I Own; Therefore I am.
Materialism in Digital Communities
Gabby Keiran
The University of Alberta
COMM 555: New Media Narratives
Dr. Jessica Lacetti
February 12th, 2024
As humans, we are intrinsically attracted to spectacles of devastation. Entire genres of media are dedicated solely to disasters, both natural and man-made, and the fallout of such events. Traffic slows as drivers crane their necks to catch a glimpse of wrecked vehicles on the side of the road, our eyes constantly drawn to carnage both on-screen and off. From a safe distance, we thank our luck that we were not involved, and quickly move on with our lives. This desensitization has become even more prevalent as social media has grown to dominate attention spans, and users can wipe away the horror with a mere flick of their thumbs. Until we are the direct victim of such an incident, it is hard to truly internalize what it is to be without our basic needs— to have to start back at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy and build our way up. On January 26th, 2024 I was awoken in the middle of the night by such a disaster. My apartment building had caught fire, and in the hours that followed I watched as the flames spread across the entire façade of my building, engulfing the roof and leaving foul-smelling ashes in its wake. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been confronted with the frustration and grief that comes with losing everything I had built for myself within the course of my lifetime. I’ve become increasingly familiar with the extent to which my belongings had become a reflection of myself— my persona is no longer reflected upon the books adorning my shelves, or the paintings hung on my walls. I have watched as the breaking news grew stale, and the residents of my old apartment building were left with no answers, no homes, and no platforms upon which to voice their frustrations. While social media has become a tool to gather support for certain social movements, we have tumbled into an anthropocenic dilemma— human crises have become a branding issue. In the midst of the glamour of celebrity selfies, the exotic beauty of travel blogs, and the many curated ads designed to tug at users’ attention, how does an individual lacking financial and material resources compete? Digital identities, as extensions of our own lived experiences, have become so intrinsically linked to the collection of material items and wealth that individuals who lack the resources needed to participate have effectively become ostracized from online communities. The exclusion of their voices and stories from our online spaces aggravate issues that threaten all members of society, as solutions that may arise from their perspectives are not heard nor implemented. The selfies I curated to highlight my experience display parts of an identity that I am no longer able to inhabit— items which filled my shelves and drawers, anonymized and deconstructed into something less recognizable in an attempt to showcase the strange “otherness” which now rests like a shroud over my new life.
Regardless of the extent to which an individual rejects consumerism within their lifetime, humans as a species devote much time and energy towards the collection of “stuff”. It is one of the first concepts we learn as infants— which items belong to us, and which items do not. We learn self-expression— how to dress for certain occasions, what towels should be used only when guests arrive, which paintings to hang in what rooms. In modern societies, we are taught from an early age that “we are the sum of our possessions” (Belk, 1988, p. 139), and as we grow, we sculpt our collection to better reflect our changing values and personalities. We take pride in what we own— and what we don’t. In 2019, Netflix released “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo”, a limited series depicting “author Marie Kondo [offering] tips on the art of keeping your home and workspace tidy and organized” (IMBd.com, 2019). This show sparked a movement on social media, “#konmarimethod” became a trending hashtag (Adam, 2019) and hundreds of new videos and accounts were created showing various people tidying their living spaces and throwing away copious amounts of items which “do not spark joy” (Netflix, 2019). Even in this performance of minimalism, it becomes apparent that in order to reduce the amount of clutter in one’s home, one must first have items to clutter it. #Konmarimethod became a subvert display of wealth, with the content receiving the most interactions being accounts owned by individuals who no longer “found joy” in expensive, luxury items. In this way, individuals lacking in material wealth, or those who lost their possessions to crime or disasters were effectively barred from participating in a popular online trend. How does one participate in such a trend when every possession they own is coveted, precious, and well-utilized? If “visibility is interpreted as giving… power” (Tiidenberg, 2017), how can members of the bourgeoning low-income class access this power and platform while maintaining the same level of privacy and dignity that wealthier social classes inherently adopt? This is a question I have had to confront in my own life, in the wake of the fire. In the midst of such materiality, it seems impossible to curate an identity that would demand answers to the questions I and the other victims have been asking, without revealing that I am wearing my mother’s sweatpants, and a several-sizes-too-big shirt borrowed from my aunt. In not having any of my own possessions, nor the exotic allure of luxury that garners views, I feel as though I have been forgotten. In “Possession and the Extended Self”, Russell Belk states, “If possessions are viewed as part of self, it follows that an unintentional loss of possessions should be regarded as a loss or lessening of self.” In losing my home and everything it contained, I have become invisible. Without the “objects that [I had once used] to communicate to others” (Dittmar, 1992), to make the “visual truth claim” (Tiidenberg, 2017) that I am as equally valuable as materially wealthier individuals, I lost the platform and influence that tokens of wealth innately provide.
