summary
Author Jill Rettberg explains that book that she wrote can be break down into written, visual and quantitative self-representation. The first piece talks about writing about ourselves using multiple varieties of things from painting, drawing and writing and others. Authors goes into detail about documented history to show example on how we adapted to change and not so different from previous humans. She gives detailed examples about humans centuries ago kept tabs on themselves as it became popular to write autobiography. The Second would be visuals of self-portrait in history. This passage talks about how we changes we see ourselves over history from head and shoulders painting or photos to now generally full body and to share with family and friends. The third would be quantitative self-representation, in this she gives a before and after how we use to track ourselves. Author goes to talk about how people before technology use to keep track of their money, habits, sleep patterns and such. Overall of this passage she breaks down the idea of how we filtered ourselves to connect with other people with our social media accounts. But also connecting a bride to the past that it wasn’t common to write about ourselves. She also breaks down the social media we use, phones, apps that set best fit for our emotions and filters.
Main ideas
Technological and cultural filters- As social media word filtered is being evaluated into culture filters to connect with whats popular in our culture.
Aestheticising, anesthetising and defamiliarising- Ex. One reason the filter fascinates us is that it gives the image that strangeness that defamiliarises our lives (p26)
Choosing what technology can do – Finding a technology that best fits our needs while price and other stuff play factors but certain phones offer different needs for different people.
Genres as filters- stories shared in blogs, photo albums, journals and other have created a imaginary rules that set expectations what to write about or collect.
filter(1)- allowing us to make our selfies and other photos look a certain way, more muted than in real life same for email, news feed and any images
Cultural filter- norms, expectations, normative discursive strategies that teach us, for example to copy photo models in fashion magazines or Instagram selfie stars when we photograph ourselves.
Making a connection
When i first signed up for snap-chat i was in middle school i think it was 8th grade but my first username was embarrassing and didn’t even change it after two years later. I Just signed up for Facebook the year before. I wouldn’t even be on Instagram for another two years. having coming late to the social world except Facebook i didn’t really think Instagram, twitter and snap would be any better than Facebook. But i soon realized that i had became addicted to snap chat after abandoning it but going back. I realized that the same with twitter and Instagram had happened to me where i would abandon it then get hooked on after. The one thing i found very interesting was the dog filter off snapchat or what i call the founding father of filters. I would manly use these apps to send snaps of filters to my friends like one of my friends. As these apps released weekly or even sometimes daily filter i would stay to see what had released but as i grew up i instantly stopped. Because i realized that they were literally pointless unless it was something i liked and connected to it. I then started to use these as communication apps instead.
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