freedom of instaspeech

From looking at my Instagram feed, one would probably be skeptical that my summer was not an all day roller-skating, sparkler waving, and beach/concert/airport festival. In fact, some may even say that the photos posted on my account depict me as a personable, perhaps even interesting person. Contrary to instabelief, I spent most of the summer in the solitary of my bedroom, wrapped up in the comforts of my duvet and social media. A lot, (and I do mean a lot) of this time was consumed by scrolling through my own photos, editing, re-editing, spell checking, and a-z lyrics-ing every caption of every photo. Given the average view time of each picture, which for me is about three seconds, one really has to consider the potency, relevance, and wit used to summarize or comment on the picture at hand. I can distinctly remember wearing a specific shade of lipstick to a concert this summer just so I would be able to draw reference to the “Pink Lemonade” lyric I would later be making in my picture’s description. This concept of the quick thumbed, hashtag obsessed, bed-ridden teenager is what brings parents and politicians alike to call out the hypocrisy of “social” media, and leads to the question, has our focus on technology been taken too far? Or rather, have we brought technology too close?

It can be argued that though information is more easily accessible than ever before, what we have to say has lost its potency. When every person and their two Siamese cats have a blog, a snapchat, a facebook, an instagram, and a twitter, it seems that there is just too much information to be processed. You can only care so much about so many people’s constantly updated platforms. Regardless of attention span and phone storage space, our culture continues to progress with these new aspects of life in mind. As we progress, and cultural determinism marches forward, we have to acknowledge the evolution of our language. Communication has become our most minimal, but effective tool in defining the generation. Our words must be intriguing, meaningful, and most importantly, minimal. If the world gives me only three seconds and an instagram caption to prove myself, I have to use the 2200 characters carefully.

Works Cited

N/A, Lari. “A PhD in the Art of Instagram Captions.” Home. FlockU, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.

Winston, Brian. “How Are Media Born?” Http://www.eserver.org. Ed. Mohammedi Downing. Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction., 1990. Web.

https://flocku.com/articles/a-phd-in-the-art-of-instagram-captions