What your Instagrams and selfies reveal about you
Your Instagram feed – revealing, intimate, immediate – shows everyone what you think you are, and everything that you're not. Take, for instance, Kim Kardashian's selfie, which Kanye West tweeted to his 10 million followers…
Eva Wiseman: 'Lady Gaga told a story on her Instagram last week. Pages from a notebook, a pressed joint as a bookmark'. Above: Lady Gaga in London this August. Photograph: FilmMagic
Our lives wobble on, three-wheeled. We eat, we sleep, we chat, we eat. But all the time, there's a second plotline, unravelling on our phones. My friends preface any conversation about these stories with a brow-raised phrase: "Meanwhile, on Instagram…" These are the DVD extras to the box set of your life. These are the photos revealing the beginnings of affairs. These are the double-clicks documented in the "Following" column, the "Likes" on every cleavage selfie of one particular High Street Honey clicked during their baby's nap time. Meanwhile, on Instagram, the truth of the thing is revealed – the mask you wear (the fabulous meals and grinning fields) and the sad crap behind it, too. We're not fools, us humans. We can read a picture of you thumbs-upping with an elaborate cocktail as both a document of a glamorous night and a telegram to all acquaintances alerting us to how absolutely, completely fine you are and not thinking about your ex at all. Not at all. Fine.
And as with friends, so with celebrities, the people who live in houses made of slate and mirrors, whose lives you understand better than your own. Last week two celebrities uploaded Instagram photos that simultaneously hid and revealed the truth about their lives, and the lives they want to project.
Much has been written about the selfie. I may not have read the pieces, but I imagine they discuss things like narcissism in an age of Twitter, our personalpopularity campaigns, our search for approval, the way we are writing our autobiographies in careful pouts. Maybe not. There's this disturbing phenomenon on YouTube where teenage girls ask the camera, with its anonymous auditorium of spear-wielding bastards: "Am I pretty?" Artist Louise Orwin has based a whole show on it, investigating ideas of performance, anonymity, and responsibility, and how it feels to be told: "You're a 4."
So: to the centre of all things, Kim Kardashian. Around midnight she shared a photograph of herself in a backless thong leotard, her arse – a phenomenon in itself – to camera, her newly blonde hair over one eye.
The reaction varied, from the people who told her she was a bad mother to those who told her she was looking disgustingly fat; to date it has had 911,000 "Likes". Within minutes her boyfriend, Kanye West, had retweeted it with the line: HEADED HOME NOW. This photo, of two-thirds of a bum and one-fifth of a breast, was a story about the things Kim and Kanye want to project about their relationship. This was the biggest thing to happen to sexting since phones started carrying cameras rather than torches. This was the Beveridge report of sexting, the document that would change everything. And it was an "Am I pretty?" on an international level.
Similarly Lady Gaga told a story on her Instagram last week. Pages from a notebook, a pressed joint as a bookmark. "Each day I cry," she'd written, "I feel so low, from living high." Those who speak internet recognised it as a future classic in the genre of "social needier". People who claw for attention and sympathy through cryptic messages and pictures, people who inspired the now infamous @UOkHun Twitter. A typical exchange would be: "U ever been somewhere and feel unwelcomed?" "U ok hun? *hugs*" Or indeed, a verse of hand-written poetry. Except, because she's HER and has more than 2m followers, Gaga's "U Ok hun?" response was a concerned letter from Instagram itself. It lives! "Members of the Instagram community," it wrote, "have raised concerns for your well-being after seeing posts you've shared. We're reaching out to provide you with some important safety information." Tweeting the email, oh how she laughed.
It was a masterclass in brand management, a millefeuille of meaning. Meanwhile, on Instagram, we document everything we want to be true. We seed in subplots with two careful clicks and a Valencia wash. In saying: "I'm fine! I'm totally fine!", aren't we, sort of, asking: "Am I?"
