Key Terms and Main Ideas

1. Digital self-representation is a cumulative reflection
2. Digital self-representation is influenced by cultural filters
3. Artists are generally the first to create art and tools that respond to and reflect the current culture
4. Gender and race, specifically sexism and racism, affect general reception of personal digital content.
5. -Break while I watched a few pregnancy time lapse videos and cry-
6. Profile photos are a central part of self-representation in social media
7. Art styles, such as Surrealism, take advantage of modern technology as a new media with which to create meaningful art
8. Abundance of selfies and digital self-representation may be an unconscious attempt for one to truly see themselves reflected.
9. People take on different roles to digitally present as in order to find the one most appealing or fitting.

Summary:

When viewed as a whole, digital self-representation is a cumulative reflection of a person finding their identity and the identity they present to the world. As Jill Walker Rettburg explores in the third chapter of her book Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves, the magnitude of digital self-representation coming from a digital search for the self spans from the most serious artists to a teenager casually taking photos. Indeed, these are the people who generally first begin to reflect changes in culture, whether this be from technology used to the cultural trends and filters followed. Responses to digital self-representation, especially the polarizing responses of support versus disdain and criticism, join to the chain of cultural reflection, and serve to further cultural filters. Long term cultural filters such as preferences and styles are shown through digital self-representation, such as surrealism. Everything, from the criticism to the art, is an abundance of attempts for those online to find a true reflection of themselves. 

Commentary

In the middle of reading the chapter, curiosity overtook me about the mentioned ‘pregnancy time-lapse’ videos, and I took to Youtube to watch one. One was about all I could take. Change is so hard and so beautiful! Even simply reading about the time lapse of the girl who stopped smiling was hard, perhaps because it was a little to real and close to home. I reminded myself that, as Jill Walker Rettburg has been saying, digital self-representation is only one part of the whole of a person’s true identity. A sad photo and a mention of depression does not necessarily mean the never-ending doom that my mind instantly went to. I should know this, as a person with depression whom only this morning was giggling gleefully in the middle of a Natural Grocers about a new ayurvedic toothpaste I was buying. I believe that a large part of digital self-representation is trying to find yourself in the reaction of others. I see it when personal accounts post stories with dark screens and small white text filled with angsty messages of woe. I see it in the “guess how much I like you” polls on Instagram I have so much disdain for. I see it in captions that try to find pity in the comments, or rage, or any form of attention. If the responses of other people did not matter to us, we would not use social media. It is not a necessarily weakness that we care about the thoughts of others as we do, rather, I believe it is a complex thing with many different sides, like everything. Through comments of all sorts of fondness and storms of selfies, we must maintain our empathy and our respect towards our humanity.