We’ve all been culprits of this tenacious trend that is ever so discreetly taking control over our lives. This very trend is a social horror unabashed in vanity and deprivation. In other words, we have all subjected ourselves to third-party photo editing apps.
You know how it goes. You take a photo on your phone, or more often than not another person takes a photo of you. This photo may even have been staged and perhaps you went to great lengths to perch precariously on a tree branch that shows off your adoration for ‘nature’. Maybe you’ve even practiced your fake-laughing skills in order to produce a photo that is just the right combination of effortlessly candid and rigorously arranged. You’ve planned it, you’re ready.
On the other hand, you may not have staged this photo but your intentions do not escape this suspicious vanity. You might be at a party and in a valiant effort to show off your vivacious social life, you force some unfortunate fellow partygoer to take a photo with you. The photo suffices, you look happy enough to prove that yes, you do have friends and you do have fun! The reputation of your social life indeed depends on this.
But really, if we already go to great lengths to capture that perfect photo, why do we feel the need to edit it to such an extreme?
When Instagram was first released all the way back in 2010, we were thoroughly astonished by the filters that came with the app. I recall many Internet memes depicting the stark contrast between a dull original photo and its luxurious counterpart, the latter of which had been Instagram’d. And that was just placing a slightly colored filter over a photo.
Unsurprisingly, with the rise of Instagram’s popularity, various third-party editing apps soon rocketed into the stratosphere of app-usage due to their abilities to go above and beyond what Instagram could provide. These editing apps vary in ability, from elemental filter-providers to full-on Adobe Photoshop. Soon enough, we all began to develop a routine.
The routine goes a little, or embarrassingly identical, to this. You take your photo, most likely staged to at least some aforementioned degree. You then proceed to go to your first editing-app. In my case, this is Afterlight. Afterlight provides a range of services from basic editing tools to app-bought filters and floral borders.
So, I take my photo and go through my predesignated steps. Brightness? Check. Contrast? Check. Filter? Oh God, which one do I pick? Okay, I’ll go with ‘Rain’, it seems like a ‘Rain’-type of photo. I am so humiliatingly quick at this that by now that this process is done in less than a minute.
After that, I charge valiantly onwards to FaceTune. Now, FaceTune is something I simultaneously despise and cherish. FaceTune is the true goliath of all third-party editing apps; it provides airbrushing, teeth-whitening, eye-brightening, hair-smoothing, all the works. In other words, it takes the photo of myself, already heinously in-organic, and transforms it into a frightening Stepford Wife.
Finally, I breathe a sigh of relief. I am done. I then head to Instagram, the colloquial mothership of all these editing apps, and triumphantly post my photo.
Although this routine is almost comical, the dark, underlying question remains. Why? Why do we do this?
The answer is actually quite simple. Our self-worth, our entire perspective on whether we are valuable or not, is based on this. No, we feed off of this.
From MySpace to Facebook to Instagram and beyond, our generation has evolved into a hungry pack of insatiable vultures that crave ‘likes’. ‘Likes’ connote self-worth and popularity, we’ve known this for a very long time now. It functions as the millennial version of a compliment. Instead of saying to someone’s face, “Oh, you look nice today”, we give them a ‘like’. It means more anyways, right?
Wrong. Especially when we don’t even look like ourselves on social media anymore.
Humans will constantly strive to out-compete and outdo each other, specifically when it comes to beauty, and as the filters get more effective and the apps get more cunning, we will only work harder to invoke envy in others. We will strive relentlessly to convince others that we are beautiful, social and popular in order to somehow construct a sense of self-worth.
But self-worth can only come from what is real, what is organic and essentially, what is genuinely you.
Follow Ciara Gaffney on Twitter @CiaraGaffs