How the desire to gain social capital on Instagram makes people twist the reality
Thesedays, Instagram is definitely one of the most influential social media platform. What is more, some say its reigning in social media kingdom is just around the corner. Easy to believe. Even a person like me who is constantly trying to keep a distance and not to be defeated by the temptation of all the shiny new features of this app can see what makes it so irresistible. There comes a confession now. Yes, I still belong among the people who check their Instagram feed right before they go asleep and right after they wake up. Always. (Did I just manage to look as a hypocrite already in a first paragraph?)
With all this said, I think I am still succesful in avoiding posting a perfect looking shots wonderfully edited in VSCO. Because that's what scares me most about Instagram — the way people are able to create their own new reality based only on how they wish to look like in public. The show off. Where does this come from?
There has to be a way to explain this phenomena. Yes, there has to be but I definitely don't feel that brave to try to give you a deep explanation. I will only try to tell you my opinion with a little help from Pierre Bordieu and other similarly clever men. They are the ones out there who can make explanations and definitions.
But firstly, let's look how this “twisting a reality” actually comes alive.
It's all about filters
Even people who never ever used Instagram (where are they hiding? Can someone show them to me?) probably know that it's about images, photos. It's visual. Knowing that, it's not difficult to guess that everyone using Instagram cares about how their pictures look like. And there comes the most important thing to bear in mind when speaking about twisting a reality on Instagram. You can express that in one magic word: filters.
Last year, famous travel bloggers Lauren Bullen and Jack Morris drastically changed their Instagram strategy. They started to post every one of their photos in an edited AND unedited version together. Many people, therefore, found out what is this popularity all about and what it takes to get more followers than just your few friends from university.
People are seeking for beautifully coloured photos with content they would also like to experience. In other words, you have to make them envy you.
Different angle, different judgement
However, the trick is not only in the colours of your photo. It is also about how you take it. What composition are you going to choose? Are you going to include in the photo of your breakfast also the mess around that you did while making it? How are you going to pose or smile? Are you going to take a selfie right after you wake up or with your make-up routine already done?
In this article, you can see how easily this can be applied to health and beauty instagramers. The way you pose and take a photo of yourself can make a big difference. Of course, all the influencers want to look thin and sexy. That is what mass culture and mass media teach us, the audience, to like and prefer. Luckily, there has been raising public discussion destroying this idea of only one version of (mostly female) beautiness.
But it doesn't only apply to “body”, in this article they tried to gather romantic travel photos from Instagram and compare them to photos from the same destinations with real everyday traffic of tourists. It doesn't matter that other 20 people are staying in a row behind you waiting to take the same photo of the same magnificent cliff, the only thing that counts is that your followers will think you were there alone and enjoyed romantic evening thinking about your sweet life and drinking a glass of red wine, right?
A little theoretical party never killed nobody
Ok, let's ask the same question like in the beginning. Where does this come from? What is driving us to be behaving this way? I think we can use the theory of social capital to describe this kind of “phenomena”. Every person who wants to be successful and popular on social media platform like Instagram tries really hard to get more people on board, to get more people like him/her. Speaking in terms of Instagram, they are trying to get more likes, more follows, more buzz. We want to get to know more people and make them stay around in order to create our community bigger and bigger and bigger (yes, it never stops). And that is what we could call a social capital.
Bourdieu is telling us that social capital is all about building relationships and trust. Resnick adds that it has also something to do with shared values, norms and knowledge. On Instagram, the influencers and their audience share exactly the same norms of perceiving and judging things. Otherwise it wouldn't be possible to build relationships and communities.
On daily basis, we are working on strengthening all of these mentioned social factors because they will eventually provide us with popularity and success. The feeling that we are wanted.
