Image Culture and Life as Spectacle
“… just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967
The world has changed so much in the less than 20 years that social media has existed. The rise of social media and instant messaging platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Whatsapp has revolutionized communication, essentially rewriting the book on human communication. These platforms have turned the tiny, isolated islands of humanity into one global village in ways that even air travel has not managed to do. The effects of this have gone far beyond communication, and have begun to trickle down into what is most fundamental about how we live our lives.
The 21st century has, so far, been characterized by the emergence of technologies that allow us to document and share our lives with the world with remarkable ease. This has facilitated a societal shift whose significance rivals even that of the industrial revolution. The mostly visual nature of these technologies means that more emphasis is put not on things as they are, but as they appear, and facilitates the devolution of everything into a collection of spectacles. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a spectacle is ‘something exhibited to view as unusual, notable, or entertaining’. Spectacles are eye-catching and dramatic, and they are often meant to not only draw the attention of the public but also to elicit some desired response. Our way of life can easily become a spectacle when we decide, consciously and through our actions, that what matters is not reality in itself, but its representation. We accept technologies that allow us to manufacture reality without asking ourselves if there may be unexpected consequences on us and society at large. There are those that have asked these questions, and the data coming in from their research shows that there may be some cause for concern.
I think that the first thing that we must all recognize is that social media platforms have become about more than just communication. Our favorite defense of social media platforms is still that they enable us to communicate with friends and family around the world, but that is hardly the focus of platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter. These platforms not only offer the ability to share the most intimate and personal moments of our lives with the world but a level of control over what we share that was never possible before. In one sense we become like celebrities by having our lives plastered all over the web, the key difference being that we retain the power to create our online reality. In the virtual world of social media, we can be who or whatever we want to be.
This similarity to celebrities is especially important for two reasons. The first one is that social media has managed to blur the lines between the public and private spheres of our lives. A life of constant scrutiny from the public or media with no privacy or solitude is normal for public figures, but not for everyone else. To us, the lives of celebrities appear to be eventful and dramatic because that is how the media portrays them. This is, of course, just an illusion. No one reads the gossip columns for the ordinary and mundane — people want the spectacular. As a result, tabloids are incentivized to ignore or sensationalize the mundane, giving the impression that normal is boring, and the spectacular is far more common. Social media puts the same power and pressure in the hands of ordinary people. Instead of reporting on the lives of celebrities, we become the object of our reporting, and instead of showing our lives as they are, we are incentivized to sensationalize them.
The second reason is the murky question of cause and effect. All our lives are filled with constant ups and downs. The media gives us the impression that celebrities experience higher highs and lower lows than ordinary folk. Their missteps and misery are, to us, something at which to ridicule, poke fun at, or pass judgment on. The irony, then, is that even the constant spotlight and the threat of public outrage is never enough of an incentive for celebrities to behave ‘normally’. It raises one question; how much of an effect does living under the public’s watchful eye have on our behavior?
‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ — a Hollywood proverb
Despite all the glitz and glamour that makes celebrity life look so appealing, stories of depression, addiction, and substance abuse are common in their circles. Why is that? There are many possible explanations. One of Hollywood’s favorite explanations is that fame and success go to their heads and they spiral out of control. This is how stars are frequently portrayed in films and on TV. Another could be the issue of relevance. As I mentioned above, the gossip strips are incentivized to only report on the spectacular, and those whose lives don’t draw much attention risk fading into obscurity. We could also try to step into their shoes and see what it’s like to live as they do. How would you live if you knew that the tiniest gaffe of your day — dropping your cup as you walk out of your local Starbucks or having a wardrobe malfunction will be plastered all over the internet within minutes? This constant specter means that, in every moment, they have to be putting on a show to keep up appearances. Just as celebrities have image consultants to micromanage tiny details of their lives, we do the same for our online appearance so that our online image is who or what we want people to see. This reflects itself in how we present ourselves every day so that everything we do, say, or own becomes less about how those things relate to who we are and more about what they tell people about us.
“Most people don’t wear designer brands because they have a particular love for their products but because doing so tells people certain things about them such as their financial status and how in touch they are with popular culture”
Looking back on my over 10 years of social media usage, I can’t quite put a finger on what exactly is so appealing about being able to share my life and thoughts with hundreds or even thousands of strangers. In December 2020, social media platforms, especially Instagram, were flooded by people sharing their ‘2020 Wrapped’ posts from Spotify. Why? Why should people care about the 5 songs or artists I listened to the most throughout the year? Do they even care? Why should I assume that they do? What should they do with that information? Beyond that, why should anyone, maybe except for my closest friends and family, care about what I did on the weekend and who I did it with? In my experience, I have found that this is information that just flows through me, soon replaced by whatever Instagram or Twitter throws at me next. Social media tells us (not explicitly, of course) that we must sensationalize even the quietest, most serene, and meaningful moments of our lives. It’s not enough for us to just ‘Netflix and chill’ — we have to #netflixandchill.
