Examining my digital place making practices
The Schwartz & Halegoua reading was particularly interesting as it articulated what I believe a lot of us who have grown up in the digital generation have a very readily accessible subconscious understanding of. Namely, the way that the “spatial self” is curated. The concept of the spatial self being performed either synchronously or asynchronously was particularly interesting especially when examined in conjunction with my own social media habits.
When examining synchronous self performance, it’s interesting to think about the fact that Snapchat was arguably the first SNS to thoroughly define for Gen Z how one creates synchronous identity performances in space. Limiting a “story” to a 24 hour period ensured that any aspect of the spatial self showcased on snapchat was truly in the moment, nothing in a “story” could be considered an artifact. I rarely use any of the 24 hour story features available to me on the various SNS I frequent because generally speaking, I never got in the habit of documenting my social/travel experiences on a day to day basis. That said, I am extremely guilty (is guilty the right word?) of defining my spatial self through the asynchronous performance of self in relation to social media. I have attached below screenshots from my instagram where a quick glance with reveal an almost immediate pattern.
These photos represent 5 of my 10 most recent instagram posts. Of those ten, 8 have location geotags. Looking at the dates, I have only posted 10 times in the last 3 years but in each instance, my posts are almost exclusively artifacts of travel.
I don’t consider myself social media averse but I certainly only post things that I would consider “particularly interesting”. Notably, however, the performance of self presented by my social media completely avoids my actual self because the qualifier “particularly interest” is asked of my follower base, not of me. My spatial self is almost entirely fabricated. No photos exist in the last 3 years of my hometown, only 1 of me actually in Illinois, and very few feature unposed shots of a genuine “behind closed doors” self. The spatial self presented is one of a perpetual traveler, although with only 10 posts in the last 3 years, even the traveler persona is underdeveloped. Despite exclusive operating on social media when locative media is in play, even that is rarely utilized as a result of the underdeveloped traveler persona.
The difference between synchronous and asynchronous had never particularly occurred to me prior to doing the reading but upon reflection, I found the patterns of asynchronous performance of self in my instagram impossible to ignore. I would be very interested, as we discuss further, to examine the social media feeds off our classmates and see what other patterns regarding the spatial self begin to emerge.
