Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not existing in reality).
Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-distorted" reflection so the reflection from strangers is worth more. Colleagues or friends saying "you're smart!" means a lot more from them.
When each mirror is carefully placed, the "whole" of we we are and would like to be can be understood more deeply just like 7 blind men working together understand the elephant more deeply.
However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you have no control over their place in your life, then the identity becomes overwhelmed by expectation. Just like super high resolution makes your pores look larger, the mirror array makes every aspect of your life feel like shit even if from a rational analysis "extra information should never be a danger"
"Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous."
Wow. I have problems with Instragram, but I've never tried to sum it up into a single statement and while this is rather specific and may not include all the problems I _feel_ are there, it really does bring home the main issue, for me. A little snark in there about democratizing, as some people will always put a positive spin on such things, which I feel is totally appropriate here.
Just... The comment could have stopped right there and been as or more impactful (for me). Thanks. :)
I remember that for a few months before my partner broke up with me, their IG feed was full of reels, posts, 'comedy', 'psychology tips', about people complaining about their partners. And also lots of Insta influencers posts giving relationship tips or encouraging people to break up for diverse reasons.
While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life. Unless of course your life consisted only of perfectly curated Insta moments.
> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life.
In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by how toxic and outright false the pop psychology memes were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the cluster-B LARPing.
"Your partner won't give you access to their financial accounts? That's domestic violence, and he probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder too! What's his is yours, so just use his credit card to book plane tickets without asking and remember that him yelling at you about it is verbal abuse, so get out while you still can before he starts beating you! And remember abuse thrives in secrecy-- so make sure you tell everybody how he was so aggressive that you were in constant fear for your life!"
Sorry you were on the receiving end of [whatever your case is]. Not even the strongest of relationships can withstand reinforcement of sentiments as corrosive as Instagram, where you're a useless piece of shit if you can't/won't support your partner's ambitions of joining the jet set.
You lost your partner to a cult. They're called "followers" for a reason. It starts with separating victims from their loved ones...
I saw a youtube short like this. It was a video demonstrating the "perfect" guy. It started reasonable, with him saying "oh can you check this on my phone? the passcode is XYZ"
Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually telling it to her so she could do something with it is probably a thing that happened.
But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.
> But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.
Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner. But men are supposed to feel ashamed of themselves if they're not willing to just blindly go along with it.
The irony is, they call this sort of victim the "ideal" guy, while simultaneously deriding him as a "simp" to the rest of their cliques. It's loathesome. I pity anybody involved in the dating game these days.
No, domestic violence is only one thing, that thing is domestic violence. All violence is physical. Other forms of abuse that are not physical are not violence.
If we have a verbal confrontation one of us has hurt feelings. If it turns violent, there is actual violence. Words have meanings.
You can care about other types of abuse. You should care about other types of abuse.
But claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.
This is massively wrong at best and evil at worst.
> Domestic abuse, also called "domestic violence" [...]. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person.
> Intimate partner violence refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours
> Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship
Yes. The misuse of terms you've shown is exactly the concern I and other victims of domestic violence have.
Meanwhile, here the Oxford English Dictionary:
violence, n.
1. a. The exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property; action or conduct characterized by this; treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.
You are indirectly supporting domestic violence by manipulating the definition of violence to include non-violent offences.
(separately: Wikipedia is not a source at all, let alone an authoritative one)
Again, since you didn't address this: claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.
> Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.
I get where you're coming from but enough men figured out that when wife-beating became illegal, they could continue to torment their wives and exes through passive-aggressive, explicitly nonviolent acts enough that the laws were expanded and the definition changed.
The redefinition happened at least 20 years ago and has since propagated across multiple disciplines (law enforcement and psychology inclusive). Even publishing revenge porn falls under domestic violence statutes now.
Yes, it no longer meets the strictly-literal definition of violence. It is what it is. Rather than arguing it here, consider adapting to the times or taking your grievance to the Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence):
> Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
This is a far stretch in trying to hang on to the last thread of the definition of violence.
