Summary: The way we see ourselves online is through a filter. We filter about everything that we do online. We can change or remove filters when they get “clogged up” by unwanted aspects of the picture that will make us look bad or give us an unattractive assumption about ourselves. Our social media feeds and cultural filters teach us to copy what the models of social media or social media stars look like through these filters because we want people to think that we are like them. This mimicry of popularized social media stars is used to try to get ourselves more followers more times than not. Not only can social media picture filters be a filter, but many other things can be considered, by definition, a filter (from a man-made dam to a curtain on the window to a snapchat filter). Technological filters can allow us to express ourselves in certain ways but not in others; we can apply certain filters to an image we post to Instagram but not Tumblr, we can post GIF’s to Reddit but not to Facebook, etc. We tend to post pictures about the good things and not the bad, like a highlight reel of our life.
Main Ideas & Terms:
1.) We filter everything we do online.
2.) Filters can change the way we look to show the perfections instead of the imperfections.
1.) Neo-liberal citizen: the people most likely to succeed on any social media platform, most likely to gain followers, and most likely to have their feeds filtered into your newsfeed.
2.) Cultural Filters: the rules and conventions to guide us in our culture, mainly through technology.
3.) Baby Journals: a type of journal that is used to form a collection of pictures from the new-born baby’s first year from being born.
4.) Social Media: websites and apps that allow users to create and share content with each other.
5.) Digital Filter: a system in which alters different aspects of a picture to make it look more attractive.
Analysis: I thought that this chapter was pretty spot on in that it describes the different filters that people use, how we use filters, and why we use filters, in depth. I agreed with most of what the author was stating in this chapter. I did like the coffee analogy as well, “social media isn’t simply the kind of filter that removes impurities, but also shapes them and flavors people as the ground coffee beans flavor the water that passes through them.” It shows that people are more concerned about how attractive they look instead of how they act/see other people. I do agree with the authors argument that you shouldn’t put a filter on yourself just to get compliments and attention, but I disagree that you can’t change the picture a little bit. For example, if the lighting or shading is really bad, you can change it to make it look good, but when it comes to anything else, don’t do it.
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