10 April 22
Speaking of Instagram. Or perhaps that should be speaking in Instagram. With the release of their new algorithm the internet is awash with discussion on improving our positioning. Is it too harsh to say interacting with Instagram is like watching an interview with Jimmy Saville? It’s telling us it’s abusing us, and we nod, and help it reach further into our life. A little dramatic perhaps.
I was reading an article on W.E.B Du Bois in the fashion journal Vestoj, and his views on the fashioning of the black masculinity. Du Bois being a critical essayist who was influential in advancing equal rights for Black and Asian people in the States and colonial Africa. Somewhat handily (or is that dandily) for a fashion journal he was also a rather spiffy dresser.
Vestoj is one of the titles from the Stack Magazine subscription recommended last week. In the words of Mr Remington I liked it so much I bought the company1. Actually, I bought all the back issues, but accuracy is rarely as quotable. The issue Stack sent on was on authenticity. Yes, last week's column was on authenticity. And Instagram. Are we having a senior moment here? Is this thing on?
Let's move swiftly on. No doubt, like me, you've been thinking about many selves. All of you.
David Lester proposed his ‘A multiple self theory of personality’ back in 20102. Note, this is not the multiple personality thing where you lock teenage girls in the basement and evolve into The Beast when angry. These days psychoanalysts use Dissociative Identity Disorder3 to label the mental health issue, and multiple selves to explain what James Mark Baldwin referred to as the ego and alter being born together4.
Current thinking says we are split into the experimental self and the narrator. I was very excited by this. I wanted to get in touch with my experimental self. I had all sorts of wild things planned for the weekend, and went as far as booking time in a clinic and hiring a good lawyer in advance, to cover any eventualities. Only to discover I had misread it, and it’s actually the experiential self 5.
This is the very boring self we wake up with, and responds to external stimuli. Obviously I wake up with Anne, who, if woken at the same time by my external stimuli evolves into The Beast. The experiential self shuts down each night when we go to sleep. Then there’s the narrator. This is the voice that won’t shut up in your head, and causes your loved one to shout at you because several pans are burning on the stove while you mentally rank Bond films from best to worst.
Some psychologists split this (in a non dissociative identity disorder sort of way) into the private and public selves6. In short, how the narrator chills at home in your mind, and how it gets totally stressed out imagining how other people see you. This is Baldwin’s ego and alter being born together.
Du Bois said the experience young black men face was a double consciousness, a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in an amused contempt and pity”7. This struck me as being somewhat akin to the Instagram experience today.
“Oh my God, you can’t say that” said Anne as I harangued her with my current theory on one of our walks. I’ll be clear. I am not doing a Brexit war analogy. I am not equating the experience of people looking at Instagram with that of being born in an institutionally racist society as Amerikkka was in 1897, when Du Bois wrote those words.
The world is more equal now. We can all equally share in the “my life is shallow and drab compared to everyone else’s” feeling Insta gives us. Unless you’re an influencer. Then life’s really hard. Yes, ok, mocking them is a soft target and easy win. But we are allowing ourselves to be gaslighted by Mark Zuckerberg. A tad dramatic?
Do you remember when Instagram showed you every photo from the people you subscribed to, posted in chronological order? A tool for seeing what your friends were up to. Now your friends have to compete with people you don’t know in order to rise up the algorithm to feature in your stream. We can’t show each other our snaps amongst all the signal to advernoise.
It seems we seek happiness by subjecting ourselves to illusions of other people’s happiness. Generating content for the advertising machine that is Meta. My friend Isabella suggested I post these very columns on Insta. I did. With a reasonable degree of certainty I can state it did diddly squat. Please drop me a note if seeing my Insta post made you open the email already sat in your inbox. I checked my stats. Every hour. Compulsively. For days after every post. Alright, three times an hour. Like any normal person monitoring their likes. Nope. Nothing from Insta. So no more. Sticking to my guns. Firing blanks.
“Bit heavy here Julian, where’s all the Epicurean lutes and lentils of happiness you promised us?”. Turns out in Spanish customs actually. Apparently I live beyond the EU VAT region. Importing lutes is no mean feat. And importing lentils is no mean feast.
If each Instagram post were a lentil, then… no, we’re not doing that. More on Epicurus another day. I use Insta for more than one purpose. To appear book smart to people I know follow me whom I wish to impress, to appear effortlessly cool to people I half or don’t know, and to let friends know the quantities of sardines and chips we’re consuming.
I’ve stopped posting on my main account, and writing this is causing me to consider my usage on my ‘personal’ one, aka spamming the fam with sardine n chips pics. If you use Instagram, as a philosophical exercise, ask yourself why you do it. If it’s achieving those ends, and what else could you do to reach them. Assuming of course you can get a good ‘grammable image out of it.
My feed reflects the different people I try and be. The many selves. Most people would agree they act differently with elderly relatives than with friends, behave differently at work than at a party. Our internal narrator tells us this is a consistent us. I’m an adherent to the many selves at its most fundamental level. That’s it’s not just acting out a different facet of ourselves, but we become another self. As we see ourselves subconsciously through the eyes of others, our moral code will bend to blend with our peers. That there are distinct “us’s”, and at times these selves compete and conflict.
Procrastination is a good example. If you’ve ever tried to give up an addiction you’ve probably said to yourself “what are all these people doing here, why am I here, what’s my name, who are you?”. Maybe not. Maybe that’s just me. More common is “I really want to do what’s best for me”. Where the I and me are competing as different people.
But what about flares, and turtle neck jumpers, and macramé tops? When discussing authenticity Vestoj concludes that dressing up is just externalising our many selves, and in fact helps us formalise which self we need to be. How we should be seen through the eyes of others. Doctors don’t need to wear white coats to give a good diagnosis but we’d be less comfortable if they didn’t.
Vestoj is my ideal magazine, critiquing the world through the lens of fashion, while not taking itself too seriously. Highly recommended. In recent issues I’ve been introduced to Du Bois and the psychological theory of the many selves.
I also enjoyed House of Gucci, own a fuchsia towelling t-shirt, and espadrilles in batik fabric, so draw your own conclusions.
Lastly, a nod of appreciation to M Night Shyamalan, who admittedly has produced some turkeys. Who here can say with a straight face they’re making a film called “The Last Airbender”. Not I. But then one of me is pretty childish. Most auteurs rest their laurels on two or three films. He’s made four, and Signs with hindsight is actually pretty good. Sixth Sense is a meme to itself. His Unbreakable trilogy is a triumph in both celebrating and playing with the superhero, conspiracy, horror and thriller genres, while quietly inventing the stealth sequel with Split, and bless his cotton socks, giving us Bruce Willis’s last great roles. The final Die Hard outing was dire. Dire Hard. Sorry. Well, one of me is sorry.
“Split” written and directed by M Night Shyamalan
“House of Gucci” directed by Ridley Scot
References
See Victor Kiam above
W.E.D. Du Bois ‘Strivings of the Negro People’, The Atlantic, August 1897 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negro-people/305446/