(Here’s something I wrote recently, but have cut out from the piece….) Our Digital Self is a product not a person (Solon, 2011). Technological advances in media production over the past 20 years mean that everyone has become a marketing manager, a photographer, a filmmaker, a star, a brand. We have evolved from the postmodern consumer (Fromm, 2013) into the product to be consumed. We photograph our lives as social media marketing content to sell our brand. We even have our own AI photographic retoucher in our pocket- our phones automatically impose a skin smoothing filter on each selfie we take (Madrigal, 2018). We have become so used to seeing filtered versions of our Digital Selves that when we look in the mirror we are faced with unacceptable imperfection in our Real Self (Curran and Hill, 2019). Luckily for us along with technological advances, there have been advances in cosmetic surgery.
Consuming Ourselves
(Here’s something I wrote recently, but have cut out from the piece….) Our Digital Self is a product not a person (Solon, 2011). Technological advances in media production over the past 20 years mean that everyone has become a marketing manager, a photographer, a filmmaker, a star, a brand. We have evolved from the postmodern consumer (Fromm, 2013) into the product to be consumed. We photograph our lives as social media marketing content to sell our brand. We even have our own AI photographic retoucher in our pocket- our phones automatically impose a skin smoothing filter on each selfie we take (Madrigal, 2018). We have become so used to seeing filtered versions of our Digital Selves that when we look in the mirror we are faced with unacceptable imperfection in our Real Self (Curran and Hill, 2019). Luckily for us along with technological advances, there have been advances in cosmetic surgery.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.