Response2 – IanD

Jennicam

I’m surprised that, before reading these articles, I had never heard of Jennicam, given how much of a cultural phenomenon it was. The most intriguing thing about Jennifer Ringley’s project is that, although it did create a ‘new and strange mirror’ reflecting human nature, it can also me seen as merely a window into our mundane everyday lives. Apart from the obvious reasons of males on the internet wanting to see pictures from inside a college girl’s dorm room, I think Jennicam welcomed a different kind of voyeurism as well. There is something about a raw, unedited account of this girl’s experience that makes people empathize and makes people curious.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Jennicam was also a kind of performance. It doesn’t take a PhD in Psychology to know that human behavior changes when others are watching. The at-the-time new technology of the webcam allowed the number of people watching her to skyrocket. So is this Jennifer’s real self? Or has she abandoned authenticity in front of the lens?

An article I read about Jennicam cited a recent tweet that reads “We are all Jennicam now.” The project was a harbinger for the social media-obsessed world we live in today. We are constantly sharing our opinions, our surroundings, our locations, and our selves with anyone who is willing to log on. There are some aspects of social media that contrast with Jennicam, though. First, there are so many sharing that each person is, in a way, less miraculous. And secondly, not many are willing to share in such a raw fashion. For many, posts and images are curated, staged, and edited. Now, nearly everyone has access to technologies that allow you to create an online self. It is in their hands to construct and shape that persona. Although there are benefits to building online communities of online selves, I can’t help but wonder if our society may be hindered by the dissociation of the real world self and the self driven by a keyboard.

Shop Mandiberg

The second project that I chose is Shop Mandiberg. The more I explored Michael Mandiberg’s site, the more I understood the implications and the poignant meaning behind the project. At first, I thought that he was just selling some of his belongings. Then, I realized that you could not only buy his time, forcing him to do whatever you task you pay for, but you could also buy letters from his family, his bank statements, and the contents of his wallet. Mandiberg was asking the audience to be perverse and to strip him away to nothing. Perhaps what is revealed here is that, without all of these things, he still has himself. You don’t need possessions or money or even government-given identification to be a human being. The kind of self that is left after expelling all of these auxiliary facets of himself is but the marrow; the most concentrated self contained within.

The new technologies that make this project possible is the internet and the e-commerce site. They shape the self, in this scenario, by allowing others to peer into Mandiberg’s personal life and buy whatever they like without even interacting with him directly. Just like with Jennicam, I feel like people tend to lose themselves a bit when given the anonymity of an online persona. Likewise, in an e-commerce setting, people can buy things without seeing them first-hand or considering the consequences, making it a lot easier to impulse buy. This may be tangental, but I feel like this project also addresses the tendency of our online selves to make decisions without as much consideration. Given the abundance of corporate advertisements in our society, perhaps we should take a moment to consider what is really driving our choices before we click “confirm purchase.”