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LADY GAGA GOT a bit of a land earlier this month when Instagram sent her an email, apparently automated, containing safety information after users flagged her photographs. Gaga had posted some handwritten lyrics from her new album, and some fans clearly took this as indicative of a frail mental state. With lines like “Each day I cry / I feel so low from living high”, you can see how some of Gaga’s monsters were concerned.
Gaga seemed perturbed by Instagram’s preset pep talk, though, and tweeted “What the actual hell? Hahahaha”, which seems a little unfair seeing as the idea that Instagram will send safety information to users who are reported as being at risk is kind of great.
In fairness to Gaga, she was probably feeling a little defensive; it’s not nice when strangers cast aspersions on you when all you were doing was diligently promoting your latest release, as per your contractual obligations. Considering Gaga’s previous record as an advocate of mental health awareness, it seems an odd reaction. Possibly because a celebrity’s social media presence, far from being a window to his or her soul, is a carefully-managed promo reel, and fans getting the wrong idea is… Well. A bit of a PR fail.
Social media has sold us all a platform for self-expression on a scale that we could scarcely have imagined only a few short years ago. It’s given rise to a pervading trend of image management – not just amongst the famous. Through social media, ordinary plebs like moi and toi can now compartmentalise our private life into private-private and public-private. We promote that attractive side of ourselves through carefully-posed selfies, filtered photographs of our dinners (#nom), strategic check-ins at hot spots and witticisms we nicked from George Takei. It scarcely matters if we’re really sitting on a mound of takeaway wrappers in our pyjamas, watching repeats of Top Gear on Dave; no one need ever know. We’re all master image manipulators now.
Celebrities can share their “quirks” with their public by simulating intimacy via social networking. Usually, this manifests in artful selfies and carefully plotted tweets. Just as it is for the rest of us, there’s more than a hint of micromanagement to this faux familiarity, and it’s rare that a celebrity shows us something that contradicts their “public” persona. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to see the string-pulling, which is why Gaga’s fans reported her lyrics; there is a difference between the celebrity’s private life and the image they present to the public, but social media blurs those lines.
In fact, the idea that social media can frame true self-expression is debatable, and we don’t just see that in the carefully managed accounts run by celebrities and their PR teams. Instagram also made headlines this month when it shut down the account of photographer and visual artist Petra Collins. The offending image was a self-portrait in which Collins, unwaxed, posed in a bikini bottom.
The thin glimpse of a young woman’s pubic hair was deemed to violate Instagram’s terms of use, although the company has little issue with Rihanna’s knickerless arse, as she’s bald as an egg from the neck down. The message seems to be: share, overshare, frame, filter and pose, but do it in a way that the world finds aesthetically pleasing. Rihanna can be provocative via safe, sanctioned sexiness, but a photograph that silently challenges beauty standards? Oh hell no.
Meanwhile, over on Facebook, the company has lifted a ban on decapitation videos so long as it’s clear the act is condemned, but photographs of breastfeeding infants where the infant is not “actively engaged in nursing” – read: no nipples, please, we’re squeamish – are deemed to violate its terms of service. Not to pick on the poor lamb, but Rihanna’s arse cheeks and jewel-pastied boobs are, again, a-ok.
Why pubes and nips are morally warping but near-nude glamour shots are not is confounding. It smacks of the kind of loophole hunting one usually associates with teams of Hollywood super-lawyers, treading the fine line between what’s allowed and what’s not allowed to push products at us in the most provocative way possible.
More and more, the celebrity is the product – not simply their talent, but their body, thoughts and person, all in one. We can’t deny there is massive pressure on stars, particularly female stars, to present physical perfection alongside their art, and selling the idea of sexual availability is yet another complication. “Self-expression”, for many of the biggest stars on social media, involves a lot of booty shots. “#nofilter!” tweeted Kanye the other day, as his missus Kim K does the look-over-shoulder-bum-stuck-out pose in a white swim suit (duck face is for tweens, duck arse is for ladies). The idea is to present an intimate portrait of Kardashian-West home life, but with Ye Olde Sexy Twiste.
I was going to point out we never see Kanye with dat ass out on Twitter, but let’s not tempt fate.
Why no mummy boobs while pop stars post close-ups of their backsides? It’s all self-expression, isn’t it? Well yes, but only one of them is a literal money-maker. The commodification of intimacy shouldn’t surprise anyone, seeing as we’ve found ways to commodify absolutely everything else.