Why can't you just use the term "domestic abuse" and stop supporting the misuse of well defined words?
Do you think that if you and others use the term "domestic violence" to include non-physical abuse that it just magically changes the existing definition? Why would you even want to support that when there's clearly another term that's both in general use and clearly fits what you're attempting to refer to, by definition?
Repeating for a third time so you can hopefully read it and actually respond when you hit ‘reply’:
Claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence
I’m not responsible for all of humanity: you should want a clear definition and separation of violent and non violent abuse so why don’t you handle this yourself rather than asking me?
“get with the times” is ridiculous. vague legislation is bad whether it’s new or old. Likewise a lot of progress has obviously been bad much like other progress has been good.
I’m actually not really interested in your replies any more, since you’re not actually responding.
Victims of non physical domestic violence also need money, police time, and medical attention (yes, they do!). So I'd argue that widening the definition of domestic violence actually increases the visibility of the cause. More people are concerned, directly or indirectly.
> “get with the times” is ridiculous
It's not. Language changes all the time for better or worse, and trying to change it back is just not possible. You're wasting your time if you're trying to make your definition the correct one instead of the one that's widely accepted, even if your definition made more sense (I don't have an opinion on that).
Language is a reflection of society, and whether you want it or not, society has decided that physical domestic violence and non-physical domestic violence are the same thing, which we call domestic violence. You can fight words or fight for a cause, your choice.
I have no clue. I mostly get warhammer, video game, and programming videos. It showed up in my shorts one day so I took a look. I have long since purged it from my history because I want to minimize the chances of getting something like that again.
It's funny, I am married with a child, do my best and my wife too, but sometimes she gets dragged into meme-expectation that take her a long time to recover from. I cant see nor understand much of the source of these: Im an immigrant and I cant read her native language, and I dont know if it s a girl thing or if it's actually me not fitting reasonable expectations, but damn I wished everyone could look at their own relationship without trying to copy the appearance of others.
What seems to help is when an idolized version of relationship is suddenly broken into pieces and you discover your model was actually completely miserable and whatever you expected became trivial relative to that.
I had an ex that did this based on fantasy novels. "Why can't you be more of a man's man?" "What, from your romance novels?" "Yes!" "Ummm..."
Ironically, the thought never even occurred to me to respond with "Why can't you be more of a <insert stereotypical sought after characterization here>?"
Oh well, we haven't been together for a long time. :)
Point being, it's not just instagram or even social media at large. They've just made the situation worse. This is deep rooted in most of society and isn't going to end any time soon. Just need to find people that are strong enough to not fall victim to this (even if they don't bring it up, like our partners did).
If someone is constantly projecting relationship advice social media topics on you'd I'd venture to say you're in an abusive/manipulative relationship as opposed to a healthy one. Glad you got out.
I've learned more recently that healthy relationships aren't empirically so. Instead, there's "signs" of a healthy relationship; determining the health of your relationship must be a two way conversation. It requires assessment, honesty, and participation by both parties as a qualifier as well as the ability to listen without your ego involved. That's not to say all of those aren't challenging things to do in their own right just to say that the health of a relationship will be explored differently by different sets of people.
>It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem.
The internet and the options it gives, I believes leads people to think they have far more relationship options then they actually have, and the options they think they have are not as good as they believe. A lot of people put a lot of work in selling a perfect image online, but those rarely hold up in reality for any amount of time.
Of course this doesn't mean we should stay in bad relationships either. Our society doesn't really teach us how to have good relationships, especially in a capitalistic fashion (hey, just spend more money and everything will be ok), and quite a lot of us had really poor examples from our parents generation on how to treat other people.
The joy of exploitative recommendation algorithms. I had a discussion with my daughter about TikTok's Glamour Filter the other day and now my whole feed is full of glamour filter posts. This is so unhealthy (mentally).
All the ideas that the world will be perfect if you would just think thoughts like these...
