Virtual Authenticity?
Oct 2022
How the Picturesque Aesthetic Still Finds Itself in Post-Pandemic Trends
Ariel Grossman
I scroll through my photo library, attempting to find the photos that best represent my first month at Washington University in Saint Louis. After thirty minutes of my eyes being glued to my screen, I successfully select ten photos that I deem instagrammable — something that is interesting enough to grab your attention. It is appealing, eye-catching. It is a post that compels you to stop scrolling for just a few seconds, so you can double tap your screen and leave a witty comment.
In Daniel Penny’s 2017 article “The Instagrammable Charm of the Bourgeoisie” for the Boston Review, he researches the bourgeois history behind certain social media trends to dive deep into our obsession with appearing aesthetically pleasing in a society saturated with curated pictures and imposters. As an arts and culture journalist, he specifically focuses on the “generic similarities between the picturesque and images one finds on Instagram.” Penny remarks that originally the picturesque “was ultimately about situating oneself within the class structure by demonstrating a heightened aesthetic appreciation of the natural world, during a period when land was becoming increasingly commodified.” Even though that definition of the picturesque describes the aesthetic during the eighteenth century, the updated version of the aesthetic found itself in the age of Instagram back in 2017 through travel photos and selfies that expressed a certain awareness of an influencer’s surroundings. The past and current interpretations of the picturesque epitomize an appreciation for the “natural” aspects of the world around us and the ones we find in ourselves.
“This obsession with looking natural” continues to flood Instagram feeds today, and the Covid-19 pandemic has consequently reinvigorated many forms of this trend (Penny). On Instagram the “natural” aesthetic need not currently reflect actual nature, as in trees or ponds, but it can include realistic aspects of a user’s daily life. In 2017, Penny recognizes that “the platform — and its aesthetic — are evolving.” Since then, the aesthetic currently presents itself in the form of photo dumps, the trend #makeinstagramcasualagain, and visual features on video chat platforms. On the surface, these new phenomena appear to differentiate themselves from the picturesque — in so far as they establish a sense of authenticity. But Covid-19 catapulted a change of self-presentation, which further intensified the picturesque found online as a new way to present our polished lifestyles to our colleagues, family, and followers.
In the early stages of the pandemic, our experience of human connection was completely altered, leading to an entirely new longing for intimacy and a strong desire to find something beautiful in the mundane. The world contracted from what we previously knew, and it forced us to see things we had never seen before. We walked around parts of our neighborhood we did not know existed and spent time exploring the different rooms in our homes. There was such a craving to connect with the people, items, and the places around us that we eventually began to present our authentic desire for human connection through photos online. Photo dumping became an online representation of users’ attempts to connect with their followers by sharing snippets of their daily life in quarantine. Consequently, a certain type of authenticity that social media had never seen before evolved. Even the word “dump” implies these posts were constructed with minimal effort and a nonchalant attitude that indicates, “I barely even looked at this pile of photos before posting online.”
Initially, photo dumps seemed to be an authentic way to encourage intimacy online, but they eventually began to exhibit a sense of careful curation, and the trend revealed itself as inauthentically pleasant. In an Instagram photo dump, the individual pictures do not necessarily fit the picturesque, but the culminating effect of the pictures renders certain aspects of the aesthetic. Instagram allows you to post no more than ten images at a time and you can only pick one caption for all photos, so you must rely on your choice of images to develop a storyline.
Performing authenticity through a series of chosen photos is paradoxical. It seems nearly impossible to label the photo dump trend as care-free when the photos included in the post are deliberately chosen to be published on Instagram. The trend shifted toward a more curated presence at the start of the pandemic when it became so popular that celebrities began to craft their own version of photo dumps. In March 2020, Bella Hadid captioned a post that included a series of photos “Random!”, which blatantly ignored the fact that she likely selected those “random” photos from a much larger pile than what was posted on Instagram. According to the Input article “Everyone You Love Is Doing It: How the ‘Photo Dump’ Took over Instagram,” more than 700,000 “photo dump” or #photodump instances appeared online by July 2021 in the United States (Ernest). When a trend becomes a viral hashtag, I question its true authenticity because it becomes so formulaic that it loses all sense of genuineness. There is something so alluring about photos that appear to be haphazardly put together, but in reality, they were equally manicured to fit a certain aesthetic. It can be extremely hard to eliminate all aspects of a curated presence online, but are the trends of the current age of Instagram steering us in the direction of a more genuine online appearance or more towards the picturesque aesthetic?
