In Social Media, I consume, therefore I am
Consumption and social networks invite us to rethink many aspects of how individuals define themselves.
It's a work that has circulated millions of times on Tumblr and frequently reappears on social networks. Rarely credited, the image "I shop therefore I am" actually dates back to 1987. It's created by the artist Barbara Kruger, an American born in 1945 who blends advertising codes, impactful collages, and slogans.
This image is fundamental to understanding the ambivalent current relationship with digital platforms and, by extension, behaviors stemming from our domestication through smartphones. What we observe: if, with a desktop computer, the user was forced to explore multiple available parameters—even making mistakes and "crashing" their PC—the freedom offered on a social network or an application is extremely limited: we are reduced to a few very restrictive functions. Thumbs of the world, unite!
In the excellent Tèque magazine, Silvio Lorusso wrote an essay titled "Liquider l'utilisateur" ("Liquidate the User"). His argument: the individual who refuses to use social networks might ultimately be freer than users, and even hackers.
"Within a given system, the non-user has the most possibilities for action, more than the regular user and even the hacker. To some extent, this should not surprise us too much, as often the ability to refuse (veto) coincides with power. Very often, the possibility of breaking a behavior or not adopting it in the first place reflects a certain privilege."
— Silvio Lorusso
The author goes even further by speaking of the proletarianization of the user, defining certain characteristics that we are experiencing at the moment. The modelization can be seen in French.
One can contest this entirely dichotomous view of social networks. After all, the user always has some choice, even if their scope of action is very constrained. Repetition brings life, and it would be wrong to see it only as proletarianization; it's the equivalent of saying hello in the elevator in the morning, the habit of going to a bakery and chatting about everything and nothing with the shopkeeper, or even parties. Above all, we must not forget that what truly nourishes attachment to a platform is the infinite informal exchanges that take place through private messages—rare spaces still more or less protected from an algorithm since it is the users who create the value of the exchange, with the help of content, of course.
Nevertheless, this "I shop therefore I am" applied to social networks carries within it a multitude of contradictory yet concordant promises. For example, the utopia of access to an infinity of online content and possibilities, and in opposition, the limitation of accepted (and acceptable) actions on a network like Instagram or TikTok. Or the access to millions of applications and uses, while paradoxically, we may only use 3 or 4 of them. In fact, upon reflection, most actions allowed by social networks are essentially consumerist: a like or a share will lead to more information to serve us the same type of content. A comment will tend to encourage us to click on an additional link, often a shop.
Using the prism of fashion, it is interesting to see that this new consumption environment has implications both on how we define ourselves and position ourselves.
talked in her newsletter about the death of genres. In a nutshell, since the decline of traditional organization in stores and retail, clothing categorization is being challenged in favor of a more cultural production, based on the immense machine for reinvention that is the internet.“No one on the Internet speaks in genres. We speak in memes, references, and remixes. This language of boundary-crossing and cross-pollination breaks down genres by default: it takes elements of different genres and turns them into a new cultural output. On the Internet, we are not buying something that belongs to a specific genre (e.g. tailoring); we are buying into a look of, for example, Timothée Chalamet, Pharrell or Tyler, the Creator. These looks themselves are memes that get to live on in the endless references they generate.”
— Ana Andjelic
The conclusion can be either optimistic: we have never had so many choices to define ourselves through our purchases. Or sadder: why do we have to go through the act of consumption (however cultural it may be) to identify ourselves? Fluidity in a panoptic environment or a real advance? A total look anchored in a total state of mind? I shop therefore I am. You have 3 hours.