I went on Instagram for the first time in ages the other day. I haven’t
been off it for any particular reason; I just forgot my password to
the mobile app about eight months ago and became so incensed by
the idea of having to reset it that I almost tossed my phone down a
stormwater drain. Enter my email address to receive a reset token?
How dare you ask me to perform this disgusting chore! Don’t you
know I have better things to do, like dig through my clean laundry
pile for undies and then moan to my boyfriend that I can never find
anything around this place?
Anyway, I was finally moved to log back on, tempted by the promise
of fresh pictures of my friends’ children and their round, juicy
cheeks. Almost immediately I became extremely jealous and
insecure. There’s all this good writing about how #selfie #blessed
#culture is supposed to be about building each other up, but
really, Instagram is a giant digital envy factory. Rationally, I know
everyone’s life is as bizarre and unsettling as my own, and there’s
no amount of money or unicorn hair that makes the experience of
piloting a fragile bag full of organs around this geohell any better.
But then I find myself lusting after objects, many of them pastel
mint in colour, that I know my brain is tricking me into wanting just
because someone else has them.In past societies, people dealt with this human inclination toward
jealousy, envy and contagious desire using hierarchies. It didn’t
work 100 per cent of the time, but in general, peasants didn’t get
jealous of aristocrats because the whole system was very rigid –
peasant things, like millet, sackcloth and illiteracy, were assumed
to be peasant-y by nature, and the same for aristocratic things
like gold, sugar and incest. A place for everything, and everything
in its place. You stop people from desiring what other people
have by erecting very durable taboos about what is appropriate to
whose station. That way, there’s much less scope for what French
egghead/philosopher René Girard calls “mimetic crisis” – when
everyone in a given community learns to desire the same things and
ends up in a complete clusterfuck fighting over them. If you’ve ever
been a teenager or on social media, this situation may ring a bell.Rigid social stratification has some drawbacks, though – the main
one being that it absolutely sucks. And while our current social
system isn’t as elastic or meritocratic as we like to think it is, it’s
certainly better than being Eoin son of Eoin son of Eoin from the
hamlet of Türdchester, where all your ancestors have gone insane
and died from ergot-tainted rye as far back as the local church can
record in the town book (there’s only one).But the question remains: how are we supposed to handle this
immense onslaught of envy- and desire-provoking imagery; these
tantalising fantasy lives constantly dangling in front of us? It’s hard
to find good answers, because this kind of desire is the lifeblood of
consumer advertising (Pretty Lady In Ad Has Product. Now I Also
Want Product). So, if something is being advertised as a solution to
desire-induced anxiety, it’s probably not going to work.Simply being aware of what’s happening doesn’t really work, either.
It makes me think, “I bet those hot people on Instagram aren’t this
weak-willed and jealous.” But I think they are! I think we all are, and
rather than striving for some illusory authenticity, we should just
admit it to each other. Hello, I’m Eleanor and I’m filled with petty
envy. By the way, where did you get those sunnies?user envy
ELEANOR ROBERTSON RECKONS
THERE’S A GREEN-EYED MONSTER
INSIDE ALL OF US.
PhotoLukasz Wierzbowskisomething to say