The Social Media Distance

With the theme of seeing and being seen, social media has naturally come up often in submissions we’ve received for this issue. Social media is arguably now the primary format through which we see each other; during lockdown it became the only format for many of us.

While we’re unbelievably fortunate to have had this connection with each other throughout this time of social distancing and while it has brought us closer in many ways, there is a different kind of distance that comes with the territory. With two screens between each of us in any given interaction on social media, it is worth considering how this affects the way we see each other, the world, and ourselves.

Editors Kimberlin and Simoné discussed their preferred social media platforms, how they make sure to use it mindfully, and how distancing yourself from social media for a short while can give you a new perspective on it.

“We are forced to see more yet given fewer tools and less time to think about seeing. If we cannot stop the pace of images, if we cannot remove ourselves from the pipeline of contemporary living, then we must carve out spaces to think, debate, and come to terms with this visual world.” — Visual Culture, Alexis L. Boylan

Kimberlin: Twitter

I like being armed with information. I’ve always been a know-itall in that way. During high school, I took comfort in things like general knowledge and trivia games, and tried to have an opinion on everything. In university, my anxiety-riddled brain clung to any bits of rational information it could in order to make sense of a world that was looking increasingly like a cruel and random game of chance. Knowledge became both a weapon and a coping mechanism. I rationalised that if I knew just a little more than the next person, it might ease some of the constant pressure on my chest. And so, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Twitter quickly became my social media platform of choice. I followed various authors, journalists, reporters, analysts and commentators, in an almost desperate attempt to keep abreast of the never-ending stream of ‘unprecedented events’ that flooded my timeline.

Halfway through 2019, I went through a massive depressive episode, the biggest I'd had since being diagnosed. All I did for a little over two months was lay in bed and scroll through my feed. When September came and the heartbreaking news of Uyinene Mrwetyana’s* death was confirmed, my insomnia meant spending even more waking hours feverishly refreshing Twitter. I stayed in a hyperaware, anxious state for the rest of 2019, desperately trying to maintain enough focus to graduate. Obviously I soon reached a breaking point. And one morning, just after New Year’s Eve at 2am, I deleted all my social media apps.

At first it was jarring, particularly being without Twitter, which I'd used as a news source for so long. Not constantly being in the loop on current affairs and global politics was a very uncomfortable feeling for someone who likes to arm themselves with information. I only managed to stay off Twitter for a month before I redownloaded it, but I made an effort to unfollow anyone who I felt was too negative. I followed more "frivolous" accounts to liven up a very serious, doom and gloom feed. I finally made my profile public and followed friends and acquaintances and Twitter became a much more welcoming, pleasant place.

* Uyinene "Nene" Mrwetyana was a 19 year old film and media student at the University of Cape Town. She went missing on August 24th 2019, which led her friends and subsequently her fellow students to launch a prominent social media campaign, with the hashtag #BringNeneHome, for her safe return. The campaign was quickly picked up by local and national news. After more than a week since her disappearance, her body was found.Her rape and murder sparked nation-wide protests and campus shutdowns against gender based violence, especially on university campuses where female students, Uyinene herself, had been calling for heightened protection against GBV. Her life, death and legacy have been a prominent feature of discourse on GBV ever since.

Simoné: Instagram

We’ve somewhat come to take it as a given that websites like Facebook and Instagram are surveilling us. But it has become equally ubiquitous that we have the ability to access information about other people as well. In Visual Culture, Alexis L. Boylan writes:

“Permission doesn’t matter much. At some point, access and surveillance have become ubiquitous. We assume that all have the power to look, and that someone always has the power to look at us.” (19)

This led me to wonder how cutting all ties with social media, would affect how I looked at other people. This way of interacting with the world and with our friends is so starkly different from how we do it in “real life”. It’s such a strange way to meet a new person, through their online presence. Instead of discovering things about them bit by bit, everything is there all at once: date of birth, university, workplace, major life events. The whole person— flayed out in front of you with all the facts of their life on display.

I’ve always liked the idea of living in desolate places: the middle of the Sahara; adrift somewhere on a sailboat in the Atlantic. I chalked this up to being an introvert, but now I wonder if it doesn’t have more to do with having partly grown up under the ever-watchful gaze of the Internet. Akiko Busch calls this “the impulse to escape notice” in her collection of essays How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency:

“The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation (…), but about maintaining identity, propriety, autonomy, and voice. It is not about retreating from the digital world but about finding some genuine alternative to a life of perpetual display.”

A life of perpetual display also means your life is there to be compared with other lives. Whether we intend to or not, social media ends up being a comparison game. And instead of only comparing ourselves with those in our circle of friends, we often end up comparing ourselves to everyone out there. No wonder it’s depressing. It also means your life is there to be commented on. In Greek plays, the chorus was supposed to bring wisdom into the narrative. Social media sometimes feels like living with a chorus of comments on everything we do and everything we share. Instead of bringing any clarity, it only brings confusion.

Over the years I’ve sought various ways to remind myself not to fall into this comparison trap or into the confusion of so many voices giving feedback on my life. During the pandemic, I also tried to challenge how I viewed people and kept a watchful eye on any judgements I might have made (positive or negative) about them based on their Instagram presence. One of the most effective ways to do this is by making social media breaks a regular habit: one day per week, one weekend per month, even one month per year. It reorients me back to the “real world” and gives a necessary distance from the digital one for a little while. ∞

Recommended Reads

Visual Culture by Alexis L. Boylan (MIT Press, 2020)

“The visual surrounds us, some of it invited, most of it not. In this visual environment, everything we see—color, the moon, a skyscraper, a stop sign, a political poster, rising sea levels, a photograph of Kim Kardashian West—somehow becomes legible, normalized, accessible. How does this happen? How do we live and move in our visual environments? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a guide for navigating the complexities of visual culture, outlining strategies for thinking about what it means to look and see—and what is at stake in doing so.

Visual culture has always been inscribed by the dominant and by domination. This book suggests how we might weaponise the visual for positive, unifying change. Drawing on both historical and contemporary examples (…) Alexis Boylan considers how we engage with and are manipulated by what we see.”

How to Disappear by Akiko Busch (Penguin, 2020)

“In our networked and image-saturated lives, the notion of disappearing has never been more alluring. Today, we are relentlessly encouraged, even conditioned, to reveal, share, and promote ourselves. The pressure to be public comes not just from our peers, but from vast and pervasive technology companies that want to profit from patterns in our behavior. A lifelong student and observer of the natural world, Busch sets out to explore her own uneasiness with this arrangement, and what she senses is a widespread desire for a less scrutinized way of life —for invisibility.

How to Disappear is a unique and exhilarating accomplishment, overturning the dangerous modern assumption that somehow fame and visibility equate to success and happiness. Accessing timeless truths in order to speak to our most urgent contemporary problems, Busch inspires us to develop a deeper appreciation for personal privacy in a vast and intrusive world."