in an age of Self Design
Shadeh Kouvasian
Our digital reality has led to us constantly being perceived and constantly perceiving. But what does this era of discernment mean for our inner psyche and understanding of self?
The instagram story is live for 24 hours. Once posted others can screenshot, share with their peers, perhaps save it as inspiration or even evidence. The image goes into your archived posts, leaving a digital footprint that we’re not sure can be erased or forever belongs to everyone and no one. A signed, sealed, delivered, singular expression of self, implying a permanence that can be argued as merely fleeting or as an electronic time stamp that could jeopardise your freedom.
That’s a lot of pressure from one little post. We’re all aware of these terms, though most of the time the details are subconscious, they are still very much an anxiety that lives rent free in our minds.
Now let's disregard said post. Currently we are living in a capitalistic system that sets high expectations, focusing on goals, progress, and improvement. In conjunction we are asked to trust in this system, having patience that it will help make our dreams attainable.
However when these dreams and expectations don’t materialise (on personal, governmental, or societal levels) we are left with a deep feeling of impatience that ultimately leads to radical mistrust and a need to realign our focus - putting our egos at the centre of our actions.
Welcome to the era of reactive narcissism, where the focus is on a centre-ing of self.
In Shumon Basar’s Zora Zine piece The Laws of Lorecore he describes this as “Main Character Syndrome” or “MCS”, illustrating it as something that we suffer, “Everything is about you. Revolves around you … in the olde days, we would call this solipsism: that strange sense that you are the only thing that truly exists. MCS is as if a solipsist could conjure a real-feeling world simply by manifesting it through their media channels. During MCS, it’s your stage, your film set, and everyone else is the crew.”
As we adopt behaviours reflecting a sense of entitlement, dogmatism, impatience, and superiority, are we entering an era where ego is rewarded? And what does this mean for how we view ourselves and others?
To Perceive and Be Perceived
"The contemporary Narcissus, cannot be so certain of their own taste. Today we are unable to like ourselves if we are not liked by the society in which we live… we produce aesthetically relevant things and/or surround ourselves with things we believe to be impressive and seductive. And we act publicly—even sacrificing oneself in the name of a public good—in order to be admired by others."
— Boris Groys’ Self-Design, or Productive Narcissism
Catherine Etl'armoire by Théâtre du Mouvement. 1985.
★ We are always being perceived ★
The intense voyeurism of ourselves and others has pushed us into a stage of peak self design where we have become unaware of what we like and why we like it. This has manifested into paralysing self doubt that is being masked by delusions of grandeur. AKA Narcissism, the extreme focus of self.
Of course this directly impacts our behaviours online. As our voyeuristic tendencies become capitalised, our data gets monopolised and the algorithm dictates our feed, what we own (including our taste and opinions) become precarious and debatable.
Through research for MØRNING’s 2023 report Fake vs. Fake, we found that 89% of our community feel like they are playing a character. “Character” implies fictionality, highlighting our awareness of the roles we play within this existence and our detachment from our actions and expressions of self.
Online we oscillate between public displays of affection (PDA) and rejection (PDR). One using a performance of interests, opinions and tastes to seduce, and the other using a performance of rejection to earn respect and admiration.
It’s all in service of our individualistic Self Design. In Dazed’s The rise of the Personal Brand, Sean Monohan theorises that “personal brand was the upsell on surveillance. If you were always being watched, it was simply in service of your own (algorithmically-aided) self-actualisation.”
As we express these public displays of self, how can we distinguish what we truly love, with what we love to seduce others with?
Self Gaze and the Society of the Spectacle
Fake vs. Fake explored the shift in our understanding of identity in an era that has a camera pointing back at us at all times. Shifting our perception of identity through a perpetual “Self Gaze”, that feels eerily like a parasocial relationship. Constantly observing and obsessing over our fragmented reflection.
Me and my friend Ivy stuck in a Self Gaze Glitch
This in turn brought me to the Society of the Spectacle by Marxist theorist Guy Debord - a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism that feels particularly relevant to internet culture today. Through this critique Debord argues that our awareness of external dominant systems have led to more contemplation before action and therefore less understanding of our own desires. Combined with Self Gaze this can be simplified to reflect our online behaviours through the diagram below:
Outsourcing of self
If our tastes, opinions and actions are being mediated through our digital experiences that implies a decentralisation of self. A new sense of self that is crowd sourced or outsourced drawing on the 360 degrees of perception.
Therefore perhaps this essay is not my own critique of our behaviours. But instead a collected perception created and curated by our collective data and simulation, only “owned” by me and this platform to seduce my peers through a public display of intellect and cultural understanding.
We always hear about AI only being as good as its prompts - deemed strictly as good when working in collaboration with a human with “good taste”. It seems perhaps even our understanding of technology can not come without an insistent sense of superiority. But within today's reality where do we develop our tastes or opinions, if not online?
Ultimately our experience of real life self is indistinguishable from the reflection that we constantly see on screens. But this doesn’t have to mean we are flattened or uninspired. Instead we are complicated and tightly woven into the fabric of our digital realms. More complex than our ancestors would be able to understand. A multiverse of existence, pixelated and undefinable, connected and disconnected, owning nothing and everything.