Whatsup Bloggers?
So I had an epiphany. An Instagram epiphany. An Instiphany, if you will.
YES we use visual media as a way of constructing ourselves, as a way of constructing a representation of ourselves, in the minds of our "perceivers". But what if our photos are saying something we don't want them to say?
Today, I was looking through my sister's Instagram, and through my best friend's Instagram, two people that I have known pretty much my whole life. And I realised that this is something which we haven't really touched on in group research. I realised this limitation.
My best friend was posting pictures of her trip to Hawaii earlier this year, and a lot of the photos were the very abstract-deep-and-meaningful-picture-of-a-cocktail-by-the-Waikiki-surf kind of thing. I know why she was posting those photos, because they were a representation of her deepest passion: to travel. Preferably to places that have a little ocean :P. But the comments that followed didn't mimick her intentions... in particular, a photo of her in a glamorous rooftop hotel pool had people tagging her as "rich rich b*tch" and "If only my dad could afford to send me to those places".... All meant as jokes, of course, but not the image she wanted to portray.
It's all well and good to want to communicate your own, constructed self-identity over the web. But the limitation of visual media is a lack of words. A lack of explanation. Isn't that crucial to constructing an image?
What if we're all just getting the wrong idea?
xx Nicola
xx Nicola
