Op-Ed

For our next assignment, we were tasked with writing an op-ed. An op-ed is an article, typically found in newspapers and magazines, and are usually on a personal topic to the author. The author writes their own opinions and perspectives on their chosen issue.

For my op-ed, I decided to look at how Instagram is used as a way of selling products and how social media users can become ‘influencers’, by posting images with brands and being paid a fee per post.

Before I started writing, I made a mind map and looked at the different people that use Instagram and how Instagram has now become a place where people post images of their lives, showcasing an idyllic lifestyle their followers would envy.

I was hoping to write about the different ways Instagram can be used and how it is a tool for celebrities to talk to and interact with fans. As I started looking at my ideas, I saw how I would be able to talk more about Instagrams advertising and how ‘influencers’ are used as a way of selling products.

I also looked at how Instagram is now a place where ‘influencers’ post images of their physique and try to promote dieting pills and drinks, promoting unhealthy ways of achieving a ‘perfect’ body.

Social Media: The New Marketing Technique.

Instagram. The platform for everybody to share their lives through images. Influencers, celebrities, artists, athletes and dreamers all update the world on their day to day life through perfect images and meaningful captions. It’s also a great way to interact with your adoring fans. So, why has it been named the worst social media?

Influencers have a long history of displaying the idyllic life everyone wants. Expensive clothes, expensive cars, expensive jewellery and a million-pound mansion to reside in. This is the kind of life people could only dream of. But how can these normal, everyday people afford this lifestyle?

Companies have always had unique ways of selling products. Adverts plastered on billboards, buses and beyond, telling us about all the products we need to better our lives, how best to shred that annoying extra weight, the new exercise trend that’s shredding the nation. But a new wave of advertising tactics is available at our fingertips through social media.

Influencers are people that, to put it plainly, influence people. They are usually reality stars or YouTubers who have a cult like following of fans, ready and willing to follow their every move in their career.

Influencers with a large, loyal fanbase plus companies trying to sell their products equals a match made in heaven. Advertisers get their product seen by thousand, maybe millions of people and the influencer gets a hefty bank transfer and a free product. This seems like a fair trade off, however I can’t help but question how the products are chosen for the influencer.

Something that many influencers forget about their followers and audience is that a lot of them are teenage boys and girls, following every post and Insta story the second their posted. “Paid partnership” or plain old post, these young people are digesting the lifestyle of these people, aspiring to live the perfect rich life they live.

So why do influencers think it’s appropriate to post images showing their weight loss or chiselled physique, through use of weight loss aids to such a young audience?

The women plaster images of themselves in sports bras and skin-tight leggings, displaying their flattened and toned tummies, whilst they happily tell us all about this weight loss tea they swear by, that lets them eat whatever they want and lose weight at the same time.

They show themselves drinking the vile powdered concoction, whilst tagging the company with the special discount code you can use to get 10% off your first order.

Showing these types of images can lead to extremely unhealthy imagery of our own bodies and how we perceive healthy weight loss. Young people seeing someone they look up to promoting these weight loss tea and pills will lead to them believing that the way to perfect their bodies is through taking supplements.

Influencers have a platform where they can promote healthy eating and show body transformations through good nutrition and exercise, yet they still choose to advertise the products because they are getting paid. They are putting their need for cash above the welfare of their followers.

Many young people are growing up with an unrealistic perception of their bodies and how society perceives them. They log into Instagram and see skinny, toned bodies plastered all over their feed, a constant stream of gym mirror selfies, like the person never leaves, constantly striving to get their already bodies into better shape.

Showing this kind of excessive exercise routines tells a younger audience that in order for them to get the bodies they want, they can eat whatever they want whenever, and just spend some extra hours in the gym to shred those extra pounds.

Instagram seems unable to police the posts that could potentially be damaging the self esteem of young people. Although age restrictions are in place, Instagram cannot enforce which accounts teenagers follow or what the influencers post. There needs to be more of an understanding from the influencer as to who their audience is. They post images to boost their own ego or because they know they’ll be paid an extortionate amount of money, by advertisers and their managers, hoping to get enough exposure to put them on whatever reality show trend is on this year. So, Instagram. The platform where people once shared their lives through images. Now, a place where people can catapult to fame, sell overpriced “healthy alternatives” and the idea of a perfect lifestyle. A platform run by capitalistic companies cashing in a new wave of marketing techniques. Showing the lifestyle they dream of can be achieved, one post at a time.

I am happy with my op-ed as I think I was able to convey my ideas clearly, however I started to become repetitive, as the topics I covered linked with each other and I started to repeat the same ideas.

Guy Debord ‘The Society of the Spectacle’

This session, we looked at and discusses Guy Debords’ ‘The Society of the Spectacle’.

