Portfolio Assignment #6
From this week’s articles and media on promotional culture and digital media, I am reassured that promotional culture prevails on digital media in this day and age because the public focus has been shifted from traditional media to digital media. People usually watch the advertisement online instead of randomly read in a printed newspaper. However, digital media is accessible to everyone. In other words, it does not have to be companies, press, advertisers in order to launch the promotion. Everyone can brand their own image and promote themselves on their own social media account with a much lower cost than that of launching TV commercials. This is the reason why there are so many influencers online. Companies start hiring them to promote their own products other than those superstars. Meanwhile, they lead the trend of sharing and polishing their daily life routine because it is not difficult to just take good photos, do some photoshop and post some fancy captions on social media. Eventually, we are now more inauthentic than ever so the idea of authenticity becomes even more valuable.
Speaking of my own experiences, I personally believe that promotional culture is increasingly universalized because sometimes I didn’t post out of authentic joy but rather telling my friends I got new stuff, I ate good food, and I went to new places. Some of my friends even arrange a posting schedule for their social media so they may be still posting photos taken on the trip months ago. It is all about telling people that we are living a good life and we are so excited. On the other side, it is so rare to see people sharing pessimistic and negative feeds on social media. Even if there are some, they must be the minority. Authenticity is supposed to be the key element of a relationship but nowadays things are getting too inauthentic online. I would say what people are representing on digital media are just their ideal image. It is of the essence to know the true self through face-to-face conversations and interactions.