I have found this artical in the metro , a free news paper created to entertain city commuters on there jorney with funding from advertising. I found this artical called #MeAtGrandpapsFuneral. Highlighting that the main picture on the riht is of a girl wearing skimpy clothing saying a very public goodbye online for the world to see. 1. i very much doubt her grandpa would like the way she is dressed ,In my opinion there is no respect as she is not wearing the tradition moaning colours of black and 2. This is an amazing example of "social needier" .She is trying to create empathy very publicly between her friend and family . A public cry for attention and sympathy This just shows to me that some people dont know when it is appropriate to post "selfies" of themselves . In this case i find it completely inappropriate . The article also featured other "selfies" posted on the day of funerals one being "# Black lace: Am i going to hell?" Stupid girl is the only thing that enters my mind !
And as with friends, so with celebrities, the people who live in houses made of slate and mirrors, whose lives you understand better than your own. Last week two celebrities uploaded Instagram photos that simultaneously hid and revealed the truth about their lives, and the lives they want to project.
Much has been written about the selfie. I may not have read the pieces, but I imagine they discuss things like narcissism in an age of Twitter, our personalpopularity campaigns, our search for approval, the way we are writing our autobiographies in careful pouts. Maybe not. There's this disturbing phenomenon on YouTube where teenage girls ask the camera, with its anonymous auditorium of spear-wielding bastards: "Am I pretty?" Artist Louise Orwin has based a whole show on it, investigating ideas of performance, anonymity, and responsibility, and how it feels to be told: "You're a 4."
So: to the centre of all things, Kim Kardashian. Around midnight she shared a photograph of herself in a backless thong leotard, her arse – a phenomenon in itself – to camera, her newly blonde hair over one eye.
The reaction varied, from the people who told her she was a bad mother to those who told her she was looking disgustingly fat; to date it has had 911,000 "Likes". Within minutes her boyfriend, Kanye West, had retweeted it with the line: HEADED HOME NOW. This photo, of two-thirds of a bum and one-fifth of a breast, was a story about the things Kim and Kanye want to project about their relationship. This was the biggest thing to happen to sexting since phones started carrying cameras rather than torches. This was the Beveridge report of sexting, the document that would change everything. And it was an "Am I pretty?" on an international level.
Similarly Lady Gaga told a story on her Instagram last week. Pages from a notebook, a pressed joint as a bookmark. "Each day I cry," she'd written, "I feel so low, from living high." Those who speak internet recognised it as a future classic in the genre of "social needier". People who claw for attention and sympathy through cryptic messages and pictures, people who inspired the now infamous @UOkHun Twitter. A typical exchange would be: "U ever been somewhere and feel unwelcomed?" "U ok hun? *hugs*" Or indeed, a verse of hand-written poetry. Except, because she's HER and has more than 2m followers, Gaga's "U Ok hun?" response was a concerned letter from Instagram itself. It lives! "Members of the Instagram community," it wrote, "have raised concerns for your well-being after seeing posts you've shared. We're reaching out to provide you with some important safety information." Tweeting the email, oh how she laughed.
It was a masterclass in brand management, a millefeuille of meaning. Meanwhile, on Instagram, we document everything we want to be true. We seed in subplots with two careful clicks and a Valencia wash. In saying: "I'm fine! I'm totally fine!", aren't we, sort of, asking: "Am I?"
I have found this artical in the metro , a free news paper created to entertain city commuters on there jorney with funding from advertising. I found this artical called #MeAtGrandpapsFuneral. Highlighting that the main picture on the riht is of a girl wearing skimpy clothing saying a very public goodbye online for the world to see. 1. i very much doubt her grandpa would like the way she is dressed ,In my opinion there is no respect as she is not wearing the tradition moaning colours of black and 2. This is an amazing example of "social needier" .She is trying to create empathy very publicly between her friend and family . A public cry for attention and sympathy This just shows to me that some people dont know when it is appropriate to post "selfies" of themselves . In this case i find it completely inappropriate . The article also featured other "selfies" posted on the day of funerals one being "# Black lace: Am i going to hell?" Stupid girl is the only thing that enters my mind !
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