Terms and Conditions* An Exploration in Personal Data by Maine College of Art

Terms and Conditions* An Exploration in Personal Data

Copyright © 2021 Beckett Asselin Submitted in partial fufillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelors of Fine Arts at Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine May 16th, 2021 Major in Graphic Design Designed and written by Beckett Asselin Typeface used, Helvetica sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann. Website: beckettasselin.com

Who is this for? My thesis started out as a way for me to explore social media advertising. I witnessed a boom of sold out viral products while in home lockdown at the beginning of COVID-19 at the same time that I was working an advertsing internship. Originally I hoped for my thesis to give way for more advertising research and experience without going to ‘ad school’. That is not at all what this thesis is. as I continued to research social media advertising. I became more interested in how targeted advertising works and the lasting impacts it may have on those who grew up with and on the internet. This project is for those who agree to the terms and conditions, accept cookies on their computer, and have internet access for as long as they can remember. This is for those who are curious about the online shopping takeover and what that means for now and for the future.

Acknowledgments The past several years have been a whirl wind of experiences that could be a whole book of their own, I would like to thank those around me that kept me afloat and stood by stubborn decisions trusted me through it all. @mymom for raising me with art and never letting me quit, for teaching me how to be independent, continuing to love me unconditonally while fighting your own battles. @mydad for not giving up. @myfamily for proving me with a home when I needed one most. @myroommates thank you for teaching me that I am a little more than just my academics. @theinternet for being the strangest place that forced many to grow up fast, and changed the course of all. @myself for sticking to it, and getting my bachelors degree before I could legally drink. All the summer classes, winter intensives, and AP credits finally payed off.

Contents

Introduction Viral Content Data Double -Introduction to the Internet -100 Words -Interview Quotes -Personas

-The Future of E-Commerce -The Space Between Psychology and Design

-What Do Your Ads Think About You? -My Inspirations: Design and Order

B.T.S.

-The Glossary of Your Data -Historical Precedents to Social Media Advertising

Algorithems Conclusion -The System to Keep You Scrolling -Contemporary Context: a Changed Perspective

-How Does Social Media Know All That About You? -Bibliography -Resume and Biography -Exhibition

Introduction to the Internet This project series is set in Helvetica, this was a conscious choice. The most popular typeface among social media platforms on iOS devices. This project sticks to a six color palet based on the most popular color themes used on social platforms, taking the most inspiration from Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Light Mode HEX D7D7D3

Retweet HEX 45BF3

Dark Mode HEX 1A1B2F

Capital F HEX 4461A1

Caption HEX 000000

Continous Scroll HEX 7B26B4

I was born in the year 2000, a strange period of time between Millennials and Generation Z. A time when we took both typing and cursive courses in school (I was much better at cursive and most definitely was not prepared for the direction the world wound up going). I grew up playing in the woods, but I also got my first iPod touch in 6th grade, I promptly lost said iPod in a roadside McDonalds on a trip to Six Flags a few months later. Though, by that point it was already too late, I had already made my first social media account. On February 22nd, 2012, I was sitting in art class when one of my peers told me about this new app that I just had to download, it was called Instagram. When I went home and asked my dad about it I was quickly told a firm ‘hell no’, but being the sneaky kid I was, I knew that if I asked to download Solitaire first, iTunes would not ask me to put in the password for any other downloads for the next thirty minutes, and that’s how I got Instagram. The next day, with the help of a friend, I set up @dance4everlove, which would later turn into @skyelar_terresa_ (in which I spelled my middle name wrong) and finally @_s.ass. My relationship with the internet is a long and strange one, a mix between one parent giving me full access to find what’s out there and the other deleting my Facebook account as soon as I made it, and managing to find a surveillance app like life360 before life360 even existed. Over the years, I have had Instagram, Facebook, Kik, Tumblr, Snapchat, Whisper, Vine, VSCO, Afterschool, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, and most recently, LinkedIn. I was raised to never trust strangers on the internet This was, of course, advice that I did not listen to because I thought I knew better than my parents, and to be honest, that stupidity has come back to haunt me more times than once, but I was never told to fear the internet itself. I believed for a long while that if I deleted content, it was gone, if no one knew about my secret account, that it was not mine, if I looked something up in incognito mode, no one was looking. I was obviously very wrong. My naivety is not something that exists in just me, there was a point and time where many of my peers and I all thought this way. We were told the words that once it’s online it could never be deleted but we had no clue where our posts and content went, it did not cross our minds to think our actions have consequences that have since come to contribute to our individual data.

