29 February 2020 | New Scientist | 33Don’t miss
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Media, is a regular look
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by David Farrier asks
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ALTERED CARBON/NETFLIXpersonalities. “If you want to be
more aggressive, outspoken,
sexual or kinky, you can rely on
this self-representation by proxy,”
says Katrin Tiidenberg, who
researches social media and
visual culture at Tallinn University,
Estonia, and is author of Selfies, a
book about the way we represent
ourselves online.
“Because there is this idea
of interpretative flexibility
involved, you can always back
away from it and say it’s just a
joke. These quizzes serve partially
the same purpose,” she says.
Quiz filters like those are just
a small proportion of the filters
used on Instagram: most are of the
type that tuck in cheeks, smooth
out skin and remove even
more blemishes than Photoshop.
Their popularity is probably
best captured by Macalos’s use
of them to finesse her selfies.
“It’s like getting instant plastic
surgery,” she says. “The more I use
it, the more I get addicted to it.”
Macalos says that using the
Photoshop-style benefits of filters
makes her feel 10 times better
about how she looks, especially
the ones that blur the skin.Like the quiz-type filters, which
spread through digital word of
mouth and by users watching
friends and idols using them,
Macalos finds most of her filters
by following celebrity stories on
Instagram. “I use them especially
when they look good with that
specific filter,” she says, citing,
among others, US celebrity
Kylie Jenner using filters on her
photos and videos.
Those face-shifting filters allow
people to play about with identity,
which is important for teenage
or pre-teen Instagram users. Effie
Le Moignan, a research associate
in social computing at Newcastle
University, UK, takes a cautious
view of their place in an online
world. “There are valid concerns
where this overlaps with body
image, peer pressure and diet
culture, but fundamentally
Instagram is a context where
people are being aesthetically
playful,” she says.
Beautifying filters are complex,
says Tiidenberg. “They make us
feel better about ourselves, and
allow us to see ourselves as more
similar to the standards of what
is considered beautiful at that
moment in the culture. But that is
also why they’re problematic – in
many cases we’ve seen the filter’s
index of how beautiful people are
is quite racist and problematic.”
As she points out, the filters
tend to make skin lighter and eyes
larger, promoting the Western
ideal of beauty – even though
they are used across the world.
That isn’t something that
worries Macalos or her friends.
“They don’t mind me using them,
but they do think I look different
and weird,” she says – “but in a
good way.” ❚Chris Stokel-Walker is a technology
writer based in Newcastle, UK“ Most filters tuck in
cheeks, smooth out
skin and remove
more blemishes
than Photoshop”