Sunday, 7 October, 2018

Cancel Out the Noise, Stay True to Yourself

[First published on Instagram Stories]

I’ve been aware of a lot of discussions lately about the adverse effects of social media and its distortions of the lives content creators lead. The system has built up a simulacrum of made up realities feeding on the hopes and dreams of people who live vicariously through the lavish lives of the subjects in the images. Like an addiction, we continuously consume these virtual realities which grace our eyes tantalize our inner fantasies, only to make us feel meagre and insignificant while we reference our own mediocrity against them.

Social media companies know what keeps us on the platform, which then it will monetize and replicate until we are in an echo chamber reflecting our own desires. While I am not in a position to criticize nor heighten commercial capitalism (which is a whole other discourse), I am very rapidly feeling the effects of this psychological phenomenon personally as well as witnessing its effects on the people around me, content consumers and creators alike.

This is a personal account on my thoughts on this issue and how going through the struggle of creating and consuming content on social media has made an impact on me through the years. And 5 years is a long time, going through an expedited cycle from gaining social media prominence as a creator, to witnessing a myriad of changes to the platform, to breaking out of my comfort zone to produce something personally more meaningful. As I ponder on how repetition upon repetition of cityscapes can garner up to 5 times the engagement of an emotional, sentient being, I gradually begin to realize the irrelevance of the number of likes to the emotional depth and significance of a photograph.

It is also a self-realization of my propensity to downplay the importance of the algorithm. This disassociation means that I will no longer shoot for the pursual of feeding the system (apart from the occasional times when the subject matter aligns). It means I will shoot for what is important for me, it means I will travel for experience, which may or may not appeal with the visual impact of something staged, but perhaps also with the spontaneity of living and feeling a particular moment of love, joy, melancholy, sadness, exhilaration or happiness.

The experience on social media has brought me to where I am today, but I’m happy to look back on it all to say that the only freedom is to let go, to let go of all the values which I have clung onto so dearly as an eager soul trying to gain exposure on social media. For me, there is definitely more that the thrill of chasing numbers, and furthermore, more than the need to portray an ideal life.

I am also hoping that people reading this will support these thoughts, and that everyone can appreciate what drives my motivations to take photographs. Besides, I can really say its how I got here in the first place. I hope something beautiful and powerful will come out of this because of my intentions to stay true to my passion and not the number of likes or reach – I believe one can only create something extraordinary if they stay true to themselves.