"manifest what you want from the world" and "think positive thoughts and everything will be ok"
Is actually kind of true when you think about all the algorithms that run social media. If you only ever search for cats and scroll past anything political, the algorithms will learn what you like and feed you more cats.
So, if you're searching up relationship advice, and spending time on those things, that's what you get back from 'the borg'.
You do have control over what social media shows you, it's just that you need to work against your basest desires in order to get there.
It's like those "drug pushers" we were told about in school but don't seem to actually exist who use weed to constantly try to get you onto more lucrative for them heroin no matter how many times you say "no thanks." Heard that so many times at school, never heard anyone encountering anything like it in the real world.
But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come on, just try a little culture war" because its lucrative for them, no matter how many times you say no thank you.
It's really sick but yeah, obviously lucrative and Larry, Seregey & Mark clearly need the money.
I think this was an issue that was really only an issue for specific geographic areas, but also an easy bandwagon to jump on and look like you're "fighting the good fight". It was an actual problem in one area from my childhood, but never saw it anywhere else.
Otherwise, fully and wholeheartedly agree that it's now a global issue and is indeed real. Welcome to the "global community" we were always told was going to be such an advancement for society.
The gaps of "what do we show now" are filled with popular content, so culture war content is what you notice but there's probably other tamer things that only the algorithms know is popular.
Yeah, it's very much a game of "well, other people fit this profile, but also tend to watch this other thing, we should recommend that, as it will probably hook this person as well. With any luck, they'll be grateful that we introduced them!"
From the algorithmic feed PoV it's a very high value cluster (average watchtime has to be very high, audience retention is probably quite excellent) so it's unsurprising that it'll try to get you hooked from time to time.
I watched a funny video of the President of my country mis-pronouncing a word in English. The recommended videos afterward were comprised ENTIRELY of the local far-right party's propaganda.
Observe how this amounts to crime. The platform has motive:
-newly single users attract more views
-newly single users are worth more to advertisers because they’re likely to spend on appearance, travel, new hobbies, and big ticket items formerly shared with a partner.
The platform also has opportunity because it has data on exactly what content has highest probability of nudging a particular user to break up. (Perhaps the “you are being abused by a narcissist” stuff others have mentioned works nicely.)
(See also Shoshanna Zuboff)
Is that any more accurate though? I agree that the headline is snark, but... content creators are a large part of the problem, though it's such a complex problem that I'm not sure how to even guess at which is more liable unless you simply take the "whoever is the last in the production line has the ability to prevent this kind of content" view, in which case it's pretty obviously ... well, I was going to say obvious the content provider, but no... it's you. The problem is likely you, and your inability to avoid this kind of content.</more-snark>
The biggest problem with instagram (well and most other photo-based social network) is not the fame and glory of a few individuals, but a selective showing of the best highlights of other people.
Imagine sitting at a shitty job, going to the bathroom, and browsing instagram... hey look, here's Alice eating at a fancy restaurant.. here's Bob on a beach... here's Cecilia at a party... here's Doug moutain climbing... and you're stuck at a shitty job.
Instagram doesn't show eg. Bob working for months to save up for a trip to a shitty seaside location, hotel with bedbugs, overpriced cocktails and a sewage flowing into the sea just out of the visible part in the photo... but you don't see any of the bad stuff, just other people having fun, and you having to deal with all the bad stuff. Add all the filters, and all other people are pretty, have nice skin, look skinny.. and you look like shit after 7 hours on the job and one more to go.
This kind of reminds me what I experienced during my first travel to south america. In short, most people I met with shitty jobs or no job wanted to go to either north america or europe. They kind of assumed everything would be fine if they just could go to one of these countries. What they totally forgot is that we had to work our asses of to actually pay for the flight and 2 months or backpacking. At home, we had 9to5 jobs, something the people we talked to would actually consider slavery...
This is what a lot of immigrants during the "refugee crisis" thought too... pay the smugglers a couple of grand, then they come to germany, get a free house, free money, buy a bmw.
