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>I am getting too old.

*I just don't get it anymore.*

I mean, I kind of understand how Instafamous celebrities have to do it, as it is the expectation set by the "industry". And I even get why normal people do it too. But how much is too much and what are the ramifications of it? 

Oh...

I am talking about digital manipulation of personal images....

*We live in a strange world.*

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/244KbMn1hmbNEHm3HPnwLwAovrfnv1ts8kVdbukWyYNRchEB4oubhgRc4pR8NVB34vjPQ.png)

There are plenty of example online, just check "photoshop selfie fails" and see what people do to their images to appear "more or less" than they actually are, as the background warps as they pinch and pull to "enhance" their true selves. But, who are they doing it for and what is the affect on the mind of looking your digital best, knowing that the reality is something very different?

Firstly, what is the point of posting selfies anyway? Sure, the odd one here and there, but this constant stream of sharing images to strangers in the hope for positive reinforcement, seems more like an illness, doesn't it? Just imagine going to someone's house for "slide night" and instead of seeing their holiday pictures (already boring), all they show are pictures of themselves in much the same pose, with much the same expression on their face. 

> Sounds normal.

But, online life is not normal, is it? In the digital realm, you can be who you want to be, because there is the sense that no one knows for sure, there is some level of pseudonymity. And, while for a long time people have been faking the skills they have by using Google'd personality and now AI, through image enhancement apps, they are faking who they are physically too. But of course, just like faking skills, the proof is in the pudding and no matter how good that stream of images look, each day, people have to wake up to their reflection staring back from the mirror and see all those imperfections that can't be removed. 

> Augmented reality.

Perhaps at some point, we will have such good AR tech that we can put on some glasses and walk around, seeing people as we want to see them, or they want us to see them, rather than the reality of what they actually are. Perhaps we will live in virtual worlds of designed personal avatars that allow us to be exactly who we want to be in any given moment. But still, reality exists.

Every compliment received on a digitally enhanced image, is a reminder that it is a lie, that what they are complimenting is not me at all. It is no wonder that if people are getting their sense of self and self-confidence through this false image perspective, there is going to be a high degree of depression and suicide, because there is a high degree of personal conflict between, the way I feel, the image I portray, and the reality of me.

>It is not healthy conflict.

And, worse still is perhaps if I start to believe the compliments are genuinely about me, as I am likely to get a splitting of my personality, and due to the positive reinforcement on one side and the negative on the other due to the voice in my head, I will start to associate with the digital version of myself and like it more, than the real version. And, while this charade can be lived for periods, eventually I would have to go outside into the world as myself - the version of me I don't like. *Real me.*

>How do I feel then?

This is more than sucking in the gut when a pretty girl walks past, or wearing dark colors because it is slimming, it is changing the image we hold of ourselves by removing imperfections, smoothing lines, making waists smaller, arms bigger - and reinforcing it over and over and over again through hundreds of images over a long period of time. People talk about the negative affect that the magazine industry has on body image by presenting a false reality through photoshop and the use of cherrypicked models - how impactful is it when the model is us?

And, we are doing this to ourselves for what, attention? Is that the driving factor here? It makes sense as we live in a society where attention is gold and we are incentivized to get as much of it as we can, even if it doesn't bring us anything of value, other than the likes and stars that make us feel good about ourselves - or bad when we don't get enough. 

But, someone gets something out of it, don't they? Attention is what we might seek, but what the platform owners seek is data and then, there is the massive industry of applications built just to support social media platforms, all of them using various types of mechanisms to pull value from the userbase - mostly through ad revenue.

And perhaps this is what it comes down to, where ad revenue is the goal and the data collection is a facilitation tool for supporting it. Not only are "we the product" on the social platforms, but we are also the "buyer" on the same platforms, so the incentive is to keep us there, generating data, spending money, by any means possible, even if the cost is people's lives.

And, just think about the change in time using the internet over the last years.

>As of 2022, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 147 minutes per day, up from 145 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is the Philippines, with online users spending an average of three hours and 53 minute on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just two hours and three minutes. [](https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/)


I like that last sentence.

>In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just two hours and three minutes.

That is 14.35 hours a week, or *two full days* of work. That is "just" 40% of a fulltime job!

And this is what it all comes down to. 

>Money.

Making people spend time on social media earning nothing but stars and hearts, is a job people and a business mode for corporations. The more time on site they get, the more money they make through ad bookings. They convert all of our attention, into income and profits for shareholders, while the user base descends down the slippery slope of metal ill-health.

So many people these days are deriving their sense of worth from a false reality they have curated for themselves, yet don't seem to see how much harm it is doing, to them, and the communities in which we live. Those magazines with photoshopped models are selling a product in the hope we will buy, and we are no different - we are selling ourselves. 

While we say we want to be seen for "how we are", we have productized ourselves through manipulated images in an attempt for attention, making us objects.

> Don't objectify me!

*We are doing it to ourselves.*

But, no matter how hard we try, that mirror in the bathroom still shows the lines, the scars, the belly and the undefined arms - because no matter how many filters a digital gets applied image, physical reality hasn't changed. 

Psychological reality on the other hand....

"Be the Change"
Not, *fake the change.*


Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]


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