Earlier this week, I read a remark on Twitter about how long it seems to be taking for the post-election Tory-DUP voting arrangement to be agreed. The poster mused that if we were in the same situation with a proposed deal between Labour and the SNP dragging on and on – leaving the country effectively without a stable government in the meantime – the press would be all over it! I think he's right, and I think the Tories are being given far more leeway on this matter than Labour would be afforded in similar circumstances.
But the implied conclusion – that our media (and our society) harbours an inherent bias towards the Conservatives – doesn't really hold water, for me. What we are seeing here is not an intentional skewing of the playing field, or weighting of the dice, but simply the potency of our own preconceptions.
Reputations are powerful things. The general perception of the Tories is that they are competent and efficient governors, and utterly heartless bastards. You have only to look at the reactions to the Conservative Party manifesto last month to see how this impacts on reporting; by and large, they get away with including no costing details for their policies at all, because it is assumed that they're Tories so they know what they're doing with money – whilst they get hammered in the press for even the slightest hint of heartlessness and bastardness, like the so-called 'dementia tax' (the intentions of which were actually rather more noble than you think – to reduce intergenerational inequality).
On the other side of the coin, Labour have so much farther to go to prove themselves fiscally responsible, thanks to an ingrained reputation for profligacy (which, it can be argued, has not always been entirely deserved). And yet, Labour politicians can get away with some things their Conservative counterparts could never hope to…
I am constantly baffled, for example, how the odious Labour MP John McDonnell has managed to remain in the senior job of Shadow Chancellor for as long as he has. McDonnell is a thug and a bully who not only makes excuses for violence and rioting, but actively praises and encourages it. He is to the left what Tommy Robinson is to the right – and I know beyond doubt that he would not be able to stay in such a high-ranking position within the party if he were Conservative, rather than a Labour MP.
But McDonnell is Labour. They're the nice ones, right? Not great with money, maybe – but they mean well, and at least they care about people… So his inflammatory rhetoric and his incitements to violence – his descriptions of recent riots in London as 'the best of our movement' – are given a pass, when they surely would not be if they came from a right-winger.
McDonnell's recent calls for a 'Day Of Rage' and for 'a million people on the streets' to force out the government are dog whistles to violence and insurrection; the term 'Day Of Rage' is even borrowed from his boss Jeremy Corbyn's 'friends' in Hamas.
Controversial right-wing broadcaster Katie Hopkins (deservedly) lost her job at LBC radio after tweeting about jihadist terrorism using the phrase 'final solution' – an expression synonymous with the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But Labour's Shadow Chancellor can employ the vernacular of an organisation designated on the EU's terrorism blacklist – whose constitution, until earlier this year, explicitly called for jihad and the killing of jews – and not even be asked to apologise.
McDonnell's 'joke' about Esther McVey – 'Why aren't we lynching the bitch?' – during a former election campaign, for which he refused to apologise, was condemned by prominent members of his own party as 'atrocious' 'misogynistic' 'vitriol'. This alone would've been enough to see a Tory MP forced to resign his position; the Shadow Chancellor escapes with barely a scratch, yet again.
By any reasonable assessment, John McDonnell is a truly nasty piece of work. The fact that he is still allowed to retain a high-profile shadow cabinet job – even after all his incitements to rioting and 'lynching', and using the language of terrorists – is testament to the strength of people's perceptions of Labour politicians – even when they get things wrong – as fundamentally good, well-intentioned, kind-hearted people. And that's how he gets away with it.
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Friday, 23 June 2017
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Instagram lies
You may have read recently about Essena O'Neill, the teenage blogger and Instagram star from Australia who is 'quitting social media' because it is 'fake' and 'staged' – and it therefore isn't making her happy any more. I don't want to pour scorn on someone else's life choices – if she isn't happy, of course she should make a change, and do what feels right for her. But I struggle to understand why this is being held up as so laudable, and so (in O'Neill's own words, from her new website) 'game-changing'.
I know that a lot of people see social media as some sort of hall of mirrors, distorting the truth of what is really there. Social media is shallow; it's vacuous; it's illusory; it's fake. On Essena O'Neill's new 'Let's Be Game Changers' website she says:
It's a view of social media – and the Instagram photo sharing platform in particular – which a lot of people share. Instagram allows people to showcase carefully curated snippets of their day – cleaned up, edited and polished to perfection – to a potentially vast audience, presenting an unrealistically buffed and manicured image of 'the perfect life', which hides or glosses over any stress or untidiness or other imperfections.
