Ciritcal Theory: Facebook + Instagram

Instagram

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April 26, 2012 Urban Word of the Day Every hipster's favorite way to make it look like they take really classy pictures when really they are still using their phones. Yeah, you might look really cute/old school/vintage/retro, but it's still a cell phone picture. Photographer: Hey man, look at this picture I took with my Canon 5D Mark II camera and edited in photoshop! Hipster: No way man, look at this picture that I took on my phone with instagram! It's even better! Photgrapher: *FACEPALM*

Facebook's acquisition of Instagram in August is a perfect marriage of two products whose users exude psuedo-individuality and spectatorship. On Facebook, users become defined by their 'Likes', their interactions with other people, their photos, and their friends. Very little of how we portray ourselves on Facebook comes from actual individuality. This is most apparent with the 'Likes' page, in which our tastes and our interests come almost directly from mass-produced forms of media or entertainment.

The culture of taking pictures just to put them on Facebook becomes a form of staging one's life, rather than living it. This occurs with Instagram as well. The abundance of pictures on food for example, reveals how people focus more on taking pictures of food, rather than actually eating it.

Instagram allows anyone to create "artistic" looking photos just by adding a filter. It's standardized artistic photos, and commercialized it. You can now sell your instagram photos online. What's considered "good" in the photography world is now being judged by the masses. Even "bad" instagrams can sell. This applies well to Bordieu's concept of fields. Fields try to become autonomous of the market, but in this case, the market dominates what is good and bad for this kind of photography.