I mean, a generation or two ago, it would be a literal vacation slide show you might be "treated to" when visiting a friend. Obviously they never showed slides of Bob at the GM assembly plant.
But a generation or two ago you had context. You knew Bob worked in an assembly plant 6 days a week with tons of overtime sacrificing family time or took that vacation after 3 years and stayed in a cheap hotel to enjoy an amazing beach.
With social media you do not have that context, you just see the perfect parts.
You're right that there is difference in degree. But I don't think that changes the fact that we should already accept that what people post to Instagram are the highlights of their lives and not the drudgery.
It's not a question of acceptance, but rather on the effects it has on people psychologically, whether or not they accept it. Humans don't just operate as rational beings – our brains' perceptions of the world adapt and change based on the things we see and how often we see them. Being aware of this effect is not enough to overcome it, much like being aware of the effects of hard drugs does not prevent you from forming an addiction. It is simply how our minds work. It affects people to varying degrees, but the only way to guarantee avoiding the effect is to avoid such situations in general.
And in the days before budget airlines most people accepted it that an overseas vacation was a bit like that for national lampoon vacations: working stiffs working hard and after years at the job “earning” a vacation. Not jaunts you did while between dead end jobs.
> They say it's the 'me' generation. It's not. The arrogance is taught, or it was cultivated. It's self-conscious. That's what it is. It's conscious of self. Social media - it's just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform, so the market said, here - perform. Perform everything to each other, all the time, for no reason. It's prison - it's horrific. It's performer and audience melded together. What do we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and just watch our life as a satisfied audience member. I know very little about anything. But what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.
>Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection (similar to colors not existing in reality).
I strongly disagree, and don't think your example supports your conclusions.
Colors are arbitrary and subjective constructs and dont exist in reality. Following your example, identity does not exist. It is not in the reflection either.
The "problem" is that people place more importance on the subjective identity seen by the observer, and less on the equally subjective identity they see them selves.
Just because each are subjective does not mean that they are equally fulfilling, productive, or healthy.
Living a life you find beautiful has objective advantages over living a life someone else thinks is beautiful. Satisfying your arbitrary needs is ultimately more fulfilling than satisfying someone else's arbitrary needs.
It should be no surprise that people who don't live a life they like end up dissatisfied with their life...
It isn't Instagram, it is like counts. But the like counts are what drives the addictive behavior and makes the product "free" to use.
This is just Goodhart's Law at a personal level. We stop being authentic to chase likes. We inherently turn the measure into a target. We have hundreds of "friends" of FB and we interact with a dozen or less regularly.
I don't think likes are currently their major issue. Instagram at least created its own problem:
1. start with regular people posting regular stuff - it was great fun
2. the professional users are the most active and polished
3. regular people stop posting because their content isn't polished enough and they resent comparisons of their life to others'
4. regulars follow less (to preserve their sanity) and post less
5. to maintain growth, the platform pushes more and more suggestions (people you don't want to follow, ads you don't want to see, reel encouragement you don't want to do)
Final stage is a platform that has deterred you from participating and constantly assaults you with things that you don't want to see. I used to really enjoy using Twitter and Instagram. I haven't touched Twitter in a couple of months and I usually resent using Instagram (but it's key in my industry).
Silly thing is, I think Instagram would be just fine if they didn't suggest things constantly. Every time, I select to see it less often, but it's inevitably back the following day. Let each person choose what they want their Instagram to be, whether it's following friends or being a creator or treating it like a magazine and looking at reels.
>Let each person choose what they want their Instagram to be
That's not as valuable to advertisers though. With recommendations and algorithmic sorting, the platform gets to mold what's important, and that influence makes it easy to sell off to the highest bidder.
I find a lot of value in following my friends---and my friends only. It's why we've all generally migrated off traditional social media and into private group chats. There's no algorithm mediating our interactions, and no one is going to try to sell our attention to outside parties.
It's not just like counts. That's just a metric/formalism for the narcissistic self-marketing thing that these platforms are really about. You could remove them or obscure them but some other form of observing engagement would take the same place.