My thesis idea started out as a plan to focus on social media advertising. I conducted interviews with people using social media platforms from different generational age groups, to see what people were attracted to and why that might be. My hope was to make a perfect targeted social media campaign. The term “targeted” really changed my direction, and that is when I fell down a rabbit hole of my own. Here I confronted many of the questions I never really acknowledged at a younger age: what does social media think about me? How much data do I have? Do I have access to the data related to my social media accounts? Why do I see the content that I do? How much choice do I have in all of this? However, after all of this research and data-hunting, I still own all of my previously mentioned social media accounts and have yet to change the settings within them. I am now simply more aware of my actions and fascinated by the changes that have happened in the last few decades that have made screen time an important factor in our economic future. Terms and Conditions* is a glimpse into how my personal data has shaped the online economic bubble that I experience and how one can inspect their own internet presence.

How do you take an inspiration, an idea, a topic and turn it into something? If you’re the graphic design seniors at Maine College of Art the answer is... 100 words on thesis. @ Youtube Instagram Tiktok Pinterest Snapchat Facebook LinkedIn Unknown/New Corporation Small Business Influence(r) Agency Advertising Marketing Personal Brand Branding Money Sales Profit Scamming Celebrity Research History Personality Public Image Connections Aesthetic Trends Message Predictions Expectations

End Goal Three Seconds Media Visual Auditory Post Story Video Animation Experience Layout Still Image Delivery Political Discreet Bold Humor Risky “Real” Casual Violent Product Self-Growth “Health” Dieting Fitness Beauty Fashion Eco-Friendly Fake News Behind-The-Scenes Necessities Escapism Target Audience Followers/ing Representation Age Group

Gen-Z Millennials Statistics Screen Time Algorithm Tracking Attention Span Reality Personal Interest Income Impressions Interactions Scroll Likes Shares Tagging Viral Notifications “Cancelled” Reviews Bigger Picture Consciousness Self-Esteem Quitting Emotional Influence Overwhelm Face-To-Face Customer Service Affect Mental Health Brand Loyalty

Which platform do you use the most currently? Why? “It's an even split between dating apps, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, I have different uses of each platform” What motivated you to start using social media? “My only way to connect to friends that I would be moving away from”

How do you feel about seeing ads on social media? “I love it because I know that they are always listening to us so it’s kinda convenient”

How do you feel about seeing ads on social media? “Eahhh I hate it- I like to think of social media as a collective space for people to interact and I don't like when that's interrupted by things that I have to deal with outside of social media and it disrupts my experience”

How would you rate your current experience with social media? “Positive in general, obviously sometimes I feel discouraged but that is the nature of the beast social media is everyone's highlight reel”

Interviews

Which platform do you use the most currently? Why? “Tiktok, because I have the attention span of a fish”

How would you rate your current experience with social media? “Probably like 6 because I like being able to talk to my friends and being able to interact with people online and find new things but I hate the way that social media pushes you to think certain ways and buy things and live by certain standards” Do you use social media? If so, how long have you been using it? “Yes, I think for four years, it's been a while (since I was 10)”

Has social media affected your attention span? If yes, how so? “Probably... most likely. I check my phone whenever I can”

What motivated you to start using social media? “Cause everyone else was using it”

Personas

Personas 20

The Future of E-Commerce Our first and only structured assignment in Senior Synthesis was a black and white, 32” x 24”, typographic poster introducing our thesis topic. At the time I thought my thesis idea was going to be about social media advertising is failing to keep up with its younger generations. The motive behind this poster was the desire to showcase how successful ads are successful by decepting their audiences to believing its not an ad at all. While COVID-19 kept us all locked up, I witnessed product after product go viral, sell out, and trend for a week or two, and the cycle continued over and over with new products each week. All of the products and entertainment contents listed on the poster went significantly viral on TikTok in 2020. The words are laid out to say #AD clear as day when it is viewed from a far, but to read the individual items, the viewer is pushed to come close enough that they can no longer see that it is an ad. The final version of this poster was revisited after I changed my thesis focus, the heading is altered to match the perspective I now held after researching personal data.

Process 24

The Space Between Psychology and Design

Advertising is defined as the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.1 Advertising allows for the space between psychology and design to be lived in, and explored, if approached in such a manner. I’m interested in getting behind the reason as to why humans are attracted to certain things and just how much influence imagery and sounds have on each individual as they go about their day. Advertising has become just as much a part of our capitalistic society as every other daily task, take for example the Superbowl. Many people claim to watch this game for the ads alone, with little to no consideration for the actual sport, so this event has become a chance for overlap between the creative world and the “manly, sporty, macho” world. Another overlap, that of science and art, is what drives me to advertising and design as a field. Much of my practice and interest within my work revolves around research, getting to know the inner-workings of different design decisions, trend predictions, and strategic moves, which ultimately helps to keep me motivated and excited about my practice. Since graphic design is a field that is constantly moving and changing as technology advances and public interests shift, I am able to stay on my toes and keep things fresh. Within the past few years, I have shifted my focus to how design lives within the smartphone, the instant access to the internet has altered how we as a society approach problems and look at just about everything, and with that, the approach to design has shifted. As a society, we are now starting to see another deep shift into the social media realm as Gen Z gains more buying power and the target audience for advertising is now people who have grown up with the internet.