The most popular Instagram accounts present picture after picture of gorgeous home décor, delicious healthy food (brunches with avocados and salads, in particular), impeccably-decorated low-fat skinny lattes, travel to exotic places with glorious views and breathtaking sunsets, and beautiful slender people whose smiles radiate the happiness of people who live perfect, hassle-free lives. In short, they are lies.
Those 'perfect' Instagram users have 'bad hair days' sometimes. They stuff themselves with greasy comfort food instead of beautifully-presented quinoa salads on pure white plates. They leave the washing up dirty, and the work-surfaces in their light, spacious, modern kitchens messy. And their gorgeous 'selfies' took fifty attempts to get right, and were edited in six different apps before being posted. It's just that you don't see any of that, because they don't choose to show it to you – they only show you the good stuff.
This is the 'dishonesty' of social media. Or, to put it another way, this is photography.
My view is that Instagram has always been a photography app first and foremost. And unless you're making a documentary in a war zone, or something, photography isn't about depicting the absolute truth, warts-and-all. It's about creating appealing images; beautiful images; striking images; shocking images; images which tell a story. People look down their noses at an Instagram photo, and sneer 'oh, but it's been edited…'
Yes. Editing is a part of photography. Photographers have been processing and altering their shots after the fact since well before Instagram was conceived – before digital photography at all, even. It's no coincidence that much of the terminology of industry standard photo editing software Adobe Photoshop (all that 'dodging', and 'burning', and so on) comes straight from the era of film photography and the darkroom processing techniques Photoshop's workflow attempts to recreate. Even something as simple as a basic crop can alter a photo dramatically – removing unwanted objects from the image, and changing the composition of the photo in the process. The crop has been a staple tool of photographers for decades – but if you've cropped something out of your Instagram shot, people will deride you for it.
Photography is a visual art. What's wrong with simply wanting something to look aesthetically pleasing? What's wrong with wanting something to look more aesthetically pleasing than it did in real life? If you can improve on something, why wouldn't you? The colours that Vincent Van Gogh saw with his eyes were not as vivid as many of the scenes he painted – but how many people would honestly choose a dreary 'true to life' version to hang on their wall over the striking and colourful Van Gogh interpretation?
Post-processing in photography long predates Instagram, and is an essential part of creating photographic art. Photography forums are full of people smugly posting pictures that are 'SOOC' ('straight out of camera' – ie. with no editing), who succeed in proving only that they neither understand cameras (especially modern digital cameras) nor art itself. If you're into photography, and you've just looked through the viewfinder and pressed the shutter release, and then left it at that, you've only done half the job.
But someone's Instagram account is documenting their life! It's not an art gallery. It's supposed to be a window into someone's world – isn't it rather deceitful if the world you see is totally fake?
Well no, not really. No one ever lets you see all their flaws. After all, why should they? People have the right to choose how they want to be seen by others – to have control over the image of themselves they present to the rest of the world. We all do it… With the clothes we choose to wear; how we choose to have our hair; through the way we speak and the food we eat and the cars we drive.
I dress the way that I do, for example, because I want to. But also because I am happy with what my clothes say about me as a person to a casual observer. It all ties into me being comfortable with who I am.
Tattoos, facial hair, jewellery, make-up, technology, footwear, interior design, diet, culture, entertainment, leisure… All these things are choices we make with at least half an eye on how that might affect the way other people will see us. We all choose to present a certain 'version' of ourselves in public; we all want to have a certain amount of control over how we are perceived by other people. That's only natural.
Choosing not to share some parts of your life doesn't make you a fraud. Wanting people to see you in a positive light, and to think well of you, doesn't make you duplicitous or underhand. It's not 'cheating' to try and present the best version of you that you can, or to have a particular aesthetic which you feel is very 'you'. We all have a certain side of ourselves, or certain aspects of our lives, which we'd prefer not to share with everybody – that's not shameful, that's perfectly natural.
I respect Essena O'Neill's decision to change the way she uses social media. I hope she feels better about herself now than she did. But if other people want to continue posting carefully edited shots to their Instagram accounts – either because they are keen photographers trying to create a piece of art which speaks for itself rather than a stark and unaltered realist photograph simply documenting a moment in time, or because they want to present a particular image of themselves to the world – then we shouldn't be trying to make them feel bad for that choice either.
 |
| One of many (now deleted) Essena O'Neill Instagram 'selfies'. |
I know that a lot of people see social media as some sort of hall of mirrors, distorting the truth of what is really there. Social media is shallow; it's vacuous; it's illusory; it's fake. On Essena O'Neill's new 'Let's Be Game Changers' website she says:
I found myself drowning in the illusion. Social media isn't real. It's purely contrived mages and edited clips ranked against each other. It's a system based on social approval, likes and dislikes, validation in views, success in followers... it's perfectly orchestrated judgement. And it consumed me.