It's about being seen and popular. The same crap adolescents have dealt with for decades, but now... automated.
I think that is an insanely insightful comment. It is very scary having an 11 year old and wondering when that day comes when his friends are on social media and he wants to participate. I am skeptical of a lot so don’t fall for get rich scams or ads on these platforms but do enjoy perusing for sometimes too long
There's hope: My 12 year old son recently got his first phone. After seeing what's happened with his older sister (very bad), he steadfastly refuses to install any games or social media on it.
We'll see if he holds out...
It's extremely hard as a parent.
Younger adolescent girls are extremely vulnerable. But this stuff is very hard to lock down and manage. There are no good tools for managing it. The parental controls apps are leaky and crappy. Schools issue (and require!) devices, so even if you can lock your kids device, there's always alternate paths. And as a parent you are easily sidelined and ignored when you try to talk about it and bring up concerns.
Worst problems have been Tumblr and Pinterest, BTW, not Instagram. Both are full of eating disorder and self-harm content. Instagram is at least somewhat moderated. (Reddit and Twitter are also really bad, though less used by teens that I have seen.)
My oldest got instagram and such at 16. She became depressed, moody, rude, and isolated. We would take the social media away, she became happy engaged, involved with friends and family.
Go right back to being depressed again as soon as she got access to Instagram.
Repeat every three or so months until she moved out. After wasting a couple years of her life she finally got off social media all together and is doing much better.
Her much younger sister is 13 wants social media. It’s a hard no. She complained to her older sister. Older sister was extremely firm on saying to stay off it.
Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection..
That assumes a level of honesty that is missing from social media. On Instagram people explicitly pretend to be someone they are not. The reflection they show is beauty and affluence but the reality is Photoshop and prestige car rental.
Insta is like a computer role playing game, where the player usually plays a character that closely resembles themselves, but often as a more idealized version.
When my daughter started playing Hogwarth's legacy, she instantly created a charcter that looked as much as possible like her. Instagram is not that different.
It would be fascinating to take a sample of people, compare their avatars to their real life appearance, and then have them spend an hour talking to a shrink about why they are so similar/different.
Anecdotally, I know many people in both the very similar and very different camps, and a few who are very similar except for some small thing.
May be true for extroverts, but as an introvert I don't give a cent about what random people think about me (which also explains why I do not use Instagram in the first place).
Whatever personality trait you’re talking about is orthogonal to introversion/extroversion.
There are many introverts who manage their social time specifically because they care about the impressions they make on others and find it effortful to manage them; and many extroverts who do the opposite specifically because they don’t think at all about such impressions.
Impression shaping doesn't define who you are, it's a completely artificial front, and it takes an effort exactly because impression has nothing in common with person's essence.
However there is a certain kind of dissonance between deciding to publicly state "I don't care what you think" that sort of implies that they do care actually.
It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the first place?
Is there not a middle ground here? I don't think this is a binary situation where a person has to have no care at all, or it is their full obsession with life.
Like, I don't care if you think my clothes are shit, and I don't keep up with the latest javascript flavor of the day. At the same time I don't want, at least the general public around me, thinking I'm some creepy hermit murderer so they don't rise up with torches and pitchforks either.
That’s what the comment you’re replying to is saying, you just used more words. You’re downstream from someone who asserted they are a hard 0 on the caring, which it sounds like you agree is… unlikely.
>It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the first place?
That seems rather reductive given the topic here.
I don't own an EV auto, or any auto for that matter. By your logic, I shouldn't engage in discussions about EV vs. ICE or anything to do with transportation. Is that correct?
>If you said that you have no interest whatsoever in cars or electric cars, or no care for things tangentially related (impact on climate or similar).
A fair point. However, that's not what GGP[1] said. They said:
> Who people think we are is who we are
May be true for extroverts, but as an introvert I don't give a cent about
what random people think about me (which also explains why I do not use
Instagram in the first place).
I was responding to a reply[0] to that comment which asserted that:
However there is a certain kind of dissonance between deciding to publicly
state "I don't care what you think" that sort of implies that they do care
actually.
