Instagram: An Analysis Through the Lens of Wendy Chun, Paul Virilio, and Jean Baudrillard
Kenneth Gergen once said in 1991; “I am linked, therefore I am.”[1] Thirty years later, Gergen’s play on Descartes makes sense more than ever. With the emergence and production of new surveillance methods and vision machines, humans have been intimately intertwined with technology. Unable to imagine a world without technology by our side, vision in particular has now become an abstract concept that is difficult to grasp. The issue at hand is to question if there now such a thing as vision and perception that is separated from technology. Delving into the relationship between vision and technology, this essay will examine one social media in particular, Instagram, owned and managed by another social media, Facebook. This social media platform will be analyzed alongside Wendy Chun’s writings on new media, Paul Virilio’s The Vision Machine, and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of Hyperreality. Although the essay cannot exhaust the entirety of the three thinkers’ intricate texts, the essay will focus slightly more on Virilio, as opposed to Chun and Baudrillard’s. Despite this, the essay will focus only on how the thinkers can be related with Instagram.
With more than 800,000 users today, Instagram has become more than just a member of the Facebook family, but an icon in understanding the visual landscape of our contemporary world, a space where communication and commerce overlaps. Although it is just an app on mobile phones, it is home to a “gigantic database of images, videos, captions, comments, geolocative tags, location tags… and many more items over time,” but most importantly, it is a collection of personal data.[2] Created in 2010, Instagram began as a photography inspired app, focusing on the communication which photography allows between its users, but soon the app became more than just the photographers’ playground.[3] In 2012, Facebook announced that they signed a US$1 billion deal to buy Instagram, when the app was only eighteen months old. This was also a time when Instagram never had any advertisements going around the app,[4] but that soon changed drastically within a mere few years.
Wendy Chun’s New Media and Habituation
Instagram, just like other social medias, is categorized into what is called “new media,” which is media that uses digital technology. In Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan’s Old Media, New Media, new media is described to be fluid and of individualized connectivity, “a medium to distribute control and freedom,”[5] and especially on Instagram, freedom and control can be seen to work hand in hand. At one end, users are given the freedom to post whatever they wish to post, like, comment, and follow whoever they want, but, at the other end, all of this “freedom” must fit into the societal norms that are set by the authorities and the higher-ups. In simpler terms, users can post anything that is considered non-offensive by a group of people who may have differing moral values as the users, which fundamentally demonstrates societal exclusivity. It is important to note that what is considered to be the norm is a relative subject and that it differs from one culture or tradition to another. Therefore, as users believe that they have the freedom of expression in social media, they are actually being controlled and put into boxes of what is understood to be the norm and the abnormal by the ones in power.
Although new media depends heavily on computerization, it is more than “digital media” — which is the digitalization of different forms of media, like text, video, and photography — in that it is rather an interactive medium, independently distributing information.[6] Logistically speaking, Instagram works like a form of mass communication, by providing its users two forms of engagements: first; the users upload images and videos of their choosing and allow other users to like and comment on their uploads, and second; the users like and comment on the users they choose to follow and engage with. Here, the users can engage with others, the same way that others can engage with them. Essentially, we are letting others see us, but we are also seeing others — a double perception and double vision. But it is much more complicated than just seeing what others are up to and showing the world what we are eating for dinner. In her other book, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, Chun writes that new media are incredibly powerful because they alter the distinctions between “publicity and privacy, gossip and political speech, surveillance and entertainment, intimacy and work, hype and reality.”[7] On Instagram, there are no clear lines on what is real and what is not, distorting the users’ perceptions of themselves as well as others.
