Last Tuesday, Clickbait hosted a panel at Deutsch advertising agency. As we know, the panel is kind of the last word in advertising power pieces, revered in marketing circles as the modern day intellectual salon, where ideas are politely pontificated and debated.
Only this panel featured four young internet artists, who were better versed in the exchange dynamics of a social feed than an IRL ad forum. The consequent havoc was kind of amazing, with reactions ranging from shaking wine glasses, shock and awe expressions, to a dramatic walk out (request footage here).
For this week’s issue we thought we would take a small break from usual digital postcard, and dissect the learnings that emerged from the controversial clash of ideologies assembled in the same room that night.
Introducing the Panelists:
Adi Rajkovic + Arvida Byström + Jasmine Nyende + Sanam Sindhi
Four young, female artists who primarily use the internet as their gallery of choice. The purpose of the talk was to discuss the evolution of creativity in the age of social media, with a focus on the challenges The Clickonomy presents. What proceeded to play out over the course of an hour long panel and a 45 minute Q&A was akin to a piece of performance art itself, during which we all went on a journey to the bottom of the chasm that exists between the credos of the internet and those of real life.
It is no news news that the internet exists as an alternative dimension, popular intellect arguing for years that there is a digital space distinct from the social world. Indeed most of us have come to love the internet as this other dimension, a place we can visit, where we play by different rules, experiment with different codes, and exercise a level of control, dare we say manipulation, over our personal brand to a degree that we can only fantasize about in real life. A bit like going to HBO’s Westworld. And then we return to reality.
Recently this ‘digital dualism’ perspective has been challenged — not least by Nathan Jurgensen — and his view that online and offline aren’t two black and white positions, like on and off. Instead they coexist with each other, like the mind and body.
What our panelist posited however, is that while this coexistence might be correct in theory, in practice perhaps neither the dualism or coexistence hypothesis is quite right yet. Primarily because both start with the assumption that the social world is ground zero, and that the internet is some kind of secondary extension of that social world. Either directly or indirectly.
But what if the internet is ground zero, the first dimension? The starting point for your existence and more importantly, your reality? What if your primary presence is defined by the internet world, and the social world is just a place you (have to) visit for practical things like money?
Once you get your head around this viewpoint, the real problem for the panelists comes into very sharp focus. In their reality they are queen bees. They have mastered the art of playing by the internet rules; garnering likes, shares and clicks in abundance. They are the power forces that communities of social feeds galvanize around. And they can wield this influence to become collective forces for change — their networks only strengthening the more they combine and join forces with each other. They amass armies of followers. Free from traditional power structures. Free from dated controls such as age, sex and race. Free from stereotypical assumptions.
“I use my identity as a first-generation brown girl as inspiration. Growing up, I didn’t see any South Asian artists or people of color in the media. Today, with my selfies, I get messages from girls saying ‘You make me comfortable with being myself.’” — Sanam Sindhi
In this interpretation, a digital dualism does exist, but is the inverse of the one we traditionally believed in. In this experience the internet is the first dimension. And as soon as it gets a viable economy going — where you can translate your likes and clicks and shares into some form of sustenance supporting currency — for many the internet won’t be a an extension of the social world. But the primary form of existence.
The Clickonomy refers to the internet currency of clicks, likes, shares and comments that seemingly fuels online creativity today — if not financially reimbursing it.
Each of our panelists was more than familiar with the nature of The Clickonomy: while not all of them had +100K followers, they were attuned to the power and influence such numbers could earn them in the internet dimension. But they were also acutely aware, and much more inclined to point out the huge amount of pressure these numbers also created. Establishing and maintaining influence is like a full-time job.
Inundated with comments, from idealistic fans to threatening trolls — all day, every day — they were encumbered with a social responsibility to respond to these comments, for which they were given no training, recognition or salary. Each spoke of the emotional toll responding took, not to mention time, ultimately pointing to how much it influenced their mood and creativity against their will.