Simpson, John A. Essay. In The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. 1

Levine, Barry. “Study: Gen Z Cares about Issues and Is Skeptical of Brands.” Marketing Dive, May 30, 2019. https://www. marketingdive.com 2

Statistically, those born between 1997 and 2015 are more skeptical about the images they see and have far less brand loyalty compared to any other documented generation.2 This is starting to change how designers need to be working and how clients are viewing their target audiences. The old ways of empty promises and pretty pictures are out and I want to be involved in seeing what’s in. Growing up in an oversaturated world of screens has altered the attention spans of many, and lowered the patience of all. A need for instant gratification has bred for sameday shipping and fifteen-second videos, the internet theoretically has opened so many doors, but how many has it closed to? We are just now becoming aware of how much we are living in an echo chamber of content, seeing the same products and news as our close friends,

closing up any gaps in the algorithm whenever we hit ‘share’. This new challenge in advertising and psychology has become a sweet spot for my imagination, motivating the question for my thesis “how can one product be successfully marketed to the different realms of the internet?” To answer this question, I am being pushed out of my usual comfort zone, of safe moves and actions, towards working for a human being that I may have nothing in common with. A Pinterest user may enjoy an ad with soft tones and kind language that fits their aesthetic of dreamy photographs, whereas a Twitter user may only respond to a high-energy, absurd video that stops them in their tracks. Due to the consistent influx of stimuli, content on social media only has three seconds to catch someone’s eye before they scroll away forever, and knowing how to get that attention is one of the most difficult obstacles in the age of the smartphone. All of these rules must comply with any of the following preset parameters: the famous 1080 x 1080 pixel Instagram square, the phone-screen sized work of Snapchat and TikTok, and the Facebook rectangle. Each platform only allows so much wiggle room for what is capable. With those new parameters comes the fun of grabbing someone’s attention when they are seeing everything through the same light, and many have been living within these digital parameters for over half their lives. My practice has started to become consistently related to the internet, from access to inspiration and research to documentation and networking, my practice is living in an overlap between my reality and my existence on social media. I first downloaded Instagram in the 6th grade, to the dismay of my parents, and I have been documenting my life for almost half of its 20 years. In this time period, I have watched the rise and fall of several apps and watched how my peers have altered the way they present themselves online and what is considered acceptable for the time being. I have watched some peers become influencers and how this form of media leads to idolizing other humans in new ways. A new form of celebrity that has a hold of thousands to millions of people and how those people may spend their time and/or money. We have lived in the age of the internet, Facebook is three years older than my fourteen-year-old little sister, online shopping is at an all-time high, and as of 2019 79% of U.S. citizens had a social media account.3 The internet has shaped the younger generations and will continue to

“Demographics of Social Media Users and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Pew Research Center, June 5, 2020. www.pewresearch.org 3

do so as more people are born with a computer in their pocket. But the advertising world has yet to catch up and match the pace of their newer audiences, they haven’t yet figured out how to attract a generation born into an overwhelming world of information. I hope to be a part of the shift in making the act of personalized advertising less scary and more helpful to those involved, to help companies connect with their customers rather than annoy them and cause them to scroll. The science behind the function of social media in our capitalist society is both fascinating and scary in the best ways possible as we watch a shift in information consumption unfold before our very eyes.

What Do Your Ads Think About You? Ads Seen on March 8th, 2021 Curious about what the internet thinks about you? Go check your google ad settings. I cannot promise that they will be correct, it assumed that my fourteen year old sister was an 18-30 year old man. But if you happen to be anything like me it just might be scarily accurate. This poster came as a result of seeing a TikTok suggesting people check their own ad settings to see the basis on why they might see the ads they do. On March 8th, 2021 from roughly 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM, I screenshotted every ad I saw posted to Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Highlighted in blue are the categories that each ad matched. When it comes to the adverting demographic I fall into, according to my social media I am a woman in my late teens/early twenties, who’s interested in beauty, fashion, interior design, website design, sports, health, and product deals. All things I cannot dispute.

First attempt (left) was the first hour of ads I saw, organized by the catagory they most related to in my google ad settings.

