Bridge 3: ‘Selfie-As-Construct’ – Collage 1: Social Media

My Relationship with Social Media

My relationship with social media started out really healthy. I would use it to connect with friends and share fun experiences I had in real life. However, as times passed by and I grew up, the behavior people had towards social media changed and I started to notice mine changed as well. I started to care way too much about my online presence. I felt like I was becoming more self-absorbed. I would keep posting photos of myself and started caring way too much about how I looked in photos. Social media transformed from something I enjoyed doing to something I would stress about and a habit that wasn’t healthy at all. I started obsessing about how many likes I got and what people said in my comments. The higher the numbers were the better I felt.  It was a sensation I got used to and yearned for. That expectation only made my experience worse because I noticed that I would post when I felt bad and that I was using my account as a way to make myself feel better.  I had become dependent on how it made me feel and had turned into a coping mechanism. Once I realized this, I tried to adopt a new mentality. I  gave myself a rule where I could only use it when I felt good and I would post things that I wanted to regardless of the likes and the comments. Ever since then, I feel like my relationship with social media has improved.  I use it as a source of inspiration rather than a form of validation.

My online identity is very much a curated version of myself. Like everyone, I like to edit out all the things I don’t like about myself. However, this is not a matter of me not accepting myself because at the end of the day, I live most of my life outside where everyone can see all my flaws as clear as day. It is more of a matter of the curation process. I used to not care much about aesthetics when I first started using Instagram but now, I really appreciate a sense of cohesion and flow when it comes to my account. I get inspired by other accounts who like to focus on specific themes for what they post and they very much influence the way I post. This is a huge reason why I believe the accounts I follow and like say a lot about me. They exhibit aesthetics I hope to take into my everyday life. Therefore, I can say that my social media presence is very much an extension of my interests and aspirations. It helps me to construct my ideal self.

 

Format/ Size: Square (Instagram Format)/ 8×8

Material: Adobe Photoshop

Rule: Use only the photos you’ve liked in the last week on Instagram and put them into categories

 

The Collages

Fruit/ Nature/ Food/ Misc.

 

Make Up

 

Friends

 

Art

 

Editorial/ Fashion Photography

 

Cinema/ Music

 

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