Yoona Bang
On March 27th, 2023, I posted an image set with the caption: Are u ready for #algorithmprincesssummer
Across the five bikini mirror selfies, there are the words:
GOOD GIRLS LISTEN TO THEIR ALGORITHM
MY ALGORITHM LOVES ME
BECAUSE I POSTED IN A BIKINI
FEEDING MY ALGORITHM
LIKE THE GOOD WOMAN I AM
The act of wearing a bikini is itself an act where I feel most like I am seducing and seduced by my own body. Growing up Korean and in a Christian household, the idea of seduction has always been tinged with this sense of sin. No matter if you’re the seducer or the seduced, you were engaging in a ‘morally bad’ deed. The more skin you show, the farther you’ve strayed from God’s light. My mother never fails to remind me of this.
The act of taking a selfie in a bikini is itself an act where I feel most like I am seducing and seduced by my own image. It feels a bit like I am “pimping myself out” for an image and through an image, because I am haunted by the moral guilt that has been instilled in me—shame being at the core of my experience of girlhood.
While I’ve unfollowed nearly everybody I once knew at church, my past youth teachers, ex friends who have remained religious, and even old pastors I’ve had still follow me on Instagram. Their feed is the stage I hope to never show up on. Instagram feels like this panopticon where I am displayed and caged within every surrounding cell while these people, including myself, are at the center tower watching my Internet performance unfold—to their delight or dismay
.
The first bikini pics I ever posted were those #algorithmprincesssummer selfies last March. Later that day, my mom texted me.
We talked on the phone after this. While her text was sweet, I could hear the disappointment in her voice. She told me that several church moms texted her about it and that my post made her feel ashamed in front of all of them. If I wasn’t already, I became even more aware of what I chose to post. But my hypersensitivity to the eyes of these God-fearing women is what brought me to certain metaphors between God, the Internet, “good” girls, and their algorithms.
Between “hot girl summer” and what I’ve playfully defined as “algorithm princess summer” is the difference that one recognizes the presence of The Algorithm and its relation to The Girl. The Girl is not just hot, but she is a princess. The name “princess,” its own polar label of both power and the lack thereof. A sovereign, reigning princess vs. daddy’s little princess. Her hotness—for the Algorithm to define. The exposure of her skin, her tits, and her soft legs—for the Algorithm to reward. As the Algorithm’s princess, she can believe that she is the princess of the algorithm with power over it, seducing it, while the Algorithm perhaps in fact seduces her, whispering to undress like a good girl. Sometimes the Algorithm doesn’t have to push that far, because a plain selfie, face in frame, is enough to salivate at too.
I conceptualize the Algorithm as a he, because I think about the technocapitalists that own our platforms, the male software engineers of Big Tech coding like they’re Dr. Frankenstein stitching together a beast in their own image, and the male users who will eat up your bikini post like soldiers of the Algorithm’s “reply guy” army. But the Algorithm is also a he, because God is a he that people worship on Sundays, that people pray to everyday, and that people live by. While I no longer spend my Sundays within the four walls of a church, I am still surrounded by people that worship a he that is like God. But I fear the Algorithm more than I fear God, because any little thing I do online becomes an act of worship though I don’t intend it to be. Every little click, scroll, or post serves to optimize the Algorithm, making him stronger, bigger, better. It’s like praying except it isn’t your existence being made better, it’s the Algorithm’s. My mom would tell me:
Hold God in your heart. Let Him take control.
But in the back of my mind, the Algorithm is lurking – and I let him jurisdict how I behave online (and even offline). I let him in. I let him take control.
While I make these spiritual metaphors about how the Algorithm seduces me, I am searching for the divide that exists between recognizing the Algorithm’s presence in our everyday lives and recognizing my own self-determination. While posting a bikini picture makes me feel like I am pimping myself out for the Algorithm, it is also my way of enacting my bodily autonomy online. If church made me feel demonized for doing it, I’ll have to hope the Internet doesn’t too. Perhaps the idea of autonomy online (whether performed or not) is a fallacy, but I would much rather choose (when and how) to be seduced by the Algorithm, the Internet, and the lures of the cyberspace void, than to falsely believe that I am not—for all the mysticism of the Algorithm and the digital sublime rests on the assumption that every facet of my being can be rationalized into bits of ones and zeros. But the notion that my existence can be commodified to such an infinitesimal degree is a myth. I am an indeterminate, ever-evolving body of ephemera itself. The Algorithm will never know me, rather, I lure the Algorithm into believing he does. To be a girl is to perhaps seduce the Algorithm in this way, for our souls, hearts, and bodies are nobody’s but our own.