tools available in today’s digital image editing packages.
The biggest reason that Snapchat is so popular between the younger generation is
thanks to the interactive geofilters which offer a prime opportunity for users to feel
entertaining through interconnection and interaction with other users. (Scholl, 2017)
Moreover, the filters also erases imperfections, which immediately beautified the user’s
self-perception and self-esteem, encourage user to be positively face squarely to their
outward appearance. (Ritzer, 2014) For instance “the dog snout” as the top no.1 popular
geofilters on snapchat, it given a frontal photograph of a pair of doggie ears and
little doggie nose an inch below user’s real nose. (Dash, 2018) The filter itself also
enlarge the size of user’s eyes, narrow down the width of the nose, also totally
covers any blemishes or pores automatically. “What they show is that now you do
not need a human to select images that are going to be judge beautiful.” noted by
Aude Oliva, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT image
recognition. (Mulcahy, 2017) She entails that Algorithm is a culture-machine, as it operates
and produce cultural objects, processes and experience. The era dominated by the
figure of the algorithm as an ontological structure for understanding visual culture and
technology, the era of algorithm is the potentially a good future estimate. (Talbot, 2018)
Conclusion
Cultural identity today is established via small variations and differences and also
hybridisation among already established positions. With regards to new media effects
in an era of rapid technological transformation, beatification and cultural identities in
central to the impact of aestheticisation and personalisation shaped into networked
culture and social media identities within a cyber space, in which, social media and
visual culture effects human perceptual system in terms of attractiveness. Since the
beautification tools has become democratised and very handy to use, there are high
amount of social media users, especially people who have low self-esteem and
inferiority, that they tend to depend on beautification tools in order to beautified
themselves to attract new followers whilst boost their internet popularity. However,
their overdose of beautified images and their exaggerated characteristic has
transformed their visual identity to an unrealistic form of personality in digital culture.
(Krombholz, Merkl, Weippl, 2018) Thereby, what we so-called “catfish” as a norm of fake
identity, the “catfishes” are actually hidden in everywhere within the digital space.
Throughout the development of new social media and algorithms as ideology, the
overdose of beautified images, fake images, unrealistic approaches, which suggest
virtuality is somehow gradually manipulating and encroaching the reality and factors.
Consequently, users will never notice if they are actually engaging with a dog, or the
right person, or not.
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