Myth: Social media networks help us maintain our relationships and make us feel more connected.
Roland Barthes’ “Mythologies: A Critical Theory of Myths” presents an analytical approach to the semiotic systems looking beyond the obvious and taking apart the familiar cultural iconography. Barthes also describes the orders of signification which include denotation and connotation; combined these produce ideology in the form of myth which represent the third order of signification.
If the myth is that social media helps us to connect with other people, and serves to strengthen the social bonds, the meanings we derive from “reading” the images posted on social media by young women present a completely different reality: desperate pursuit of what is seen as beautiful, social isolation, and the feeling of being trapped.
While working on this assignment, I simultaneously distracted myself with the social media endless scroll, and as it happened I came across an image the electronic music singer Grimes posted on her Instagram over the weekend. The photo Grimes posted after her split up with the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, shows her dressed up in a custom outfit with ostentatious nail art, reading Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. Creatrix editor Sarah says, ”Grimes wants to be Sci-Fi Marie Antionette so bad!”
Her trolling costume is definitely giving Dystopian Sci-Fi Marie Antoinette rather than communist schoolgirl, which I can say with authority, as I once was a communist schoolgirl.
What we see at first, what is photographed, represents a denotative meaning – a young woman reading a book. The denotation of any image is what viewers from any culture would recognize the image as depicting. Then the multiple connotative meanings come forth. The term connotation refers to the socio-cultural and personal associations (ideological, emotional) of the sign. These are typically related to the interpreter’s class, age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, education and so on. The image of Grimes taken by the paparazzi chasing her after the break up with her partner, can be seen as an example of the terrifying alienating reality: a young woman turned into a fetish performing meaningless gestures (which she describes as trolling) in an announcement of a break up with the father of her child.
The caption of the picture posted by Grimes on her Instagram reads: “I was really stressed when paparazzi wouldn’t stop following me this wk but then I realized it was opportunity to troll .. i swear this headline omg wtf haha im dead
Full disclosure I’m still living with e and I am not a communist (although there are some very smart ideas in this book -but personally I’m more interested in a radical decentralized ubi that I think could potentially be achieved thru crypto and gaming but I haven’t ironed that idea out enough yet to explain it. Regardless, my opinions on politics are difficult to describe because the political systems that inspire me the most have not yet been implemented).
Anyway if paparazzi keep chasing me perhaps I will try to think of more ways to meme – suggestions welcome!”
One wants to ask, is it truly just trolling or a cry for help?
Like many other celebrities Grimes has a particular brand and a look which she meticulously created and defined as fae esthetic. Herself, like many other girls and young women who grew up on social media, has documented her visual identity timeline on her Instagram page through which we can see how she transformed since the first posts in 2014 and 2015 https://www.instagram.com/p/7YQcVGjfhj/
In recent years Grimes opted for all sorts of cosmetic enhancement: visibly enlarged lips with botox, hair extensions, eyelashes extensions, nails extensions. In order to feel adequate, desirable, loved (?) she felt the pressure of the internet to modify her body to comply with what in her opinion, or the opinion of the internet – or to even speculate future the new ideal of the feminine beauty is – the Instagram filters which enlarge once lips, eyes and the cheekbones turning a human face into a new ideal.
The next day after Grimes’ post, on Monday October 4th, Facebook and Instagram were down for most of the day. It wasn’t because the CIA put a stop on the spread of Grimes meme reading the “Communist Manifesto” worried that this will now be the book of choice of the entire population of the teenage girls and young women who copy Grimes’ elf looks.
The reason why the social media networks were down is still unknown. However, the outage came the morning after “60 Minutes” aired a segment in which Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen claimed the company is aware of how its platforms are used to spread hate, violence and misinformation, and that Facebook has tried to hide that evidence. In recent weeks Haugen released thousands of pages of internal documents to regulators and Wall Street Journal. She claims that Facebook data confirms that the social media threaten teens’ mental health and well-being, and that in particularly it is responsible for teenage girls inscread sucide rates.
Haugen was set to testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, October 5th 2021.
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