Process 32

My Inspirations: Design and Order

I decided I was going to be a designer in the spring of 2015. I was lucky, my high school had a vocational school with many certificate-based programs and one of them was graphic design. When I applied I didn’t tell anyone- just in case I didn’t get in, and I honestly knew nothing about design at that time. Before then, I had been taking art classes my whole life and unlike my peers, illustration and painting weren’t exciting me in the ways they used to. But as soon as I was accepted, I knew I had made the right decision, and my eyes were opened to the many different meanings of the term ‘designer’. This theme of keeping my head down and working hard for my education did not stop after that application to the Concord Regional Technical Center. In the spring of 2016, I applied to the Maine College of Art (MECA) Pre-College program and almost gave my mom a heart attack when I told her I got in and she realized the cost. Once again, I was set on my decision and wound up applying to college, at MECA, the next year. In the winter of 2019, I discovered that I could graduate in three years rather than the typical four and once again decided to. I took summer classes at community colleges and worked two jobs to cover the cost of classes. But yet again, I had no idea what I was going to do with my design career after the approaching graduation deadline, until the VIA Agency. For someone who has been interested in art my entire life, creativity is not my strong suit, even in traditional practices, realism was my strength. Logic and rationale are and probably, and always will be, my best friends. Advertising made sense to me, the sweet spot between statistics, research, planning, and creativity, and within the summer of 2020, I had come to terms with the fact that the advertising world is exactly where I wanted to be. Quick turnarounds, several projects going on, research and trials, seeing the impact of your work statistically- all of these elements match up with my ADHD-influenced thought process. That summer, I interviewed different women who work as creatives and their experiences with the advertising world. I saw firsthand the struggles that women go through in the male-dominated field, with even my own male counterpart getting congratulated on the work I did. That anger and frustration sparked questions for me that lead to my thesis. What are middle-aged men going to do to reach their younger female audience when the focus is on socials?

Living and working in a pandemic has provided some pretty interesting shifts in our society, and mobile/computer screen time is through the roof. People who claimed they would never download TikTok are now obsessed, and every product that goes viral on that platform is sold out almost instantly. In 2020, there was a visible change in how younger people started approaching shopping. Attention spans have lowered, influencers have risen to celebrity status, all while documentaries like The Social Dilemma 4 and books like Unspun 5 have caused suspicion to all targeted ads. This combination has created a challenge in the predictability of success;and if there’s one thing I like in design, its challenges. The idea of ‘Gen-Z’ advertising is honestly hilarious, and due to the targeted videos I receive, I am lucky enough to witness the reality of ads and how bizarre they have become in recent months. I also get to witness when an ad comes out and the comments are flooded with “this is what a gen-z ad looks like, good job”, which allows me to see firsthand what the different and new trends are as they are coming out. There is a very distinct change in humor, tone, look, and motives, and it takes a company or agency paying attention to that exact moment in time to make a connection, or else the trend is dead in a month. This is paired with the rising hatred of capitalism and persistent need for instant gratification from an audience of young adults that went to college, took out loans, worked several jobs, and are still living with their parents who are rightfully frustrated. They are watching the rich get richer and many are making changes to avoid fast-fashion, shopping small, and holding brands accountable for their actions. #DeleteFacbook is trending on Twitter every few weeks, every Instagram update comes with many complaints, and in the interviews I conducted based on social media advertising, the most common response when asked ‘how do you feel about your current experience with social media?’ was ‘eeeiiickk’. This is a love-hate relationship that provides me with so much motivation to figure it out. As much as we want to believe that social media is for us, it is a for-profit platform that will not last if it is not making a gain. For example, this is how nostalgic applications like Vine disappeared, and how the once hated musical.ly app became the now beloved TikTok. We all moan and

The Social Dilemma, Netflix, 2020, https://www.netflix.com/ title/81254224. 5

Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007). 4

groan when we start seeing ads pop-up a bit too much, but we don’t stop using the app, and every once in a while, one will really catch an eye. Targeted ads are providing a level of convenience, that is, if you are not too creeped out by seeing something you just mentioned that you needed appear on your phone seconds later. Social media provides a place and a time for brands to connect with their consumers directly, as opposed to a large billboard seen by many, but not all, profitable viewers. Looking into my own Google analytics was a fascinating process as it showed me just how much an algorithm was able to figure out based on my day-to-day searches. Even as I learn the tips and tricks of the industry, I still fall for the pretty packaging and presentation, as most under the age of thirty do, as we were raised by the aesthetics of the internet and pushed to show off “the highlight reels of our lives”.

The Glossary of Your Data, a Game! The gateway to spartphone app usage is often ‘games on your phone’, and once you download one, the ads for others are endless. Formatted as an Instagram ad, this poster draws from playful language seen in online boardgames to bridge the way into the deeper issues of the nternet.The language used in data research can be confusing and disconnected from social media itself. The motive of this poster is to pursuade the viewers to research these topics on their own, and start a personal dialogsurrounding their downloads, internet usage, and social media accounts. This poster is reformatted as a takeway at the 2021 BFA thesis exhibition for people to fill out and play on their own.