It's a view of social media – and the Instagram photo sharing platform in particular – which a lot of people share. Instagram allows people to showcase carefully curated snippets of their day – cleaned up, edited and polished to perfection – to a potentially vast audience, presenting an unrealistically buffed and manicured image of 'the perfect life', which hides or glosses over any stress or untidiness or other imperfections.
The most popular Instagram accounts present picture after picture of gorgeous home décor, delicious healthy food (brunches with avocados and salads, in particular), impeccably-decorated low-fat skinny lattes, travel to exotic places with glorious views and breathtaking sunsets, and beautiful slender people whose smiles radiate the happiness of people who live perfect, hassle-free lives. In short, they are lies.
Those 'perfect' Instagram users have 'bad hair days' sometimes. They stuff themselves with greasy comfort food instead of beautifully-presented quinoa salads on pure white plates. They leave the washing up dirty, and the work-surfaces in their light, spacious, modern kitchens messy. And their gorgeous 'selfies' took fifty attempts to get right, and were edited in six different apps before being posted. It's just that you don't see any of that, because they don't choose to show it to you – they only show you the good stuff.
This is the 'dishonesty' of social media. Or, to put it another way, this is photography.
My view is that Instagram has always been a photography app first and foremost. And unless you're making a documentary in a war zone, or something, photography isn't about depicting the absolute truth, warts-and-all. It's about creating appealing images; beautiful images; striking images; shocking images; images which tell a story. People look down their noses at an Instagram photo, and sneer 'oh, but it's been edited…'
Yes. Editing is a part of photography. Photographers have been processing and altering their shots after the fact since well before Instagram was conceived – before digital photography at all, even. It's no coincidence that much of the terminology of industry standard photo editing software Adobe Photoshop (all that 'dodging', and 'burning', and so on) comes straight from the era of film photography and the darkroom processing techniques Photoshop's workflow attempts to recreate. Even something as simple as a basic crop can alter a photo dramatically – removing unwanted objects from the image, and changing the composition of the photo in the process. The crop has been a staple tool of photographers for decades – but if you've cropped something out of your Instagram shot, people will deride you for it.
“Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.” – Ansel Adams
Photography is a visual art. What's wrong with simply wanting something to look aesthetically pleasing? What's wrong with wanting something to look more aesthetically pleasing than it did in real life? If you can improve on something, why wouldn't you? The colours that Vincent Van Gogh saw with his eyes were not as vivid as many of the scenes he painted – but how many people would honestly choose a dreary 'true to life' version to hang on their wall over the striking and colourful Van Gogh interpretation?
 |
| A Wheat Field, With Cypresses (1889) – Vincent Van Gogh |
But someone's Instagram account is documenting their life! It's not an art gallery. It's supposed to be a window into someone's world – isn't it rather deceitful if the world you see is totally fake?
Well no, not really. No one ever lets you see all their flaws. After all, why should they? People have the right to choose how they want to be seen by others – to have control over the image of themselves they present to the rest of the world. We all do it… With the clothes we choose to wear; how we choose to have our hair; through the way we speak and the food we eat and the cars we drive.
I dress the way that I do, for example, because I want to. But also because I am happy with what my clothes say about me as a person to a casual observer. It all ties into me being comfortable with who I am.
Tattoos, facial hair, jewellery, make-up, technology, footwear, interior design, diet, culture, entertainment, leisure… All these things are choices we make with at least half an eye on how that might affect the way other people will see us. We all choose to present a certain 'version' of ourselves in public; we all want to have a certain amount of control over how we are perceived by other people. That's only natural.
Choosing not to share some parts of your life doesn't make you a fraud. Wanting people to see you in a positive light, and to think well of you, doesn't make you duplicitous or underhand. It's not 'cheating' to try and present the best version of you that you can, or to have a particular aesthetic which you feel is very 'you'. We all have a certain side of ourselves, or certain aspects of our lives, which we'd prefer not to share with everybody – that's not shameful, that's perfectly natural.
I respect Essena O'Neill's decision to change the way she uses social media. I hope she feels better about herself now than she did. But if other people want to continue posting carefully edited shots to their Instagram accounts – either because they are keen photographers trying to create a piece of art which speaks for itself rather than a stark and unaltered realist photograph simply documenting a moment in time, or because they want to present a particular image of themselves to the world – then we shouldn't be trying to make them feel bad for that choice either.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)