It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the
first place?
As I said, I think that's pretty reductive. If you don't care what people on Instagram (or other social media) think, then not using such platforms makes perfect sense. Which is what GGP said.
It seems reasonable to comment on the perceived "quest for likes" in a discussion about such things, even if you don't use those platforms and/or don't care what others think.
I don't agree with GGP's point about being an introvert, as I'm an extrovert and I don't give a rat's ass about such things either. Nor do I use Instagram or other (mainstream) social media.
Despite my (potentially) poor analogy, GP seems to be implying that if you state that you don't care about something, then you actually do care. Which, as I said, seems pretty reductive. And is also a poor use of logic.
Please feel free to disagree and/or down-vote me, as I (at least as far as this, and most topics goes) don't really care what others think.
Rather, I'm interested in discussion that sparks interesting exchanges. GP's shallow dismissal of GGP doesn't do that. In fact, it may well stifle discussion. And more's the pity.
If you actually don’t care you wouldn’t post because it wouldn’t occur to you to.
Edit: I find that most people who scream “I don’t care what you think” generally mean “I’m not influenced by what you think”. Which is an important difference, and helps explain getting red in the face about someone else’s opinion about which one don’t care.
That's because delusion is ugly and thus invokes complaint, so yes sufficient ugliness has influence, but the influence of ugliness is invocation of complaint about ugliness, it doesn't define who you are.
> Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality
Identity is by definition what and who you _are_ and this is _prior_ to thought -- it is a matter of being, not thinking. It is to some extent determined in time; our character is determined by our choices, and choices actualize potentials, or thwart them. The very fact that someone can have a distorted view implies a distinction between the opinion and the real.
You seem to be getting at this in the paragraph that follows. That is, what people _observe_ and know about you is information that can help you learn about yourself. That information can be distorted (through incompetence or malice) and should be therefore be verified before it is accepted.
So your general point has merit. Instagram, for example, feeds approval and validation seeking behavior. What does Instagram reward? Appearance and instant gratification. There is no verification, no contextualization. People not only develop a strong need for approval, but fickle, superficial approval. It's like Goodhart's law. The shallow image of identity, not the real identity, becomes what matters and what people invest all their energy into, and through their investment, reduce themselves to that image and accept it as who they are. People have always done this. Keeping up with the Jones', saving face. We all know people who are slaves to their reputations, to what others think of them, anxiously guarding their appearance from the slightest perceived threat. Social anxiety is largely this. But social media exaggerates and magnifies this flaw, one that young people are more prone to.
A virtuous man is concerned about his character; how he appears is a consequence or the effect of his virtue and who he is, not a deceptive mask that requires maintenance to conceal the filth and vice lurking underneath. And by his virtue, he suffers little from slander and welcomes truthful criticism. The Image Man is destroyed by anything unflattering because, true or not, it involves a negation of the image which he identifies with his very being.
> (similar to colors not existing in reality).
A digression, but this claim bothers me. Colors do exist in reality. Your claim rests on an unjustified Cartesian metaphysics in which color as we mean it is redefined as a surface reflectance property and what we commonly call color is involved in scurried away into the mind or "consciousness". (Materialism can't even pull that trick as the Cartesian mind has been eliminated from the picture.)
From a pure physical point of view, light exist of an infinite number of wavelengths. A mix of light of different wavelengths thus form an infinite-dimensional color space.
Our eyes only has thress sensors to detect the difference, roughly corresponding to Red Green and Blue, so as the light hits our brain, we receive a 3-dimensional color space. The brain collapses this further into a single qualia, that is very remote in structure to the physical light.
By comparison, our ability to comprehend shapes of objects is much more closely related to the objects' acutal shape.
>> Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality
> Identity is by definition what and who you _are_ and this is _prior_ to thought -- it is a matter of being, not thinking.