Answers

1.Data Double 2.Interaction 3.Targeted Advertising 4.Dopamine 5.Content 6.Cookies 7.Social Media 8.Millennial 9.Narrowcasting 10.Facebook 11.Personal Data 12.Addiction 13.Attention Economy 14.Ego 15.Trend 16.Generation-Z 17.Digital Age 18.Manipulation 19.FOMO 20.Scam 21.Behavior-Altering 22.Algorithm 23.Audience 24.Cambridge Analytica 25.Instagram 26.Google 27.Influencer 28.Location 29.Social Graph 30.User-Generated Content 31.Interest Graph 32.Advertisinment 33.TikTok

Process 40

Take Away

Historical Precedents to Social Media Advertising

Within the big picture of art history, technology design is very new. The first ‘accessible laptop’ came out in 1981, and the famous Apple Clamshell was released in 1999.6 But at the same time these technologies were accessible and common by the time Millennials ‘were growing up, and Generation Z, on the older side, grew up with iPods and iPhones. The technology that is often not recognized in any classical art history courses precedes all of their lifetimes, and has had a rapidly changing and evolving lifespan. As technology has updated so has the way people approach socializing. The first social media platform is considered to be Six Degrees, released in 1997, it was a blog-based platform that created the basis of internet stardom that is still chased after today.7

Mary Bellis, “Learn Who Invented the Laptop Computer,” ThoughtCo, accessed March 14, 2021, https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-laptop-computers-4066247. 6

Mary Bellin “Learn Who Invented the Laptop Computer,” 7

Drew Hendricks, “The Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now,” Small Business Trends, May 8, 2013, https://smallbiztrends. com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic. html#:~:text=The%20first%20 recognizable%20social%20media,make%20friends%20with%20 other%20users. 8

Brian Dean, “How Many People Use Social Media in 2021? (65+ Statistics),” Backlinko, March 9, 2021, https://backlinko.com/social-media-users. 9

While Six Degrees has not run since 2001, the social media platforms that popped up after it are still making an impact today. Myspace and LinkedIn both gained traction in the early 2000s, and Twitter and Facebook both released in 2006 have had a lasting presence.8 With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, apps started to be accessible through iOS in a way that was not widely considered. Instagram came out in 2010 and quickly gained popularity as the lead social media platform for young adults, it was also one of the first social platforms designed specifically for a phone-based interface, with little to no user accessibility through the web. It has become such an essential part of people’s daily lives that as of 2020, 90.71% of 4.20 billion mobile internet users are on social media.9 Being a teen in the 2010s, I saw firsthand the rise and slight fall of influencer culture. The once personal views into people’s lives, posted on social media, have transformed into carefully crafted images and words that all attempt to gain the most possible likes. Social media has changed the way we think, dress, shop, travel, vote, experience, and socialize, and this affects how everything approaches us too. The rising generation of consumers are the first to be raised on the internet, and that has left a permanent impact on how they follow trends, their sense of humour, and how critical they are. Everyone is one Google search away from knowing more about a company, and one step ahead of the brands trying to trap them in. Furthermore, the pandemic has pushed audiences deeper into socials and streaming than ever before as self-isolation drove us to reach out to others in different ways. The rise in screen time led to the rise in TikTok, which, in around two years time, has completely dominated the

content field. The trends are changing from week to week, if a song goes viral on TikTok it is on the radio soon after, and product reviews on the app can make it go out of stock in hours. The content-specific algorithm, constant scrolling, and short videos are perfect for the Gen-Z attention span, and the ability to go viral keeps its users making videos just for that chance. Now Instagram, the former leader in youth social media usage, is using Reels as a way to get their audience back or bring its older users onto the same content style as those using TikTok. The internet created a new space for manipulation and audience connection. This can most easily be laid out in The Great Hack,10 this documentary looks into how Facebook ads were targeted towards those deemed undecided to sway the outcome of both the 2016 U.S. election and Brexit. We know and have directly seen how the sense of connectivity has affected those who were not raised with the internet, how, for example, someone’s sixth cousin reposting a wild article allows it to now become a trustworthy source because ‘it’s coming from family’. This even affects millennials when it comes to pyramid schemes, for example, if someone from your sixth grade class says that a hair product made them rich, and they got it from an influencer, you might also try to follow that path in hopes of a fortune. However, it’s really the under 25 age group that is a different story. They were brought up with internet safety courses, and had older siblings who were catfished on Myspace that taught them how to spot a fake profile. I know personally that my high school, Concord High School of Concord, New Hampshire, dedicates their entire junior english class to content surrounding questioning the media, reading how six companies control pretty much everything we see, and learning how we can find sources that are less biased and controlled by the masses. Generation Z does not fall for the usual tricks, and are not afraid to let people know that. 69% of Generation Z find ads to be disruptive.11 In studying my own feed, I noticed the pattern on Instagram of three posts to one ad, that’s not counting any paid partnerships from the people I already follow. Twitter has roughly four ads during my scroll through, they are often repetitive throughout the day and rarely relate to my personal interest. Pinterest has a similar ratio to Twitter, but is more targeted towards what I would actually buy. TikTok greets their users with an ad, but has very little pop up during the scroll, granted there is much more small business content available to consume on that platform. YouTube ads are specific to the