The days following the fire were a mess of phone calls, form filing, sleepless nights and fraying emotions. At night, I stared up at the ceiling as the inflated mattress beneath me slowly sunk closer to the floor, making lists in my head of all that I had lost. I spent hours writing down every item for the insurance company, numbed to the weight of all the meaning that I had projected onto the inanimate objects. The “identity resources” that became keystones in preserving the “internal sense of balance” (Hawkins & Rome, 2019) that I’d precariously maintained were reduced to words on a screen. My whole life— the “sum of myself” (Belk, 1988), was laid out in an excel sheet on a borrowed computer. This process became the inspiration for my selfies. Using a simple AI app, “Photoleap”, I modified images I had taken of myself in the first few weeks of having moved into my old apartment. In the same way as I had with the insurance forms, I listed items that occupied the shelves and cupboards of my apartment into the prompt section, ruminating on the small items that tend to be forgotten in most households. Makeup brushes, towels, bottles of shampoo and conditioner… Items that once brought a sense of control to my life (Hawkins & Rome, 2019), and had allowed me to cultivate an image of myself that I could project to the world in the same way that selfies act upon digital communities (Smith, 2020). The app I used for my generated selfies was also purposeful, as Photoleap “utilize[s] stable diffusion AI generator technology” (Photoleap, FAQ) which is trained using the LAION-5B dataset. This dataset “consists of a very large number of images… which are collected using web scrapers” (Goetze, 2024). Simply put, my selfies were generated utilizing the copyrighted works of countless artists, who neither gave permission nor were credited by the founding company, “Lightworks” (Goetze, 2024). As such, the elements which comprise my likeness are an amalgamation of countless lifetimes worth of experience and training. In this way, my selfies hold within them the particles of thousands of lives separate from my own. This anonymity speaks to the fact that we, as humans, have evolved to share in the commonality of “integrating possessions into [our] identities” (Hawkins & Rome, 2019). I further incorporate this theme of anonymity within the items themselves. No brand names, tags, words, or otherwise identifying images are displayed on any of the items shown— these items could have belonged to anyone, from anywhere. The resulting images are in essence a depiction of myself, everyone, and no one at all.
Our reliance on wealth as a primary platform for gaining influence (Smith, 2020) creates a closed system that further aggravates the inequalities present in reality. “Multi-billion-dollar industries are built around the “influence” peddled by popular online figures… who appear independently wealthy” (Smith, 2020). Without the ability to even fake the appearance of wealth, low-income individuals and/or victims of disasters must resort to other means to garner attention from a flighty audience base. As a result, many individuals rely on their own stories to bolster engagement— stories that are often painful to recount. In the same way that extreme wealth is an exotic notion to the majority of social media users, so too is extreme poverty. “The more frightening a television program, the more enjoyment and entertainment people expect from it, the more they tend to select it for viewing, and the more they like to talk about it in subsequent conversations.” (Portell, Mullet, 2014). “Humans of New York” (@humansofny), an online empire with 12.9M Instagram followers and 17M Facebook followers, is a journalistic serialization created by Brandon Stanton. Stanton publishes the stories of “everyday citizens” on the streets of Manhattan in an effort to depict “New York City, one story at a time” (Stanton, n.d.). Notably, the stories of former and presently houseless individuals garner particular attraction. One such instance, published on June 9th, 2022, tells the story of a formerly unhoused woman who was lifted out of poverty by a Good Samaritan. The post currently has more than 118K likes and 1.1K shares, with hundreds of comments from readers which read “sobbing with all my heart”, and “this story is heartbreaking” (Humans of New York, 2022). Stories like this are shared across the internet, often attached to crowdfunding links to garner donations from sympathetic viewers. For many victims of trauma, the commodity of their hardship can be used to access virality, desperately needed resources, and for a lucky few, accountability. In this way, social media has effectively attached a price to an individual’s pain and trauma— a price which many individuals experiencing poverty are all too eager to pay.
So, what is the cost of identity? This is the question I had to confront when my apartment was burnt down. It took two weeks for my insurance company to neatly total the price tag for my own— $41,165.17. For just over forty thousand dollars, I could reassume the visibility and presence I once held. Alternatively, I could carve out a voice using my own trauma as a spearhead and sell my pain to the highest bidder. Either way, I’m starting fresh— once again learning the concept of belonging, through what belongs to me. As for my digital identity, I will have to decide how to brand my tragedy. Perhaps I will make it all seem purposeful, let the unknowing assume that I went too far with the “#konmarimethod” trend— maybe none of my belongings sparked joy anymore. Either way, if we are what we own, then I am currently nothing at all.
“It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.” — Paul Cezanne
References
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