Many if not most millennials, those born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, have grown up with an online presence. But this demographic group has also been called ‘Generation Selfie’, a derogatory reference to its apparent obsession with its own image. With the selfies taken in a single day generating more data for storage than all the world’s books, there are concerns that sharing photos of ourselves and our lives on social media is excessively vain and attention-seeking. Some believe that it is causing serious psychological problems, including acute feelings of inadequacy, isolation and envy.
A SELF PORTRAIT
On the other hand, narcissism is nothing new and creative genius has often been linked to it. Look at how many self-portraits there are! From this perspective, the virtual world not only offers a wider pool of influence and information, but it actually enhances our individuality, encouraging freedom of expression. Tim Dowling is an American journalist who was born in the 1960s. The author of a blog-style weekly column in the Guardian about his life with his family in London, he talks about the differences between our real self and our online self.
Tim Dowling (American accent): Self-obsession, self-interest were around long before the selfie. There’s a couple of reasons that artists do a lot of self portraits: the pitiless introspection that it requires to look at yourself and be honest is something that’s very hard to do with someone else. What’s changed, I think, in light of the digital age: your online self is not the same as your self. The social consequences of being self-absorbed aren’t there anymore, which means that any of the rewards that narcissism might bring maybe are also removed because the risks aren’t there. This division of something as fragile as self into a real-life self and an online self, especially if you’ve got self-esteem issues... One of those things could run away and you’re left with nothing except this weird online self that you’ve created and have to maintain.
BUSINESS OR PLEASURE?
One person who does not appear to have self-esteem issues is Doll Cat Pvssy, a London-based influencer and feminist sex writer in her twenties, with over 71,000 followers on Twitter. On her blog, Doll Cat offers candid advice on love, lust and lifestyle issues based on her own apparent experience. Yet Doll Cat draws a line between her real and her online self, as she explains:
Doll Cat Pvssy (London accent): For me personally it’s a business platform. So it’s very, very separate to my real life. I definitely wouldn’t compose a status or anything without thinking about it a few times, and what can be quite dangerous about it is so many people thinking they know me. And I’m very, very careful with not really putting anything too personal out there. And, I think in that sense social media can be dangerous because there are lots of people who don’t like to talk about goings-on in their lives and you’re almost expected to have an alert if something is wrong. You’re not looking out for people anymore. And you stop thinking so much about them, because you’re expecting them to dish everything out for you.
CRITICS AND MORALISTS
Doll Cat’s comments raise questions about the authenticity of our digital selves and the impact that online communication is having on our relationships, including whether what we expect of ourselves is the same as what we expect of others. Dowling responds to some of these issues, suggesting that the anonymity of an online persona can help but also harm us:
Tim Dowling: I think it’s quite lonely this search for self on the internet, and that’s why it’s led to a lot of attention-seeking. I think there’s plenty of opportunity for people to grow in an atmosphere that actually has very little rejection in it compared to real life. But it’s also turned the rest of us into critics and moralists; we spend our time criticising people we see, taking the piss out of their pictures or their lives, which I think is horrible. One of the things we should also worry about is that I think we’re being played. The platforms that give rise to this sort of thing, Facebook, Twitter ... They’re basically video games. You get rewarded for drawing attention to yourself, and they also drive a self-loathing that isn’t healthy but it keeps us going.
TOXIC MIX
Simon Blackburn is a retired professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He describes how a toxic mix of insecurity, anonymity and attention-seeking in the virtual world can have very real consequences:
Simon Blackburn (English accent): People often talk about silos: you get into a little group on the web and then you can believe that everybody thinks the way you do. So if you’re anti-Semitic or something, you suddenly have a community of anti-Semites who like you and so on, whereas hitherto you’d find it very difficult not to be thrown out of the pub. It is, I think, partly responsible for the rise of populist politics; barely human people that suddenly get a lot of likes and feel important. Their supporters grow from being a dozen to hundreds, and thousands, and then suddenly the press take it up and you’ve got a new Prime Minister. It’s very, very dangerous.
GET REAL!
Doll Cat Pvssy is convinced that there are influencers out there with a moral code. While it is possible to be beguiled by praise, she says, many choose to think critically and stand up for their own individuality:
Doll Cat Pvssy: It’s very easy to see all the lovely things that like-minded people post on Facebook and it’s very easy to forget that there’s [are] people with opposing opinions. And I do think people should challenge and look for opposing opinions. [But] I think that it helps you reflect on yourself. Now, people are much more creative with themselves and how they dress, just how they express themselves. And I think trying to be different is better than not trying to be different.