Amer, Karim. “The Great Hack.” Netflix Official Site, July 24, 2019. https://www.netflix.com/ Title/80117542. 10

Blake Morgan, “50 Stats All Marketers Must Know About Gen-Z,” Forbes (Forbes Magazine, February 18, 2021), https:// www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2020/02/28/50-stats-all-marketers-must-know-about-genz/?sh=189114a676d0. 11

video but so expected that I no longer find myself surprised by them. And I don’t even look at Snapchat ads. Ads are so ingrained into the process of being on social media, that most do not pay attention to them. If it is a sponsored post that does not look like something the consumer would use or need in that exact moment, then they keep scrolling. At the end of the day, phones are the new posters. 2020 has taught he entire world just how much we can rely on the internet for everything we need to get done, from movie premieres, to food delivery, to essential shopping, everything can be done on an app. We are leaning into technology now more than ever, and younger generations who have the technology smarts are at the forefront of this movement whether or not they like it. Now, as millennials become art directors and the older Generation Z become their interns, the ads directed towards them are just starting to match the humor and pace that was set up for this time back in the 2010s.

The System to Keep You Scrolling TikTik and Instagram are currently they two most popular social media platforms with younger users. Though they both use two opposite types of algorithms, Instagram uses a social graph system, the same as Facebook, which prioritizes showing content that friends like and follow. TikTok uses an interest graph system that shows users what they think they will liked based on previous content that they have interacted with. The blue captions relate to the Instagram algorithm, the purple to TikTok, and the gray to systems that relate to both platform. As of May 10th, Instagram is 553 weeks old and has an average of 900 Million users that in tern have agreed to these algorithms as they continue to use the app.

Process

Contemporary Context: A Changed Perspective

My thesis topic and focus has shifted over the last few weeks. The original purpose of my thesis was to “show advertising agencies that I know the industry”, and I was drawn into the idea of advertising as a job rather than my true interest in advertising as a science. As I researched advertising and social media, I fell down the rabbit hole of personalized data. Looking into how data is collected and then used against its audiences has provided me with a new level of understanding of the ad world and an additional route to explore with my thesis. This side of the world lives in a contemporary context, as most of the public were not made aware of the severity of data collection until the 2016 election. Companies like Cambridge Analytical still exist, and TikTok has perfected the act of targeted content. We were raised in a generation that was warned of the dangers on the internet yet we still keep coming back. The brain chemistry of how we react to social media has been proven to be the same as those produced while gambling. People are also interested in themselves at the end of it all and social media has further allowed people to create their own personal brand and aspire to a new level of fame: an influencer. This new celebrity has given everyday users hope that they too can rise up and be known, and that level of hope, mixed with the dopamine spike from every life, has created a concussion of consistent media flow. Users who are not interested in social media in this way still help the process, as all interactions online add to the story of how we will be perceived next.

“MTA.” MTA | Work & Co. Accessed April 7, 2021. https://work. co/clients/mta/. 12

Amer, Karim. “The Great Hack.” Netflix Official Site, July 24, 2019. https://www.netflix.com/ Title/80117542. 13

Within the past year, COVID-19 has caused screen usage to skyrocket, as we have had more time with our phones and our ability to have reallife interactions has been limited. The New York subway system has finally created a digital platform where all information is up to date and tracking is available at a time when social distancing and train capacities are important.12 Schools have continued online through video chats and new educational platforms. It only makes sense that this time has changed the way people shop as well. But how far is too far? Social media was designed and marketed as a place for interconnectivity and sociability, yet at the same time, they do not make enough money as that alone. Even with advertising, apps like Snapchat continue to lose money each year, so companies are finding other ways to make a profit through users, such as their data points. A quote from The Great Hack states “If it is free you are paying with your time”.13