Interlude On Media
This discussion cannot be had without stopping for a moment to consider media as it is hardly ever thought of these days; as the plural of ‘medium’. Before we go any further, it is important to recognize the importance of the medium in regulating the content that proliferates through it.
“The medium is the message.”
― Marshall McLuhan
We are probably all aware of the visual illusion that occurs when you put a straight object, whether a spoon or straw, into a glass filled with water. The object appears bent or broken because of light refraction. Our brains are, nevertheless, able to correct for that anomaly — we don’t immediately declare that the spoon is bent just because it appears so. This is because we expect that distortion and are ready to account for it when we decide what is real and what isn’t. In the same way, we must also ask what kind of a distorting effect social media has on what we view through it — people’s lives on social media may not be the most accurate representation of reality. That knowledge can help us to paint a more accurate picture of the world around us, so long as we remember the lens through which we view it.
A careful analysis of the various social media that we have today shows us that each one has a bias towards one or another type of content. Instagram’s focus is aesthetic beauty, Twitter’s is brevity. When we share anything, most importantly our lives, through these platforms, we do so with the knowledge that what we share must meet a certain standard to attract attention. In other words, we are forced to play to the strengths of each medium.
One example of this that I was alerted to recently was that during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, most people invariably found themselves sharing only the most aesthetically pleasing images from the protests. There were reports of so-called ‘influencers’ showing up with camera crews and makeup teams to help them get the ‘perfect shot’ of them being ‘socially aware and active’ (#activism). What this did was reduce powerful moments into mere spectacle. Even those with the best intentions found themselves under pressure to post the most beautiful images because they knew that that was the only way to get noticed online. The true purpose of the protests was overshadowed by those who tried to make them look pretty via the images they took, and the pain and anger were reduced to nothing more than a vessel for those who hoped to earn a few more likes and followers, as well as social credit for their social awareness.
Another example of this is the effect that sites like Twitter have on public discourse. There have been attempts by many researchers to classify into a few groups the kinds of tweets that go ‘viral’ on the platform. Some of those they found included the ‘slam dunk’ tweets — witty, one-line responses, usually replies or quote retweets, that are often mocking or insulting. Others are insightful or relatable; these express opinions that many people share but would not usually readily express. There are a few other categories, too, but the first one is the most significant in this case. This is because while people praise social media for allowing differing voices to interact, a proper debate or exchange of ideas is not possible given the character limit and the fact that funny or mockingly hilarious responses are more likely to get attention than facts and proper arguments. This is what fuels the rise of internet trolls. It also disincentivizes proper discourse — more emphasis is put on saying what a greater number of people will cheer on and support than on truth. The prospect of being able to promote one’s Soundcloud or Onlyfans under their viral tweet does nothing to improve the situation.
I want to refer back to Spotify’s ‘2020 Wrapped’ because we must ask ourselves how our listening habits would have changed if we had a little voice in the backs of our heads reminding us that, at some point, we are going to want to share that listening history with the world. We are often blind to the ways that our lives are shaped by the constant specter of having to measure up online. We crave phones that take the best pictures not for the value of capturing moments, but because our posts on Instagram must meet a certain standard. Even the things we do, the places we go, and how we dress are often dictated by that need to measure up online. In the online world, we are constantly putting on a show, playing a part, reveling in the control that we have over our public images. We feel that there must always be something going on in our lives that we can share, lest people start to imagine that our lives are boring and uneventful. We live constantly in fear of fading into obscurity, of being forgotten, if we are not active on social media. It is in this sense that our lives start to resemble the showbiz industry — they become mere spectacle.
The saying ‘all that glitters like gold is not treasure’ comes quickly to mind. Most people’s online presence paints a very different picture of their lives in reality. It doesn’t even have to come out of a desire to impress. One does not have to have the intention of winning an eating contest to still know that a fork is a poor choice for eating soup. In the same vein, your low-resolution, face-only-with-no-filter-or-makeup selfies are unlikely to gain any traction on Instagram. This is how the medium dictates, in subtle ways, how we interact with the world through it. No conspiratorial thinking is required to see this; one needs only to recognize the fact that to play the game, we must play by its rules.
All of this poses us with the question of whether or not we can grasp onto the ‘real’ and ‘true’ in this world of smoke and mirrors. What happens to our relationship with objective reality when the only way that we interact with the world is through platforms that are built on theatricality and deception? What happens to us when our concern becomes less with expressing who we are and more with convincing people that we are something? Gates’ law states that we often overestimate the effects of technologies in the short-term and underestimate their long-term effects. Will we ignore the smoke and wait until all that remains is ash to acknowledge that we might be playing with fire? It seems wishful to imagine that we might, one day, be able to shove this particular cat back into the bag.
What we must try to establish, going forward, is whether we will be the slaves or masters of these platforms. As our technology improves, so will our ability to both manufacture and escape from reality until the real is all but indistinguishable from the virtual. Are we willing to ask the difficult questions about how this might negatively impact us, or will we continue to tell ourselves that all that matters is how each individual uses this technology? It’s so easy to view these platforms as benign tools whose use is governed only by the user, but as Abraham Maslow once said, “…it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