Occasionally, we’re reminded of that gulf between the reality of constructed image and what social media claims to give us, and the Gaga faux-pas is a perfect example. Her fans took this arty, feigned angst not as another prong to the publicity campaign, but as an glimpse into Gaga’s process, thoughts and emotions. Some of them were concerned about her, and Instagram, as it seems to do when it gets enough flags on any particular user, sent her some safety information.
OK, so it might be a little bit funny, Gaga, but it’s so rare that social media gives us something genuinely benevolent. For Yeezus’ sake, let us have this one.
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Interest rates have reached a level that makes borrowing to grow employment giving investment impossible.
@thomas molloy: Interest rates have been much higher in the past. At one point in the 90s, rates were in the mid-teens.
The low interest rates we have experienced over the past decade or so are an anomaly, in historical terms.
They will claim that they have achieved their objective in that inflation has reduced. They cannot see that their hiking of rates contributed to the inflation rate rise.
@Pato: ehhhhhhhh no.
@Pato: Explain.because everyone else will disagree with you.
@Pato: Please do explain
@Donal McCarthy: I think Pato is largely correct.
Inflation can be caused by two things:
1) A shortage of some goods, or service
2) A surfeit of money in an economy
As I understand it, the inflation we experienced – and are still experiencing – was due to (a contrived) shortage. A shortage in energy, driving up fuel and electricity prices, which then fed into everything else. This was preceded by another shortage caused by the Corona virus pandemic shutting down lots of manufacturing, particularly in China – the so-called supply chain shortages.
The way to address inflation caused by too much money in the economy is to remove some of that money. Increasing interest rates is one way to do that.
However, increasing interest rates will not bring down the cost of electricity.
Or petrol.
When the (major) cause of our inflation is the profiteering of energy companies, increasing interest rates just puts more cost onto all of us, including businesses. Which can only recoup those additional costs by increasing their prices.
Which adds to inflation.
The best way to address such profiteering by the oil (and gas, and associated energy) companies would have been a windfall tax.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: pato stated that the interest rate rises caused the inflation which was incorrect. yes energy prices and supply chain issues were minor contributory factors, but the primary factor was 10 years of free money, which was then acclerated into turbo over drive during covid when physical money supply in the US and EU increased by near 50%. There were 50% more dollars/euros in peoples back accounts after covid then before covid. I do not believe we will see near zero interest rates for some time. I believe it will remain between 2-3% for the very reason that this new money had to be extracted out of the economy and it needs to stay there otherwise it will result in another cycle of inflation.
@Niall English: No, Pato did not say that.
Pato said that raising interest rates “contributed to the inflation rate rise.”
Which is correct, in my view.
Bitcoin fixes Central Bank Ponzi Schemes
@Snacktoshi Nachomoto: how?
@Snacktoshi Nachomoto: anyone who buys crypto currency is a fool and typically didn’t study business subjects in school. The government and central banks decide what Currency we use whether that may involve digital euro. Profiting from digital euro is foolish.
@Snacktoshi Nachomoto: I’m afraid you are not as well informed as you may think. Bitcoin is the real ponzi scheme.
@Snacktoshi Nachomoto: bitcoin is the currency of crooks
@Liam Clifden: but maybe the worst performing in 2022, so what’s your point??
@Liam Clifden: Actually that’s a lie, xrp has preformed better than bitcoin and that’s with a court case hanging over it head, xrp is up over 50 percent from its bottom this year, bitcoin isn’t up over 50 percent from its bottom this year,
@Liam Clifden: bitcoin has zero intrinsic value. people like yourself are pursuant to the greater f00l theory. in order to profit, you need to find a bigger f00l to buy it at a higher price.
Control the money control the people
Great news. And well done central bankers. A solid victory over the ever populist economists.
@Itwaslikethatwhenigothere:
I don’t think you’re correct in relation to a windfall tax. Windfall taxes do nothing to protect against profiteering, they simply allow the state to increase their tax take.
Consider this. Company A usually makes profits of €100m and pays 12.5% tax on this. So they net 87.5m
Now they increase their prices and their income doubles to €200m – the government introduce a windfall tax of 20% on profits in excess of 100m so they now net 87.5m on the first 100m and 80m on the second 100m – net profits have increased to 167.5m – why would that entice them to reduce prices?
Even if the windfall tax was 50% – there is still no incentive to reduce as 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. The only winner here is the exchequer.
If you want to limit profiteering then a price cap is the only way it could work. Windfall taxes are ineffectual.
@Liam Clifden: Bernie Madoffs Ponzi scheme was running for 17 years…
Happy Christmas from the European Central Bank
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