Apps such as TikTok are bringing light to this dilemma of data points and algorithms, the app is considered addictive as people are used to using social graph forms of social media that keep you in touch with what your friends are liking and doing. TikTok is an interest graph-based media that focuses on the user’s interest. Each like, comment, and share gives TikTok another point of data on what any given user responds to and helps build a data double that can be used to subtly make changes in behavior. In the winter of 2021, TikTok announced that it was going in the direction of being an eCommerce platform, they are considering the ability to link a product directly to a video and making products directly sellable from creators’ profiles.14 This has been done before on other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and has received mixed reviews. People tend to love Facebook Marketplace as it is fueled by locals but hate it on Instagram as it feels more scammy. This tactic has not yet been tried on an application like TikTok, a platform that has collected points of data to an extent that many say means that the app knows them better than themselves. This combination may become a goldmine for sales as this app, as it is already notorious for making products go viral and sell out of stock, the algorithm may be able to predict what you need exactly when you need it and have long-term effects in the way the population approaches any form of shopping. The term “data double” is used to describe the set of data points that mimic those of a person, it includes likes, dislikes, age, demographics, and can be a scary concept for many.15 This data double is what is used to suggest content and ads that then bring people deeper into interacting with the media. And younger generations are experiencing an entirely different level of this as their whole lives have been spent on the internet, growing up online has provided companies with entire childhood experiences that can help them target regional nostalgia. The reviews when it comes to these are very different and varying, as I have conducted my research with peers I have found a range of people who do not use social media at all, due to this targeting, to people who love the idea of not having to do any work for their tailored shopping experiences. While I have been looking into this online, I have also been receiving targeted TikTox about how people love the idea that they now have a personal assistant in a sense, that can direct them into certain directions when they are unsure of a product or an illness symptom for example.

Andrew Hutchinson, “TikTok Lays Out Plans for New ECommerce Integrations as It Eyes the Next Stage,” Social Media Today, February 8, 2021, https://www. socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-lays-out-plans-for-new-ecommerce-integrations-as-it-eyes-thenext-st/594717/. 14

Kyle M. L. Jones, “What Is a Data Double?,” Data Doubles, June 17, 2018, https://datadoubles.org/2018/05/01/what-is-a-data-double/. 15

Designer and data analyst Feltron has created works, The Annual Report, tracking his data points each year from 2005 to 2014, before the public eye was on data collection.16 In his series, it is quite visible how much his phone usage goes up over the years. Feltron started creating this series before each platform provided its own set of data tracking that each user can check on their own. It was a fun side project for him as he solidified his existence in the world through documenting experiences. But a key aspect of his work was his choice in the matter to pay attention, now users no longer have the option to be looked at, each site starts their user experience by prompting them to accept cookies. People have to then go out of their way to stay out of the data pool by performing tasks such as never using a credit card, not using a smartphone, or having zero internet presence. It is nearly impossible to avoid becoming a data point and exist within society at the same time. My work is relevant beyond its creation, as it lives in this ever-changing time of data usage. My work is collecting a snapshot of this moment in time and attempts to show the ways in which design, data, and psychology meet. As we exist in this modern realm of technology, we can no longer avoid the digital takeover of our wants and needs. Going into my thesis, I had a much more positive perspective on social media advertising, I believed that it was a necessity that was not doing too much harm, it just simply was not being done right. My stance has changed, as I now believe social media advertising and digital advertising is unavoidable, but not unbiased. As companies continue to lean into AI and predictability, those using said companies have an inherent right to know how much is being taken from them. Since I’ve started my research in the fall of 2020, new changes have already raised within this field, getting this moment in time on paper, although it may not be relevant for long, shows how this pandemic specifically has altered the ways that customers approach companies, buying, and using social media to do so.

“Feltron.com.” Feltron. Accessed April 7, 2021. http://feltron.com/ FAR14.html. 16

How Does Social Media Know All That About You? As I was researching personal data and social media, things were changing right before me. I became concerned with the concept of never being able to keep up with what was going on with my data. This poster came out of a want to represent what has changed since I started my research. That has altered and changed to be the final statement of this piece. Each section hopes to answer the header question or lead the viewer to an answer that they can discover on their own. The background text is taken from the data sections of the terms and conditions of TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The terms and conditions are meant to be seen and not be read just as they exist in many of our brains as we click yes without digging deeper. Reading the Facebook terms and conditions surrounding data collection, usage, and redistribution became the reasoning behind the title of this thesis, as it both tells the user that they have no choice in their data collection and paints it as the best thing that can happen for the future.

Throughout the semsester, I utalized my social media research to run @mecagd 57

Bibliography Amer, Karim. “The Great Hack.” Netflix Official Site, July 24, 2019. https://www.netflix.com/Title/80117542. Bellis, Mary. “Learn Who Invented the Laptop Computer.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 14, 2021. https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-laptopcomputers-4066247. Dean, Brian. “How Many People Use Social Media in 2021? (65+ Statistics).” Backlinko, March 9, 2021. https://backlinko.com/socialmedia-users. “Demographics of Social Media Users and Adoption in the United States.” Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Pew Research Center, June 5, 2020. www.pewresearch.org “Feltron.com.” Feltron. Accessed April 7, 2021. http://feltron.com/FAR14. html. Hendricks, Drew. “The Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now.” Small Business Trends, May 8, 2013. https://smallbiztrends. com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic. html#:~:text=The%20first%20recognizable%20social%20 media,make%20friends%20with%20other%20users. Hutchinson, Andrew. “TikTok Lays Out Plans for New ECommerce Integrations as It Eyes the Next Stage.” Social Media Today, February 8, 2021. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-lays-out-plans-fornew-ecommerce-integrations-as-it-eyes-the-next-st/594717/. Jackson, Brooks, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007. Jones, Kyle M. L. “What Is a Data Double?” Data Doubles, June 17, 2018. https://datadoubles.org/2018/05/01/what-is-a-data-double/. Levine, Barry. “Study: Gen Z Cares about Issues and Is Skeptical of Brands.” Marketing Dive, May 30, 2019. https://www.marketingdive.com “MTA.” MTA | Work & Co. Accessed April 7, 2021. https://work.co/clients/ mta/.

