...and the Surrounding Commodifying Schizophrenia:
Bao, "The Cult of Online Identity Curation and Social Media’s Fixation on Aesthetics"This is a work in progress. More sections will be added in the future detailing the history of subcultures, as well as how community has been affected by social media and the lack of third spaces.Picture this: On your way out to meet some friends, you’re standing in front of your mirror assessing your OOTD. Your outfit? A colorful striped tee, mustard yellow mom jeans folded twice, socks with Van Gogh’s The Starry Night printed on them, and chunky Doc Martens. Perched on your nose are a pair of circular wire-rimmed glasses — do these even have lenses? (No.) Your hairstyle consists of an artfully messy bun and an array of colorful hair clips. The straps of your Fjallraven Kånken backpack dig painfully into your back, but the iconic fox logo patch that people will surely recognize makes it so worth it. Before leaving, you bid your succulents goodbye — not before almost bumping into your ukulele that’s collecting dust because of months of disuse. As you shut the door, you don a pair of headphones, and Rex Orange County starts playing. If you’ve ever been this person — congratulations, you’re an Art Hoe.
The “Art Hoe ‘’ is just one of the hundreds of aesthetic labels that have pervaded our social media world. More known ones today include cottagecore, coquette, dark academia; these labels are synonymous to certain lifestyles and products that one must acquire to be seen as part of these communities. While we could simply consider these aesthetics as creative ways of expressing ourselves, there is much nuance involved in this topic. In this essay, I argue that social media aesthetics enable surface-level self-concept due to its ephemerality and identity commodification mediated by audiovisual mediums. We will explore how all these are interconnected and how our sense of self is impacted by our exposure to trends and labels online. Finally, we will cover how aesthetics manifest in our local context through the “anik-anik girlie”.
ON AUDIOVISUAL MEDIUMS
Even before the existence of images on social media, photography as a medium of expression had already been heavily critiqued. According to Susan Sontag, photographs “give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads — as an anthology of images” (Sontag 1). Sontag also writes: “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted” (18).
Despite Sontag’s work being written in 1977 when social media was non-existent, her words surprisingly ring true in today’s Internet , but unlike in Sontag’s time, our current Internet landscape has grown to encompass media outside singular images. Now, people share photographs (including image carousels) and videos accompanied by captions or text. Back then, sites like Instagram were purely a photo-sharing service but have added 15-second video sharing in 2013 (Kelly). Afterwards, with the boom of TikTok that specialized in short-form content combining trends with audio, text, and video, other social media sites have replicated this feature — think Instagram reels, Youtube shorts, and Facebook shorts (Montenegro). Through these, users can share pieces of their life with others and even connect to those with similar interests. They can also express themselves by creating cinematic visuals, adding swift transitions, and layering sound effects and music. So if social media poses all these benefits, why does it seem so unfulfilling?
To answer this, let us understand social media aesthetics, which manifest visually in the presentation of fashion and lifestyles through both photo and video. Each trend now has to have a corresponding label for people to be able to participate in them; this leads to the over-labeling of aesthetics into something new and interesting, even if they’ve existed long before the label they’ve been ascribed to. In turn, I argue that the structure of content released on social media causes these trends to become more immersive to us and therefore more aspirational, not to mention the appeal to people’s ever-shortening attention spans. Given this, we now view our lives through our camera lenses and forget to live in the present. Think about it — when we see something visually pleasing like a sunset, our first instinct is to photograph it, add filters, and generate a catchy, relatable caption to post online. Instead of observing and savoring its beauty with all our five senses, we rush to preserve the memory, too focused on getting the perfect shot.
Essentially, our feed now precedes our life — I don’t think we know how to live life detached from our screens anymore. In conjunction, social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson asserts: “… life itself becomes shaped by the logic of documentation” (22). He elaborates on the two-pronged quality of social media as public and private: “Social photography is both the miniaturization and magnification of a person, a scene, and the world… But photography equally makes its subjects smaller. Through recording, the infinity of their complexity is shrunk to the size of a document” (84). Life cannot be condensed into a single photograph or video, and our frequency and depth of self-exposure online cannot guarantee reality either. There is so much context hidden outside the four corners of our screens, whether that be intentional or not. As Sontag says, they “are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy” (17). Because we curate our feeds to seem perfect, social media becomes more about how we present an image ourselves to others and not who we really are. Our online presence comprises only a portion of our lives, which can be clumsy and messy and not at all picturesque.
ON EPHEMERALITY AND IDENTITY COMMODIFICATION
Social media aesthetic labels often experience very rapid trend cycles, so they are aptly referred to as microtrends. Quiet luxury, Old Money, That Girl, It Girl, Clean Girl, Tomato Girl, Vanilla Girl, Office Siren, Fairycore, Cottagecore, Coquette, Blokette — what are these terms even? The list goes on. Most of these terms are attributed to a certain look, whether that be makeup, fashion, or both.