“Putting anyone on a pedestal isn’t useful. Having a following is great for my work (as a photographer), but in some ways it was better when I had a smaller following because it felt more like a close community. It was easier to answer people. When you have a large following, there’s an added sense of responsibility. Sometimes there isn’t time to answer everyone you want to you messages you.” — Arvida Byström
That this pressure was met with a common response of: “well just get off the internet then” was not only patronizing, but created an ever-climbing wall between them and the traditional creative world, who they perceived to massively underestimate their craft. Because for internet artists the internet is not just a platform, it is the art form itself. So telling them to “get off the internet” is like telling a fish not to breathe oxygen. Without it, their ideas and following die.
While much of the panel discussed how to make the internet pay (a question that has been all pervasive in every creative field for the last 20 years (from TIDAL to Vine), what it also hinted at was the answer does not lie in traditional economic models that have been borne to fit the constraints and purposes of the physical world, which is not a space run by Insta-artists with legions of fans. These are the models of the ordered establishment, the same ones that have been governing an archaic system for millennia.
What if the influencer economy is run on a different model — one separate from the IRL economy (bitcoin, co-operative models such as Youtube’s new tipping features)? If realized to its full potential, this new wave of creators might finally be able to give the established order a run for their money, and in so doing complete on the basic starting point for every artistic movement in recent history.
Because for all its raw, unfiltered energy, what this new media creative movement has on its side is sheer scale of subscribers. With few constraints of geography or time or space, this is the first creative wave that can challenge the established order in terms of force of power. While the artists spoke about unions and grassroots collectives designed in their nascent form to defy the corporate status quo, in reality this is only the beginning. If and when they figure out an economic system that can translate the votes of a like into sustenance-buying currency, they will be not only able to disrupt the corporate system, but completely circumnavigate it. To potentially transformative effect.
The fourth observation came less from what the panelists said, and more from how the whole event went down. Having Instagram stars on a live panel inadvertently worked to recreate the comments section of the social feel in real life. When the audience started asking questions seeking further analysis of how the internet could be improved — economically or otherwise — the artists simply couldn’t comprehend how these questions missed the point so consistently. So they proceeded to respond as you might to a troll in your comments section: with frustration and defensiveness.
Understanding was rapidly replaced by the aggressive dismissal of opposing views: this is my space, in my space, my views reign, if you disagree then take your views elsewhere. We had inadvertently created two filter bubbles in the same physical place, one representing advertising creativity, the other internet creativity, and the result was a slanging match of the type you might find in the Trump aisle. With both sides guilty in the ensuing fracas.
And so the biggest challenge to progressive change revealed itself: while the internet offers its inhabitants an entirely new ecosystem to create from, it also offers invisible walls for them to hide behind. The filter bubble is something we can blame on algorithms, indeed one panelist went sofar as to determine that the algorithm itself was racist; but the truth is survivalism lies deep within human nature. Our empathy only ever stretches so far as it is in our self interest, and while some scholars have claimed that social media is ultimately working to extend that empathy, the counter argument is that the internet is also acting as an enabler in letting us shut out — or worse shut down — any views we don’t agree with.
In the End…
It’s clear what the real problem for the citizens of the internet world is: the odds are stacked against them because they don’t yet have a feasible internet economy. The duality between the real world and digital worlds will never become fluid if those who influence and reign in the digital world must still conform to the economic structures of the physical world: built by people who don’t understand the new rules of creativity on the internet.
The internet may well come to be defined as the primary dimension, and while that dimension seeks out an economic system that can sustain itself, it is also rapidly developing a moral code that further sets it apart from our current reality. The moral code of the internet doesn’t have roots in religion or constitutions, but ones and zeros. It is human nature with no constraint: the baseline of human existence. And just as the homo sapiens allegedly ate the neanderthals, the first generation of internet natives are not messing around with playing polite toward dated moral concepts. This is a brave new world, and the moral code it proposes is one based on survival, not sportsmanship.
Thank you for reading