Morgan, Blake. “50 Stats All Marketers Must Know About Gen-Z.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, February 18, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/ sites/blakemorgan/2020/02/28/50-stats-all-marketers-must-know-aboutgen-z/?sh=189114a676d0. Simpson, John A. Essay. In The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Seife, Charles. Virtual Unreality: The New Era of Digital Deception. PENGUIN BOOKS, 2015. Orlowski, Jeff. “The Social Dilemma.” Netflix Official Site, September 9, 2020. https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224.

Beckett Asselin

Skills Adobe Creative Suite, Google Suite, Glyphs, UX/UI, Social Media Management, Illustration, Calligraphy, Handlettering, Book Binding, Letterpress, Screen Printing

beckettasselin.com

Let’s Chat beckett.asselin@meca.edu 603.851.3220

Education August 2018 – May 2021

Maine College of Art Portland, ME BFA in Graphic Design, GPA of 3.6 Experience

January 2019 – Present

Freelance Graphic Design Logo design, informational graphics, apparel graphics, illustrations, lettering, and print collateral. Clients include: MECA 2019 Zine Fair, Biodiversity Research Institute, Bowdoin Sustainability Network, Material Objects, and Binga’s Stadium.

December 2020 – May 2021

Maine College of Art, Curator, Portland, ME Collaborated with three other seniors to curate, design, and plan the Maine College of Art 2021 BFA Thesis show.

September 2020 – May 2021

Maine College of Art, Intern, Portland, ME Marketing and Communications Intern, working with the lead visual designer on digital and print projects for the college, and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art.

June 2020 – August 2020

The VIA Agency, Intern, Portland, ME Art Direction Intern, worked directly with the reative team on the 20-21 campaigns for Klondike, OxiClean, and Maine Huts and Trails. Attended Diversity, Equitey, and Inclusion Committee meetings and created committee logo. Group Exhibitions

2021

Terrains: 2021 BFA Thesis Show, Maine College of Art Portland, ME

2020

Get Out The Vote, Portland Public Library Portland, ME

2020

Maine College of Art BFA Show, Maine College of Art Portland, ME

2019

DesignInquiry:Futerspective, ICA at MECA Portland, ME

2018

For Freedoms, Maine College of Art Portland, ME Accolades

2018 – Present 2016 – 2018

Maine College of Art Merit Scholarship

Thesis Statement Terms and Conditions* An Exploration in Personal Data is an ongoing project discovering the ways in which targetted advertising and social media have a larger impact on the world’s economy than originally considered. As it is presented at the 2021 BFA Thesis Show, this project is a collection of five informative posters covering algorithms, trends, and language. My thesis focus started out as an observation during the pandemic lockdown of 2020, when TikTok downloads were rising greatly, and with that product trends became well known and sold out within days. I was and continue to be interested in how algorithms have become so specific that users no longer have the illusion of choice and products are spoon-fed to every individual and how these data doubles may follow younger generations into the technological future. Biography Beckett Asselin is a recent graduate from the Maine College of Art, with a major in Graphic Design. They grew up in New England and spent their childhood summers in Italy, but decided to take a jump into the unknown and relocate to Portland, Oregon after graduation. Beckett has a passion for understanding the world around them, both in design and nature, and is constantly trying to figure out how things and people tick. When they are not working you can often find Beckett reading a book on their new monthly interest, trying to get back into yoga, cooking a vegan meal they haven’t landed, and listening to a podcast in-between. Beckett’s design interest is in marketing, UX/UI, and a bit of psychology. Previously They have worked as a Design Intern in the Maine College of Arts marketing department, focusing on their website and social media transition during their rebrand. During their final semester, Beckett worked with three other graduating seniors on curating and designing the MECA 2021 BFA Thesis Show, Terrains. Finally, Beckett’s love of advertising and marketing can be credited to their Summer 2020 internship at the VIA Agency, where they worked with a team of interns to create campaigns for local Maine businesses.

Terrains: 2021 BFA Thesis Exhibition

24’x32’ posters printed on Epsom matte paper, mounted on foam core, and boardered with black electrical tape.