Not only are they attributed to a certain look, they also signal a certain lifestyle. For instance, the Pilates Princess refers to those who don hyper feminine, baby pink athleisure while simultaneously participating in activities such as working out, creating healthy smoothies, and maintaining a skincare routine (Wiki). And how do you achieve this lifestyle? Well, by purchasing products that correspond to this aesthetic. On “core” aesthetics specifically, fashion commentator Alexandra Hildreth reports: “Microtrends rely on items of clothing having an expiration date: when they are in they are amazing, and when they are out you never want to be seen wearing it again. It is an exhausting, but successful marketing ploy that taps at consumer’s anxieties of not being interesting enough, making people want to buy more to feel cool” (GLITCH Magazine).
From my observations, aesthetic labels and trends on social media have only enabled the notion that identity is bought and not developed by urging individuals to make never ending purchases as trends come and go too quickly; as such, they are temporary or ephemeral. The advent of a new trend signals a brand new monetary investment in a set of items.
From a more theoretical perspective, Guy Debord critiques modern society under a capitalist economy as a spectacle. He posits that “the Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images” (Debord 7), which aligns with the earlier mentioned concept of audiovisual mediums. In addition, he discusses one primary category of spectacle: the diffuse spectacle, which occurs when “commodity abundance” exists. Commodities become a source of anxiety for the consumer; they end up seeking fulfillment from the products they purchase (32). While Debord did not live to see the age of social media, he managed to capture the essence of capitalism that remains the major economic system the world functions under. Similarly, the concept of commodity abundance prevails in today’s society, as observed in the increasing anxiety people experience when they are unable to catch up with trends due to the fear of being left behind or being irrelevant.
Before, trends would last around 20 years give or take. In fashion, a season of clothing first released on the runway enters a cycle of introduction, rise, peak, decline, and obsolescence before another clothing trend begins (Ewens). Now, trends come and go in the blink of an eye with how social media affects our consuming habits. When something becomes viral, there’s already a label attached to it, so people aspire for this lifestyle by buying items in hordes. And when fast fashion stores and companies catch onto these trends, they co-opt these aesthetic labels to sell their products — it now transforms into a systemic problem. This is highly evident in the sphere of fast fashion, such as Shein that creates products based on these trends for cheap to lure individuals to spend money (Zhou). Now, consumers are never satisfied. Under the guise of bettering themselves, they end up more desperate to form a sense of identity by buying new items and discarding old products as trends pass by.
ON SURFACE LEVEL SELF-CONCEPT
Personal identity can be related to the psychological self-concept, which is one’s image of themselves: “what one does”, “how one appears”, and “material things one has” (Bailey 386). Due to the fleeting and even flimsy quality of trends and labels online, people seem to be grasping at straws when it comes to their ceaseless formation of their self-concept on social media. Philosopher Byung Chul Han introduces the concept of “negative narcissism”, which he claims is the state people are driven to as they obsessively present themselves on social media due to the “inner emptiness of their ego”. In his book Saving Beauty, Han covers the phenomenon of the selfie: “The contemporary ego is very poor in stable forms of expressions with which it may identify, which would give it a solid identity. Today, nothing endures. This impermanence also affects the ego and destabilizes it, makes it insecure” (10).
While online self-presentation consists of more than just selfies, Han’s observation is something I generally agree with. It seems like people are always looking for the next new aesthetic label like a shiny toy — goodbye clean girl, goodbye cottagecore, what’s next? Still, there are some points of contention. I acknowledge that there are those who participate in these trends with an actual appreciation for the aesthetics. As one interested in fashion myself, I do look to social media for inspiration and have stumbled upon aesthetic labels or trends like “Ghibli-esque” (think a mix of cottagecore and magical whimsy) that appeal to me. And to be fair, not everything we post on social media needs to have a deeper meaning behind it — we’re allowed to do things simply for lighthearted reasons!
But it becomes a problem when we fixate too much on aesthetics. Han expounds on this: “It [the selfie] lacks inwardness…The exhibition of the face as a façade does not require any depth of focus. Such a focus would even damage the façade” (11). We see this play out with how social media users, especially the youth and young adults, prioritize how we seem like on social media over organic growth, who we are and can be. Our generation is overly aware but not aware enough, a contradiction in and of itself. What I mean is that we are obsessed with labeling ourselves with prepackaged personas, falling victim to the capitalistic notion that we need to purchase a lifestyle to live a fulfilling life, that we build unrealistic notions of personality and fail to notice how we are nowhere near satisfaction.