In 2017, Instagram “filters — which, for example, let you wear cartoon glasses or bunny ears” dominated the platform (Penny). But in 2021, many Instagram users became tired of the oversaturated and non-realistic filters, and in response have launched the trend #make-instagramcasualagain. Having the “make Instagram casual again” mentality announces to your followers that you are unfiltered. But can there truly be a way to have an unfiltered presence online?
When it comes down to it, online we are a commodity, so “there is no point in putting anything on Instagram that is not, in some sense, for sale — even if what is for sale is an abstract possibility unlocked through class belonging” (Penny). Even though Penny’s claim does not discuss our actual, physical bodies, it still pertains to the commodification of “self” in the current age of Instagram. We want to sell ourselves as a genuine presence online while simultaneously coming across desirable to our followers. Today’s method of self-commodification differs from the one Penny describes in his article, which declares that “the project of the Instagrammer is not to find interesting things to photograph, but to become the interesting thing” (Penny). In 2021, social media commodifies the everyday aspects of one’s mundane life. Therefore, we are not commodified anymore by just a selfie online, which was “the most popular kind of image on Instagram” back in 2017 (Penny). We are currently commodified by what we eat, what we wear, what music we listen to, where we travel, and any other aspects of our lives we choose to share with our followers. As a result of this, our online presences have begun to fit the picturesque because we are sharing the accessibly pleasant moments of our day-to-day lives.
The pandemic necessitated a new way to present ourselves online through Zoom, which meant a new opportunity to alter our appearance and surroundings. Even though Zoom is not considered to be a social media platform, it still acts to virtually connect with others and allows us to incorporate specific elements of the picturesque. A level of greater authenticity arose on Zoom because you could not just show your life in a series of ten photos. You had the ability to see inside coworkers’ and classmates’ homes, which almost felt like an invasion of their privacy at times. But there was still a way to curate a version of yourself on Zoom. I remember waking up thirty minutes before my online class to put on a presentable sweater, brush my hair, and put on a little makeup. By organizing the bookshelf that sits in the corner of your room, choosing to wear a collared shirt, or even turning on the app’s beauty filter option, we were able to manipulate the image presented online to our peers. The illusion of authenticity dominated Zoom, but the picturesque still found itself on the video chat platform through a desire to appear pleasant to others on the meeting.
Even though these pandemic-driven trends lack complete authenticity, these new virtual opportunities have formed a type of intimacy we had never seen before. The abundance of photo dumps and the “make Instagram casual again” mindset allowed certain types of authenticity to thrive at this time. At a time when we could rarely view what hid under a person’s mask, the ability to virtually see a colleague’s or friend’s entire face allowed us to experience some form of intimacy. Pandemic photo dumps, viral hashtags, and Zoom video chats may be the closest we have gotten to virtual authenticity in a while. But when the pandemic ends, will we go back to being more curated online or are we going to embrace this less-filtered side of ourselves?
Works Cited
Ernest, Maya. “Everyone You Love Is Doing It: How the ‘Photo Dump’ Took over Instagram.” Input, 14 July 2021, inputmag.com/culture/instagram-photo-dump-trend-captions-meaning-kim-kardashian-kylie-jenner-bella-hadid-emma-chamberlain.
Penny, Daniel. “The Instagrammable Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” Boston Review, 12 Sept. 2019, bostonreview.net/literature-culture/daniel-penny-instagrammable-charm-bourgeoisie.
Ariel Grossman is from New Jersey and studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.