This is not the definition most commonly used, at least not in the physical sense. What we _are_, all of us, is very complicated. Far too complicated for our brains to relate to. Instead we're telling ourselves highly simplified stories about ourselves, where we "identify with" or "identify as" one or more characters (or personas) in these stories. This is not unlike when we watch a movie or read a book, and start to feel that we are one of the lead characters there.
And just like the color "brown" doesn't have a single essential identity (it corresponds to a relatively large are of the RGB space, and an even larger area of the full physical color space), our mental model of who we are, is extremely simplified compared to our physical selves.
There was a young woman highlighted by a popular youtuber for her odd behaviour in a gym recently. She was filming herself exercizing for views and dollars. The rough moment was when everyday gym guys walked past her. She felt pressured enough by their presence to accuse them of being creeps and mocked them on her video feed while complaining at the guys in person. The guys were doing normal gym chores ignoring her.
A young adult has gotten so far into the mental space of her social media job that she is hypersensitive to any attention, or the implication of attention, in real life.
Splitting a person's psyche into cyberspace and real life when your livelihood is on the line, is a real skill. Training healthy habits into full time workers could possibly help.
The question I have is, why do people behave like Narcissus, then?
Why do they need so much external affirmation?
Why have some people become so extremely insecure?
Question from a blind man. I know we are supposed to be so stupid that an elephant confuses us... So I have to ask simple questions, because otherwise I will likely not understand the answer, given how stupid we are.
> Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
It also democratizes the clout, power and protection that the hollywood famous have. Without social media harvey weinstein would not be in jail. A "relative nobody" wouldn't have been able to "out shout" and expose a media mogul like weinstein.
As with everything, there are positive and negative aspects.
Spot on except I don’t think identity can be boiled down to perception. It’s also not really necessary to make your point - some people simply care a lot (too much) about the perception of others. Others don’t precisely because their sense of self isn’t so dependent on others.
> mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
There is no such illness. Like, literally none of them. (And in child stars case, massive amount of their issues can be explained by pervasive abusive situations and exploitation they found themselves in. Which is something that happens to poor unknown kids too.)
I think this is a great analysis, though I think in reality it's not limited at all to Instagram specifically but more broadly to the self-promotional and self-marketing aspect of our culture in general at this point. Social media throws kerosene on it, certainly, but it's a much broader phenomenon of which this experience of Instagram is only one symptom.
Capitalism turns everything into a commodity. Including ourselves. From a very early age we are taught that it's important to sell ourselves; to survive and thrive. For most people this is just a background nag, mostly ignored, or poorly executed. For some it becomes a primary drive. The internet only accelerates it.
Mediums like Twitter are just as involved; showcasing one's quips for the world. It doesn't have to be a photo or video like Instagram or TikTok.
And as others may be pointing out, Instagram isn't even the worst of it.
Anyways as a parent of teens, it's very distressing.
> However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you have no control over their place in your life,
you have control to not use this application. It's not like you're forced to use it. You can also go there casually to see your friends pictures without thinking too much about it.
You also have control to not be a celebrity and avoid the paparazzi. This is the parent's point. While you may have free will, it's hard to argue that having cheap access to fame is not appealing to everyone.
A lot of things can be bad if abused. Alcohol, eating, watching TV, video games even healthy activities like sport can be addictive or have risk of injuries. Social medias aren't different. They are entirely harmless for most people. Not that a big of a deal.
> A lot of things can be bad if abused. Alcohol, eating, watching TV, video games even healthy activities like sport can be addictive or have risk of injuries.
Scissors can be bad if abused too. Not sure why we're playing this game...
Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not existing in reality).
Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-distorted" reflection so the reflection from strangers is worth more. Colleagues or friends saying "you're smart!" means a lot more from them.
When each mirror is carefully placed, the "whole" of we we are and would like to be can be understood more deeply just like 7 blind men working together understand the elephant more deeply.
However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you have no control over their place in your life, then the identity becomes overwhelmed by expectation. Just like super high resolution makes your pores look larger, the mirror array makes every aspect of your life feel like shit even if from a rational analysis "extra information should never be a danger"