Summary:
- The beginning of the chapter started out by talking about an Italian “Mannerist Painter” named Parmigianino and how his self portrait using a convex mirror is so much related to today’s way of us shaping ourselves through technology. People use SNS (social networking system) to view themselves and compare to others. This is just like how Parmigianino did a self portrait and saw himself (just without going through the painting process). During the seventeenth century, not many people know how to read or write. Maybe doctors were the only people who could possibly read and write. The vast majority cannot read or write. It was a thing until the nineteenth century when people started reading and writing and the knowledge started expanding. So much to the point where most of the people who read and write were either priests or nuns. They wrote religious things, but writing was more than just writing religious things. It was for business reasons like keeping track of businesses or funds. For personal reasons it’d be something private like a diary. Photography was another that has been growing at a rapid speed as well. Over the years photography is becoming a central society norm for majority of people. During Parmigianino’s era were paintings and self portraits, but in this century is mostly about photography. Quantitative Self-Representation is basically when you keep track of what you do basically during your free time. This is also a way to record dates and events.
Commentary:
- From what I’ve seen, this chapter is pretty accurate of today’s society. Social Media is just like self portrait with a little bit of writing to express through the internet. The author did talk about how he or she did do researches on selfie. That seems strange since people do not think much about selfies enough to do a research on it. He or she (the author) said when we post a selfie, it is not just about us, but is about what we’re doing. That is very true because whenever someone takes a selfie, the tend to have a reason for it to be posted like whether it is a good outfit, a dope car, or somewhere nice people tend to take a selfie. When people share their selfie, they’re not just showing off to the world, but also to themselves in a way. This is the kind of thing that increases self-esteem.
Making Connections:
- I personally cannot relate to the whole selfie thing because I do not take any pictures of myself. If I do take a picture of an event or something, I make the event or whatever the picture is about goes straight forward for the audience to understand. In today’s society I feel like shows off a bit, so this topic is easy to write about. Teenagers and young adults are the best example, they like to wear expensive clothes a lot these days, something like “supreme” or “off white” (both very good brand, both very expensive brands) t-shirt could go for hundreds even thousands of dollars, they’d wear it and take a picture and put it up on their social media. The picture they took is targeted to specifically that tee “supreme” or “off white” t-shirt as a way of showing off their nice shirt. It would lead to the audience thinking that you’re rich (reality is it might not be true) Bringing back the whole selfie thing, I feel that you’re not being true to yourself if society only sees you as a positive person who is always happy and having fun, but there is no reality in it. I also feel that people tend to post on their social media when they feel happy and positive. When they are not in the brightest mindset, they try to avoid, due to society norms looking down on negative people. Negative maybe not even knowing their background led them or certain event happened and they cannot express to the public. People only wants to see others positive and not negative because it’d bring the surroundings mood down too.
World of Brian 