Filter bubble Social Media
All cats are grey in the dark. You know the saying. We tend to say it if we want to express the idea that many things look the same in the dark. That we can overlook some shortcomings. Differences blur at night. They become the same - or unimportant.
Isn’t it just the same in our daily social media whirl? Take Instagram. A platform that is all about photo content. We only read the caption below the images if the picture has moved us or thrilled us in some way. Even then we usually don't read the whole thing. And the Discover feed has no text at all. We are exposed to an absolute flood of images.
I keep catching myself scrolling down blindly. I’m not looking for anything. I’m just enjoying being distracted. Keep on scrolling, and then suddenly: that’s it. This picture grabs me. I open it, look at it, maybe I get an emotional connection from it and perhaps I also give it a like. But now content creators need to pull out all the stops. Photos are becoming more and more elaborately edited so as not to get lost on the picture wall. Sometimes it’s the brightness that’s adjusted, sometimes the contrast. Skin is smoothed, freckles retouched or artfully highlighted. All in pursuit of a beauty ideal. Colour tones are changed. There’s no way the filters available in Instagram are enough nowadays. As we get used to seeing things, we become more demanding.
Any content that doesn’t come up to our viewing standards is doomed. It vanishes in the darkness. It becomes grey. All cats are grey at night. We are bored. Even though we have such abundance. What if we left our smartphones at home - at least for a little bit? And took a look at things as they really are? In daylight. As they really stand in front of us. I keep on trying. As I walk to my car, I watch the trees move in the wind. It wasn’t just the movement that caught my eye, it was the colours as well. When was the last time we looked at a lush green in the evening sunshine? Or noticed the whole spectrum of warm and fiery colours in a sunset? Or admired the bright white of the fluffy clouds high in the sky?
I could keep on going forever. The orange red of my Chucks, the deep blue of my new jeans. The small coffee stain on my white blouse that hopefully only I can see. What is it that makes all these visible? Completely without filters? You’ve got it – daylight. I have a clear goal: to see the world more often through the most spectacular of all filters – daylight. Because not all cats are grey in daylight!
