The Suspicious and The Self-Promotional: About those photographs we post on Facebook -- Ira Wagman
This article talks about the digital culture in which we inhabit, where photographs have become our way of self-promoting a certain image. I would agree that these images not only define how we wish to be portrayed, but also indicate our interest in "creeping" others and things around us. In a way we collect through Facebook information about others through pictures that we see or take (whether surreptitiously or not). As it says in the article "Susan Sontag characterized the camera as a 'predatory weapon'... used to shred the boundaries between private and public space.[(Sontag 14) Wagman 150]"
If pictures are no longer solely to document but to collectively authenticate our personality or capture secrets then does reality only exist once processed through the camera? I find myself, wanting to know more about someone, going on Facebook to see what kind of person they are according to pictures and tags. I am a part of the image-Facebook-viewer consumption cycle so how does it end? I don't mean to say that this is a "bad thing" but a "fake thing". Personality has become calculable if defined by the calculated digital image or the competency to use both Facebook and the camera.Can you capture the fruity smell of someone's hair in a Photo-shopped image without #hashtaging it?
The article ends well with clarifying that "there is more to life than what we see in a photograph." I couldn't agree more. Pictures are very useful in entertaining our visual stimulation and feeding our information seeking brains, but they are a superficial layer to self-promote and should be understood as such.