Recently a friend of mine posted on tumblr about the degraded state of the creative identity. On social media, persona and ego become the art. I agree that ‘creative’ is essentially meaningless as a self-descriptor and even worse at pointing at a group of people with much in common. But does this mean that we should dismiss the practice of online identity-building? Aren’t all forms of self-expression performative?
To me, everything in the social realm is of dubious authenticity. Social media is simply an extension of self-presentation, just intensified and made permanent. In dress and speech, everybody curates their presentation in relation to the culture around them. In the same way, people design their presence online according to their sub/cultural surroundings. To compare this to traditional art-making would be a categorical error. The instagram page is not a runway collection, it’s an outfit - comprised of many components created or stolen, over a day or 10 years.
When people older than me say that social media isn’t ‘real life’, it strikes me as misguided. No image, no garment, no haircut can be a holistic representation of one’s true selves or lack thereof. Social media identities are merely storefronts of the self-image, advertisements. When I am judging a person’s instagram, I do not presume that everything they post constitutes the whole of their being. I am judging their choice of presentation, the same way I would an ugly hat or turn of phrase.