Final Excerpt #2

When life becomes dependent on the social hierarchy of social media, its becomes increasingly invasive to everyday life. At this point, social media can be separate from a person’s everyday life, instead a simple highlight reel of one’s life. For the most part, everyday life and social media can be kept relatively separate. But at this rate, social media is becoming more and more invasive. Life becomes this need for likes. This type of society, was shown during the semester in Austin’s show and tell of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive.” In this society, “everyone is a compulsive user of a social media that consists of ratings. All individuals have a rating of zero through five which is determined by how people rate each other based on their interaction, content posted, or simple random anonymity” (Austin). Throughout the episode the main character, is constantly rated for her pictures and conversations she has in real life. In getting her pictures and ratings though, she often puts on this fake persona. An example of this, when she was taking a picture of a fancy coffee and cookie to get ratings. She simply took a picture of the cookie and coffee and threw them out. This reoccurring fakeness also shows up throughout the episode in the form of her conversations. During her conversations, she knows very little about the person she’s talking to and relies heavily on her social media device to even hold a conversation. It is a level, humanity will hopefully never reach.

            Although the above example, is extreme it is important to understand how life is affected if it’s lived vicariously. In the blog post labeled, “Look at the World Through a Filter (and Not a Great One)”, Erin makes a point about how life is. She says humanity has the “need to share our experience with the world, which ultimately takes away from our time living them” (Erin). In it she explains, how humanity is “living through representation” (Erin). This is something that can relate back to social media. In her post, she talks about how Snapchats are used as almost some sort of ploy. The goal of documenting exciting events on Snapchat is not to remember but as a way to convince others the person is “having a good time” (Erin). Of course, the main purpose of Snapchat is to share things that happen in the moment, but her point is still valid. A person can be having a good time, but did they have a good experience. How much time was spent trying to get a certain picture? Ultimately what was missed when taking that picture? How would memories of the event change? These are the questions that we answer everything we choose to document something rather than experience it. Going back to the Black Mirror example, people take these pictures as a way to seek approval from others.  This is similar to Erin’s thought about convincing others that one is having a good time. Representing the moment in a certain way, rather than experiencing it detracts from it completely.

            Why does this matter? Why is living life though representation inherently bad? Well, in a way, this makes us less human. Experiences and memories are what makes us human. Uniqueness comes from our ability to describe what makes us who we are. If we experience more and more through our representation of that experience, like a picture or social media post, are actual human experiences are lessened. The lack of experiences makes us less human. If we are unable to share our experiences without simply showing a picture, then the memory wasn’t experienced. Memory through representation, creates a society of robots. An almost sort of mindlessness exists.