With this, Chun brings forth how technology have been interwoven into our daily lives so much so that a body unattached to technology have become an abnormality. There is no longer amazement for having smartphones because everyone has one, and it is almost impossible to separate the human from the machine. In fact, Chun writes about habituation and how humans have become inhabitants of new media, and that through habits of using, new media users have become their machines; “they stream, update, capture, upload, share, grind, link, verify, map, save, trash, and troll.”[8] New media — and in this case social media — have become the habitat in which humans now live in, and in this space, updating is the new form of breathing; “things and people not updating are things and people lost or in distress, for users have become creatures of the update.”[9] Because of this, there is a rise in human perception, as users’ profiles are being perceived by others even when they are asleep, where time and space no longer exist.
One of the driving factors of why humans update so much about their lives on social media is the impression that these platforms provide for them. In Updating to Remain the Same, Chun calls the attention to how new media functions to relentlessly emphasize and personalize you. Everything is about you — the users — in social media; What is on your mind?; What are you up to?; How are you feeling?[10] This encourages users to be even more inclined to update and use Instagram, even though the company lacks to open up with how they use the users’ private information. In this culture of updating, more and more users find the crave for further visibility, which results in humans becoming automated machines that function to expose themselves without much thought and consideration. Finally, Chun writes that; “if users now “curate” their lives, it is because their bodies have become archives.”[11]
Paul Virilio’s The Vision Machine
At the start of his text The Vision Machine, Paul Virilio references Paul Klee: “Now objects perceive me,”[12] and although Klee never really gave an explanation for what he meant, Virilio is drawn to this phrase because it acknowledges the growing objects of technology and their increasing ability to perceive humans the way humans perceive one another. There is an inversion of perception that takes place when this happens, where humans might no longer be the obvious center of perception, but instead, its object. Virilio’s concern of this can be exemplified by the vast technologies of surveillance like security cameras and camera drones, which can record every single movement, despite the time and space. Interestingly, what lies behind these cameras are humans, which results again in a double perception. As humans are being perceived by the machines of surveillance, they are being watched and perceived once again by other humans. This double perception can be identified on Instagram, as before humans perceive one another, they are first perceived by computers and smartphones.
In The Vision Machine, Virilio also writes about the industrialization of vision, which is described to be the replacement of the human faculty of vision by machines and technologies. The surveillance cameras are essentially replacing human vision, but it is also important to note that one pair of eyes are now replaced by a hundred, if not more, which highlights what Virilio means when he writes about the rapid rise of professional simulation. Over two decades ago, Virilio has predicted that the ‘vision machine’, which are “synthetic-perception machines” will be working in certain “ultra high-speed operations for which [our] own visual capacities are inadequate,” also addressing that it is not because the human ocular system has a limited depth of focus, but because of the “depth of time of [our] physiological ‘take’.”[13] More than twenty years later, his prediction comes to life as more machines and technology evolve into becoming more human-like, perceiving us the way others used to, but faster.
This industrialization of vision that Virilio suggests can be seen through Instagram’s analytical services, managed by Facebook. On Instagram, human activities are no longer viewed and analyzed by another pair of human eyes, but instead, machines and computers have replaced them, analyzing each user’s activities which then transform them into an algorithmic pattern of codes for marketing purposes. With machines and technology, human behavior can now be predicted and altered accordingly, personalized to each user and their interests. It is in this particular action that humans are no longer the subject of perception, but instead, the object in which is being perceived by machines into a set of codes, differing from one human to another.
Today, Instagram’s commercial system has grown since their heavy use of advertisements. Virilio writes about the ‘phatic’ advertisement — ‘phatic’ deriving from the Ancient Greek word ‘phatós’, which means ‘spoken’; an anthropological linguistic denoting an expression to instigate or establish some type of social interaction — in which can be seen throughout the social media platform. This ‘phatic’ image grabs our attention and forces us to look without much contemplation. On Instagram, there is nowhere to hide from the ‘phatic’ advertisement, as it is impossible to scroll through the platform without coming across an advertisement that speaks directly to the user. Especially because these advertisements are targeted, they inhibit the ‘phatic’ character that Virilio writes of.
