By Dr. Satish C. Aikant
Estelle, a character in Jean Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, says: ‘When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn’t help much. I’ve six big mirrors in my bedroom. When I talked to people, I always made sure there was one nearby in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as the others saw me.’ The lines highlight Estella’s deep insecurity and dependence on external validation and physical appearances to feel real. Her need to see herself in mirrors reflects her lack of an inner sense of self. She develops a compulsive need for ‘visibility’ to define her ‘self.’
Social media ecologies produce forms of digital visibility that manifest and track various forms of desire. It heightens the visibility of desire, objectifying it. ‘Liking’ practices negotiate the boundaries of aspirational and the inauthentic. Digital visibility generates the flows of desire so that tracking likes – of both the self and others – is a core mechanism of ‘selfie’ sociality. Garnering ‘likes’ amounts to collecting the social capital they bestow, which becomes the primary goal of posting selfies on social media. The overriding concern of those who post selfies is to accumulate the most likes and comments from others since this functions as a form of digital capital to enhance social worth.
Within popular social media discourse, visibility is interchangeable with empowerment. But the problem is that visibility begins to function as a normative category, suggesting that what has been rendered visible is worthy of attention and claimed to be socially valid. What gets lost in the process is the ‘politics of the gaze,’ and the social and power relations underlying ‘what is not seen.’
Digital visibility signals a shift away from being ‘heard’ to being ‘seen’ as the primary metaphor of recognition and identity. To be seen confers status and recognition, and, is understood as especially important for the marginalized people, where visibility remains a pressing political goal for those who are made invisible in order to deny their existence. Digital visibility, however, comes at the expense of equity. Visibility issues from distinction and personal merit, which is competitive and indifferent to the collective commitments and solidarity that equity necessarily involves.
Social media as a tool of self-presentation is often used to create an environment that encourages self-promotion, self-aggrandisement and a curated online persona which can feed narcissistic tendencies. According to social psychologists, much of our distress comes from a sense of disconnection. We live in a society where self-promotion and individualism have become paramount concerns. But since we are social beings, we also want to be part of a community. Unable to forge genuine human contacts we fall back on social media to which we get increasingly addicted. Narcissism reflects the psychological dimension of this dependence. A narcissist has illusions of self-importance which he seeks to validate through the virtual world as he cannot live without an admiring audience. According to Christopher Lasch, a critic of mass society, narcissism refers to a weak, ungrounded, defensive, insecure or manipulative self. Social media is the refuge of such individuals. The addiction to selfies has gone to an alarming level to make psychological healthcare professionals fear that we are a generation that relies on attention-seeking social dependence with no compassion, understanding or real identification. Studies have indicated a correlation between addiction to selfies and potential mental disorders.
Happiness, it seems, scales virtual limits in the present age. Facebook, for instance, is not only a means of connecting with one’s social circle but also to seek approval of one’s self- image and individual gratification based on the number of ‘likes’ one receives. So, we constantly update our profiles on the social media in a bid to achieve the desirable image since the body and its appearance becomes the ultimate obsession. Socialites with elitist pretensions routinely greet each other, after an absence of a few days, with frivolous observations on weight loss or gain, on clothing, or on other aspects of physical appearance. Our culture tells us that to succeed is to be slim, rich, happy, extroverted and flawless. But our expectation of perfection comes at a cost. Millions suffer under the torture of an impossible fantasy as the pressure mounts to conform.
Obsession with fair skin, especially among the females, is intertwined with the Indian social hierarchy. Hindu mythology dichotomizes fair-skinned gods and dark-skinned demons. The predominantly fair Brahmins are at the top of its rigid caste system while comparatively darker dalits, who are still considered undesirable, are at the bottom. A long spell under white British rulers has also invested fairness with notions of power and superiority.
India’s fairness cream, Fair & Lovely, launched in 1978, immediately became a national obsession. The fairness cream market is flourishing on the advertising strategy that exploits the existing social stigma associated with dark complexion. Television ads for such products are more blatant in misguiding the consumers on their promise of social and cultural benefits. The focus on external beauty creates unrealistic standards, especially for women, and leads to superficial judgments about them distracting from their more meaningful traits like intelligence, kindness, and elegance.
According to Susan Sontag ‘If women are worshipped because they are beautiful, they are condescended to for their preoccupation with making or keeping themselves beautiful. Beauty is theatrical, it is for being looked at and admired; and the world is as likely to suggest the beauty industry (beauty magazines, beauty parlors, beauty products) – the theatre of feminine frivolity – as the beauties of art and of nature. To be concerned with one’s own beauty is to risk the charge of narcissism and frivolity.’
There is a nexus between cinema and advertising, via celebrity endorsements for beauty products. Celebrities who will go to any length for money and publicity, are willing tools in the promotion of products of dubious quality. The cult of celebrity can perpetuate narcissistic values such as an excessive emphasis on physical appearance, glamour and wealth. The beauty industry similar to culture industry exploits emotions, creating a sense of pseudo-fulfilment and instant gratification, which can feed narcissistic tendencies.
Coming to social media there is a significant correlation between Facebook use and narcissism. Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behaviour. Facebook puts the pursuit of happiness at the centre of our digital world redefining our concepts of identity. The source of its power is that it enables us to be social while sparing us the reality of society where our true selves may be revealed. Instead, we have the apparent slickness of a seemingly social world. The status updates, pictures, all sound so simple, but the price of this deceptive sociability is a constant compulsion to assert one’s vaunted happiness. Not only must we contend with the social appearances of others; we are compelled to project our own pretensions. Facebook has a design feature that measures engagement by the number of ‘clicks,’ ‘likes,’ ‘shares,’ and comments. It engages us like unhealthy fast food with its low-level pleasures. It rarely engages our critical faculties with the sort of depth that demands conscious articulation of our authentic experiences.
What Facebook reveals about human nature is that a connection is not the same thing as a human bond, and that instant connection is no salvation, no ticket to a happier, better world or a more liberated version of humanity.
The American cultural critic and media theorist Neil Postman in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to technology advanced the concept of ‘technopoly’ as a condition whereby technology is valorised and the culture relies on technology for its validation. ‘Technopoly is a state of culture,’ Postman wrote, ‘it is also a state of mind. It consists of the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.’ This ideological domination demands a sacrifice of all previously stable belief systems and institutions. The dominance of technology, without human cognitive intervention, can lead to a decline in worthwhile social relationships, potentially contributing to narcissistic tendencies as individuals become more focussed on their own self-image.
(The author is former Professor and Head of the Department of English, H.N.B. Garhwal University)
