Erratic Behavior Induced by Social Media
“Ordinary and legitimate human desires — to be known, to make sound moral judgements, to take meaningful action — get weirdly distorted as they are abstracted into the realm of digitized relations.” — LM Sacasas
Influencers in the Wild is an Instagram account capturing moments featuring people performing for social media in everyday places, often in awkward fashion. In a recent post, a young influencer was captured dancing at the Edge observation deck in Hudson Yards. They can be seen delivering highly choreographed moves as if they were dancing to music. The music, however, is not there, it is added later in postproduction. The audience they dance for is also not there, it is somewhere in the Internet. You could call it a ‘decontextualized’ performance, where the context driving the dancing are both the audience and the music.
People Dancing to No Music
In the video, the performer’s behavior obeys a hybrid context composed by elements of her immediate context (the observation platform and stunning New York City backdrop), mediated aspects (virtual audience), and elements happening in mind (the music being danced to). The logic of the behavior is reward by online engagement.
In the year 2021, decontextualized performance may not be as shocking anymore. Induced by mass social media, the sight has become commonplace. Performance for an audience not present, remote and faceless. Deploying behavior for the sake of cultivating an online following, instead of doing it for the sake of the self in relation to the present moment and people in presence. It’s cringey. When people pretend and can’t pull it of, that’s cringe.
✰ ⇢ Feel / Surprise, Shock, Cringe
With social media in the style of TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter we are increasing our involvement with the remote, the faraway, and the foreign. An involvement that comes at the expense of our real immediate situation, the neighborly-communal, the here-and-now.
✎ Connection to
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