Virilio also highlights how advertisements have come to affect humans more than they realize. Essentially, humans do not actually perceive advertisements, but on the contrary, advertisements perceive humans. Virilio writes: “Behind the wall, I cannot see the poster; in front of the wall, the poster forces itself on me, its image perceives me. This inversion of perception, which is what advertising photography suggests, is now pervasive, extending from roadside hoardings to newspapers and magazine.”[14] Instagram also inherits Facebook’s advertising methods, which is what is mostly known to as targeted advertisements, using Facebook’s demographic data to advertise to a targeted audience, since Facebook already has thorough demographic knowledge. With this, advertisements can be targeted through location, age, gender, language, interests, behaviours, and even through the users’ physical appearances.[15] This method of advertising heightens what Virilio means in ‘phatic’ images, apart from it being the consuming object which perceives humans.
Furthermore, on Instagram, there is a collusion of advertising and surveillance; another double perception where users are being perceived twice as the object of consumption — via targeted advertisement — and the object of observation — via the exposure each user gains through their activities. In the recent past, there were only four main tabs; the timeline where users can see other users’ posts and updates; the explore tab where users can look at other images they do not follow, designed to their interests; the activity tab where users can view their likes, comments, and updates; and their profile tab where users can view their own profiles. As of mid-2020, Instagram has added a new shopping tab, where users can now see specifically curated images of items that they can purchase just by clicking on them. Just like the explore tab, this new shopping tab relies on the users’ algorithm, only showing shopping items that have been personalized by the machines collecting the users’ data.
Undeniably, perception can be played in many ways through Instagram. In addition to the inversion of perception, the idea of double perception can also be seen through different angles in relation to Instagram. As mentioned previously, Instagram allows users to view others while they themselves are being viewed. However, this double perception can also applied in other terms, as users are being perceived twice at the same time; both visually and auditorily. Although Instagram is a very sight-based platform, users are being perceived auditorily without them realizing most of the time. This brings upon the ambiguity of what surveillance truly means, as technology has found more ways to perceive humans more than just through vision. This introduces surveillance discourses that can be extended from this conversation.
Apart from the growth of technology, Virilio also highlights how the proliferation of images have come to change how humans perceive and are perceived, as well as the psychology of visual perception. Virilio writes that the rise of images, or what he considers as mental objects, begins a conversation about its objectivity and reality. In mental objects, Virilio finds it crucial to understand that new technologies of digital imagery and synthetic vision offered by electron optics produce a kind of “relative fusion/confusion of the factual and the virtual; the ascendancy of the ‘reality effect’.”[16] With this, what Virilio is really trying to ask us is: how much of the digital image and synthetic vision is real, and how do we know?
Jean Baudrillard’s Hyperreality
Moving on to Baudrillard, Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality centers around the idea that the reality we believe to be true might not be reality after all. Baudrillard writes that:
“Reality itself founders in hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography. From medium to medium, the real is volatilized, becoming an allegory of death (…) It becomes reality for its own sake, the fetishism of the lost object: no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of denial and of its own ritual extermination: the hyperreal.”[17]
Here, Baudrillard adds that hyperrealism functions through simulation, and since we are living in a realm filled with simulations, “reality itself is hyperrealistic.”[18] Baudrillard highlights the death of reality when it has been reproduced through different mediums, and in this case, the medium is Instagram. However, one must note that Baudrillard’s theory can be applied to the aspect of the image that is produced through Instagram, as opposed to the machine itself.
In this hyperrealistic world, everything is a simulacrum, which is a representation or a copy of the real. The concern that Baudrillard tries to address is that the thin line distinguishing what is real and what is not is very much blurred — a result of the media — that nobody knows where actual reality begins and ends. In a way, Instagram can be seen as a medium which transforms a real person into a simulacrum, in which the individual’s profile is a representation of their actual self. Additionally, this changes the way individuals interpret themselves, as well as others’ identities. As Instagram becomes a hyperreality, it also becomes difficult to separate one’s online identity to their offline identity. Individuals become machines which curate their lives depending on how they would like to appear. Essentially, the simulacrum of one’s identity of Instagram might not reflect their true self, and eventually, this true self might slowly disappear and become non-existent as only the representation of one’s identity comes to matter.