THE CASE OF THE “ANIK-ANIK GIRLIES”
While people from all around the world can partake in these aesthetic trends, there is one that is unique to the Philippine context: the so-called “anik-anik girlie”. The closest translation of this word would be trinkets or knick knacks. As someone who has been collecting a variety of items over the years, I have observed anik-anik as categorized into two: kept and consumed items. Kept items refer to items we collect for practical, impractical, and nostalgic purposes. For instance, our parents own a prized collection of plastic containers that they hoard “just in case”. We may find ourselves holding onto unnecessary items like candy packaging for no discernible reason. And out of sentimental value, we may also store receipts, tickets, and letters.
While anik-anik traditionally refers to kept items, the term has acquired a more consumerist connotation in recent times; examples include Sonny Angels or deadstock keychains from Japan Surplus stores. These are what I call consumed items as we purchase them brand new or second-hand. In relation to this, the “anik-anik girlie” has been popularized by social media, and it refers to those in their teens or twenties who show off their collections of keychains, blind box toys, and plushies on sites like Twitter and Instagram. These anik-anik are highly curated and are artfully organized in photographs or short-form content (think room or desk tours) to seem visually appealing and to some extent, perfect.
I admit that I’ve fallen into the trap of the pitfalls associated with being an “anik-anik girlie”: conflating the idea of anik-anik with overconsumption. The driving force behind my purchasing habits used to lie in the anxiety of how people would perceive me: how could I aesthetically signal that I was interesting or someone with good taste? This is contrary to the notion of anik-anik as a manifestation of a life well-lived through the tangible, often inexpensive, objects we accumulate over the course of our lives. In line with the aforementioned theorists, I and many others are misled to believe that the emotions and lived experiences of those who collect anik-anik can be purchased. It has now transformed into a mainstream trend rather than its original purpose of subverting traditional Filipino norms of practicality by collecting anything and everything.
CONCLUSION
So would it be better to stop following trends at all? Well, trends can function to allow us to discover new sides of ourselves and have fun. But it becomes a problem when we base our entire identity on the self we project online and the items we buy in desperation to create the lifestyle we want for ourselves. Amber Weir comments on this regarding personal style, but it can be easily applicable to our identity outside of fashion:… Whereas, personal style is all-encompassing, slowly curated, and unique to each person. It slowly evolves and embodies scent, love, friendship, clothes, music, and books, and is shaped by relationships reflecting a person’s whole being. It cannot be taught by an algorithm, brand, roundup, or influencer online, because it’s specific to each person’s experience. What is truly special about personal style is the patience it takes to curate and develop (GLITCH magazine).With the current landscape of social media prioritizing microtrends through audiovisual mediums, I find it difficult to say whether we’ll ever be able to separate ourselves from our commodified self-concept. But one thing is for certain — our search for identity should extend outwards from social media, and we can start by living in the present without our phone screens serving as a lens of the world we live in. It’s also important to develop a healthier relationship with social media and become aware of how trends, algorithms, and features can trap us in a cycle of overconsumption and dissatisfaction. We must live by engaging with the outside world, by shaping ourselves through interactions with people of various backgrounds, and by seeing that there is much more to life than prepackaged, static personalities on social media.Works Cited
Bailey, Joseph. “Self-image, Self-concept, and Self-identity Revisited.” PubMed, vol. 95, no. 5, May 2003, pp. 383–86. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12793794.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Princeton UP, 2020.
Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Pink Pilates Princess.” Aesthetics Wiki, aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Pink_Pilates_Princess.
Ewens, Hannah. “Trends used to come back round every 20 years. not anymore.” Vice, 14 Dec. 2022, www.vice.com/en/article/bvmkm8/how-the-20-year-trend-cycle-collapsed.
GLITCH Magazine. “GLITCH Investigates: Are Core Trends Killing Personal Style?” GLITCH Magazine, 2 Aug. 2023, glitchmagazine.xyz/glitch-investigates-core-trends-impact-on-personal-style.
Han, Byung-Chul. Saving Beauty. John Wiley and Sons, 2017.
Jurgenson, Nathan. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media. Verso Books, 2019.
Kelly, Heather. “Instagram launches 15-second video feature.” CNN, 21 June 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/06/20/tech/social-media/instagram-video.
Montenegro, Lisa. “The rise of Short-Form video: TikTok is changing the game.” Forbes, 14 Apr. 2022, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/08/27/the-rise-of-short-form-video-tiktok-is-changing-the-game.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. 2001.
Zhou, Maggie. “What Are Micro Trends? How Styles Change Faster Than Ever Before — Good on You.” Good on You, 5 Aug. 2022, goodonyou.eco/micro-trends.
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