Social Media Makes Us "Mini-Celebrities"

           When I met with Dr. Bertsch to discuss my final project, we talked about the concept of the celebrity. This concept relates to the ideas I had for my project. Walter Benjamin argues in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that every reproduction is “lacking in one element: its presence in time and space.” If this is true, the “aura” should not be able to exist in social media. However there is something like an aura that is created in social media. This “fake aura” may compare to the “aura” that surrounds celebrities. Through media, celebrities are presented to the public in a very particular way. Often, publicists present only the best features of celebrities; therefore the public gets a skewed image of what that person is really like. The aura we perceive from “reproductions” of the person is not the person’s true aura. For example, I recently read an article about Julia Roberts, and how she often throws huge fits on the sets of her movies. However, I think the image that most people have of Julia Roberts is very different; we all tend to think she is kind, graceful, and considerate because that is the aura that her publicists present. Furthermore, with the advancement of social media and technology, ordinary people are now able to make themselves “celebrities,” which leads to the dissipation of this fake aura. This is the topic I wish to explore in my final project.

               The idea for my project stemmed from some thoughts I had when we watched the Black Mirror episode about Ash. After watching this episode, I concluded that one of the main reasons that the fake Ash wasn’t the same as the real Ash was because he was based on information from online accounts and interactions. When we post online, we often do not give an accurate representation of who we really are or what our lives are really like. We choose to present only certain parts of ourselves that we want others to see. For example, in the “Second a Day” video that Alex and Alyssa presented in their show and tell, the creator chose to compile only the positive parts of every day. We really didn’t see the sad parts of her day or the times when she was just sitting doing nothing, even though I’m sure that she regularly had those kinds of experiences. She chose to share the parts of her life that would make herself look the best.

               For my project, I will be exploring this concept to try to learn more about why we post what we do on social media. In addition, I want to examine how people may misinterpret a person’s true aura based on what that person posts on social media. To do that, I will be conducting a series of interviews about people’s social media experiences. To begin, I will ask people who don’t know me to look at my Instagram account and answer a series of questions about me. I will also answer those same questions about myself. That way, I can compare my true aura (or at least what I think it is) to what people think is my true aura based on my social media. I will also interview about people’s experiences with social media and how they choose the things they post. I’m looking forward to seeing what I find!