On Instagram, users have the option to upload something that resembles reality, or something that has no relationship with reality. If a user decides to post a picture of an object that is a direct reflection of the reality, then this image is categorized to what Baudrillard writes to be a “reflection of a profound reality.” However, when the user adds on a filter to the image, it “masks and denatures a profound reality,” and when features of the photograph is edited, such as its brightness and temperature, the image does no longer reflect reality, and it essentially “masks the absence of a profound reality.” Finally, when the image has lost the connection to reality, it is when it is “its own pure simulacrum.”[19] This happens when the image no longer needs reality to make sense, and when it produces its own reality; the hyperreality. With the ambivalence of images on Instagram, it is almost impossible to distinguish between real reflections and the simulacra.
But this process does not only apply to objects, but humans too. When one posts or updates their profile on the platform, it is easy for them to not display their real self. Reversely, when one engages by liking and commenting others’ posts, the individual will perceive them not as who they really are, but who they are represented as — the simulacrum of their real identity. Besides this, with the emergence of filters that is capable of altering one’s appearance, the farther the simulacrum gets from the real, and the more reality is out of reach. Ultimately, in the world of social media, and Instagram in particular, everything is a combination of signs and symbols that delineate the user from the real world, submerging them into a world of the hyperreal, where humans no longer exist and only their simulacrum remain. Baudrillard writes that “reality itself is hyperrealistic,” signaling the close proximity of reality and artificial reality. Just as Virilio emphasizes on the replacement of bodies with machines, Baudrillard’s writings highlight how real bodily identities are replaced by artificial ones in social platforms.
Both Virilio and Baudrillard’s writings can be clearly seen through the recently booming world of social media, even though both texts were written decades ago. Right now, we are living in the peak of social media, where everything is being documented and publicized online. In Baudrillard’s influential 1981 book Simulation and Simulacra, he writes that “everywhere socialization is measured by the exposure to media messages,”[20] just like Chun’s argument that “to be is to be updated,”[21] Baudrillard is similarly predicting that whoever is under-exposed to the media is de-socialized or virtually asocial. As a result, humans are now stuck in a cycle where they are updating their artificial lives on Instagram to prove their faux authenticity.
Given the points made above regarding Instagram and its relations with Chun, Virilio, and Baudrillard, it is still important to note that often times the growth of vision machines and advertisements are parallel and correlated with the ever-expansion of capitalism. Some vision machines work in accordance with markets and business. This opens up more discussions about the role that capitalism plays in how social media platforms like Instagram work. Nevertheless, it is also significant to understand that although social media platforms like Instagram may be beneficial in making connections, spreading awareness, and building careers; all of these benefits can be achieved only with the expense of an absent reality.
NOTES:
[1] Kenneth Gregen, Relational Being (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 400.
[2] Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 20.
[3] Ibid., 21
[4] Ibid., 22
[5] Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan, Old Media, New Media (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016), IX.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 2.
[10] Ibid., 3.
[11] Ibid., XI.
[12] Paul Virilio, “The Vision Machine,” In The Vision Machine, trans. Julie Rose (Bloomington: British Film Institute & Indiana University Press, 1994), 59.
[13] Ibid., 61.
[14] Ibid., 62.
[15] Rebecca Jennings, “Why Targeted Ads are the Most Brutal Owns,” Vox, September 25, 2018. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/25/17887796/facebook-ad-targeted-algorithm
[16] Ibid., 60.
[17] Jean Baudrillard, “The Hyper-realism of Simulation (1976),” in Art in Theory 1900–2000 ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Woods (Blackwell, 2003), 1018.
[18] Ibid., 1019.
[19] Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Michigan: The University of Michigan, 1994), 6.
[20] Ibid., 80.
[21] Chun, Updating to Remain the Same, 2.
