Personally, I feel as though Essena O’Neills actions fit the description
that Van Dijick gives for the neoliberal economic principles of the culture of
connectivity. I was able to make the connection of Van Dijick’s theory on
competition and hierarchy to O’Neill fairly easily.
When Van Djick
elaborates on the neoliberal economic prinicples of connectivity, he notices
that peers and technologies, “expand through competition and gain power through
strategic alliances” (21) – which is easy to relate to for a
forth-year-university student who’s growing up in the digital age. It seems as
though whenever I stumble across a foreign Instagram account, my first
impression on whether they’re popular or not is dictated by their follower
count and the amount of likes their picture’s get. When I see, a high follower
count I instantly begin to assume that this particular person has a lot of
friends. Because of this, it creates one big competition to see who can get the
most likes – which keeps a platform like Instagram, extremely active. Before eventually
ending her account, O’Neill was hiding the reality of the vast efforts she put
into her Instagram posts so she could make her life look more appealing than it
actually was. She called it the “perfect life” and people believed that she did
indeed have the perfect life.
Personally, I disagree with O’Neill when she says that social media isn’t ‘real
life’ due to Van Djick’s emphasis on connectivity. The content that is being
produce in a medium is not as important as how it is delivered – until it is
real.
Works Cited:
Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media.Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Guardian (2015) Instagram star Essena O'Neill calls out fake social media
I think the example you used of the strategic alliances that are made through social media for business reasons is an important example what this kind of fame can entail. This demonstrates the fakeness that is present online that is being analyzed by Van Dijk. It is important to spread these messages of self-worth and self-acceptance instead of the ones that are very common in society today of being perfect, and being the most famous. These ideals are not realistic, and from what O'Neil, Van Dijk, and many more have spoken out about, is this inauthentic virtual reality that controls your daily life in ways that stop you from actually living and experiencing true happiness.
ReplyDeleteWhen i was reading through the links provided for the assignment one of the most interesting things i read was when she was explaining how a male model approached her for one of these fake relationships and to think of it as a business opportunity as it would boost their followers. I believe this idea of having a large following number is true as you explain it, the more followers or likes people have the more popular they are in todays society. This is a ridiculous thing that we all do on apps and it really shouldn't mean as much as it does to people.
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