In the opening paragraph, Debord states ‘All that once was directly lived has become mere representation’. This could describe society and how everything and everyone is obsessed with images and appearances. Debord is seeing how the society he lives in is being influenced by images and how these images are altering how people see themselves and the people around them.

In paragraph 4, Debord says ” The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images”. This statement suggests that the spectacle a societal thing and that images are what influence people the most.

‘The Society of the Spectacle’ could be seen as context to social media. Debord is talking about how images influence society in the 1960’s. When social media was created in the late 1990’s, it became a way of showing our lives over the internet. Social media, however, is driven by appearances. We only show the good things about our lives and leave out the bad parts. The statement “The spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances” by Debord fits with this theory. As a society, we are driven by looks and appearances to other people.

Capitalism plays into how society looks at appearances and status. A lot of adverts show aesthetically pleasing images, rather than telling you the functionality and features of the product. These images tell the viewer that they want the product, rather than need it.

This image shows a skeleton looking at a social media image of a “perfect girl”. The idea behind this image was to show how pole looking at the image will never look the same as the image, however people will go to extremes to try and look “perfect”. It could also show how people would try so hard to look how society thinks they should look, that they could end up killing themselves in the process.

The Society of the Spectacle is relevant to photography as the spectacle is seen as images and how people perceive images. Photography is seen all around us in adverts, on social media and in books that it is hard to not be influenced by what we see.

Roland Barthes ‘The Great Family of Man’

Roland Barthes wrote an essay on an exhibition from France called: The Great Family of Man. “The aim of which was to show the universality of human actions in the daily life of all the countries of the world: birth, death, work, knowledge, play, always impose the same types of behaviour; there is a family of Man” (Barthes, 1957).

“We are at the outset directed to this ambiguous myth of the human ‘community’, which serves as an alibi to a large part of our humanism” (Barthes, 1957). This statement suggests that Barthes thinks that humans living together in harmony is a myth.

“This myth functions in two stages: first the difference between human morphologies is asserted, exoticism is insistently stressed, the infinite variations of the species, the diversity in skins, skulls and customs” (Barthes, 1957), meaning that people no longer see colour.

“Then, from this pluralism, a type of unity is magically produced: man is born, works, laughs and dies everywhere in the same way” (Barthes, 1957). Once we all accept that we all have different skin colours, we can then live and work with each other.

“We are held back at the surface of an identity, prevented precisely by sentimentality from penetrating into this ulterior zone of human behaviour where historical alienation introduces some ‘differences’ which we shall here quite simply call ‘injustices’ ” (Barthes, 1957). Barthes seems to be referencing slavery and the differences are between people of colour and white people and social classes.

The exhibition featured images of people in wars and people struggling with poverty, as well as normal and upper class people, to show the diversity of the world.

A statement from the official press release of the exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art says: “THE FAMILY Of MAN is planned as an exhibition of photography portraying the universal elements and emotions and the oneness of human beings throughout the world. It is probably the most ambitious and challenging project photography has ever faced and one for which, I believe, the art of photography is uniquely qualified.” This shows that the exhibitions intent was to show the diversity of the world through peoples skin colour, emotional state, politics and social status. https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_325966.pdf

Barthes, however, did not see the images in this way. he describes the images as “a collection of photographs in which everyone lives and “dies in the same way everywhere.” and “Just showing pictures of people being born and dying tells us, literally, nothing” (Barthes, 1957). This statement suggests that Barthes thinks the images are not really ground breaking in their contents. Although the images show harrowing subjects, Barthes statement seems insensitive as the images are documenting peoples lives who are struggling or are coming from developing countries.

In photography, I think we need to think about the emotional impact images can have on people or the subjects of the image.

Paradigms

For our first lesson discussion, we explored the definition of paradigms and why our module is called ‘Paradigms’.

First, I created a mind map on different definitions of a paradigm to get a better understanding of what a paradigm is. I found that a paradigm can be perspectives, beliefs, assumptions based on photographs, ideals of a place or people, philosophy and patterns.

This mind mapping helped me understand that a paradigm is an assumption on what someone or something should be based on what everyone else in society sees. This means that everything is the same and nobody is seen as an individual, we all are confined to societies ideals.

As a group, we came up with a definition for a paradigm in relation to photography: different ideas applied to photography with different ways of understanding photographs and discussing. This means photographers can produce images and show their ideas and points of views, and create discussions based on their work with the public.

Finally, we discussed why the module is called paradigms. We discussed how this module will expand our thinking and knowledge by researching various philosophers and photographers on their ideas and beliefs on photography and how it is changing in the modern world. It will also help us understand different beliefs and concepts and how we can think more about the images we create and the meanings behind the images.