KT Walsh
CREATIVE  PRODUCER | WRITER | MEDIA RESEARCHER 

EXCERPT:
  THE DIGITAL MIRROR STAGE

Thesis By: KT Walsh | 2021

From Chapter 2

Offline Effects of Online Identities, pg 37

 A culture of imaginary personas playing Groucho Marx, Apple & Android. 

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In the Digital Mirror Stage, the user sees a construct of their whole self as their profile and main feed on a social media platform like Instagram and Facebook. They log on to witness an image-based unity plus symbolic unity. This digital self-construct is a fiction, alongside other profiles (or objects) appearing to be whole. Being whole is what one desires through subjectivity. Wanting others to see one’s self-construct, is a way of existing as whole. This type of desire is born through the Mirror Stage as toddlers and reoccurs in the Digital Mirror Stage every time a user logs on to social media. Essentially the Digital Mirror Stage is a reoccurring Mirror Stage – a misrecognition or meconnaissance – that the user is a whole object alongside other whole objects by the understanding of viewing one’s own profile among profiles. However, according to Lacan, the user possesses subjectivity constituted by desire, which is lack. This makes the user both object and subject unable to be whole. In this striving to be whole and seen in the context of social media, profiles perpetuate the desire loop online by creating the repetitive nature of the Digital Mirror Stage every time the user checks the platform. 

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The gaze of others in likes and views is a projection making the user, as a subject, experience another failed attempt at being recognized as an object. Desire is the emptiness of subjects, or a lack of completeness – which is why humans crave to be seen as whole. It’s also why a person wants the desire of others, which signifies the lack in the Other. This makes one feel more whole by comparison. 

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Social media allows desire to be quantifiable as never before because now it can be measured. Profiles become body doubles, an imaginary being, allowing the user to add or curate some of the things a user might desire but not yet have. The user knows that their profile not really them, it’s projection of them and their desire to be seen as whole by the other.

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Respondent Rachel points out the latitude of transparency on social media, “It's infused with all the lies we tell ourselves… I know people are lying when they are posting. And we don’t know what’s true and not true about what other people say from media.” Truly the user’s profile is not the user because a profile doesn’t desire. It’s merely data. However, in the symbolic sense, profiles and a user’s main feed is attached to the person – the real person, with authenticity like Zuckerberg wanted in the birth of Facebook. 

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Users sometimes realize their social media image is not accurately them and can desire to make the profile symbolize the self-construct they desire to achieve. Respondent “Vince” (5265, Male, Michigan) admits the dichotomy of authenticity and desire for a self-construct to be whole, “I find Instagram cleaner, simpler, maybe more honest. I don’t know if that’s true because we all curate our lives.” Users carefully craft imaginary personas as adventurous, accomplished, well-liked, attractive, beings who are desirable by others, much like a celebrity. Users try to complete themselves in the image of celebrity. Social media is a complete culture of imaginary personas. 

Reality TV & Rise of Influencers

Celebrity and media go hand in hand by the nature of media consumption. The names and faces broadcast to the masses are noticed, adored and seen as complete self-constructs. However, during the advent of reality television, attaining celebrity status came without talent, perseverance, expertise, or grit. Reality TV became the theatrical stage for average people to become famous and adored simply for being themselves, making Andy Warhol’s prophecy, “In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes,” a likely fruition. 

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Social media allowed for an expansion of this theatrical stage to stardom by hosting user created content. Taking the red tape of media producers and broadcasters out of the equation, celebrity was made more accessible to anyone wanting to share themselves through social media. This is where the influencer is born, a self-construct seemingly whole as it harbors the likeness of celebrity through a series of temporary images or crafting a profile based on superficial desires. 

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The fiction of celebrity gives users the image of completed desire and advertising sells them the tools seemingly necessary to complete this desire. Some of these things are more visible in the imaginary: tangible luxuries, wealth, relationships, fitness etc., and the most important: mass adoration for being one’s authentic self. In other words, celebrities are seen as whole because they have superficially fulfilled the desire to be desired by others at scale. However, since one cannot possess another person’s desires, one will never be whole. Even celebrities are stuck in Lacan’s desire loop. 

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Advertisers know consumption is how individuals curate identity. Through the self expression of purchases and product ownership, identity is reflected. Advertisers use celebrity culture to sell products to consumers by exemplifying the image of the adored authentic self construct and offering it as attainable through commerce. On social media, influencers have become micro celebrities by quantifying followers or “reach,” and used by advertisers in the same way. Subsequently, scores of users attempt to attain this level of influence and add to their self-construct by buying more products. 

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Algorithms on the main feeds of Meta Inc.’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are dialed to the individual user by using the data collected over the length the user has been active on the platforms. Harmonizing with an individual’s desire loop by showing the user the right combination of posts in their feed achieves several objectives of the platform: eliciting clicks on advertising for revenue, maintaining habitual user attention, and provoking the user to create content in expression of self. The activity by the user to curate an image and symbol-based representation of identity to be recognized by others in the form of Likes, perpetuates the desire loop by social media’s design. 

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There are downfalls of creating a self-concept influenced by the images viewed repeatedly on Instagram and Facebook which are not authentic or dishonest to the user. Dr. Judy Ho explains, 

“[When] you are constructing a social media profile, you’re essentially trying to construct part of your self-concept that you want other people to see, but you might experience cognitive dissonance because you feel that’s not actually who you are every day…Then it becomes an anxiety to keep up based on the perception you’ve created. Who are you really, versus who are used to trying to strive to be in the world. It gets exhausting because you’re not living your life. Everything is about the picture or the post. There are so many quantitative measures about how much that self-concept that you’ve created is worth. So, when you create the self-construct or self-concept, how many likes you get on the photo or how many followers you have, it dictates how good that self-concept is and that can put added pressure on a person.”

This identity differential between the digital and the internal self can achieve varying degrees based on the users’ experience on and offline and their personality.

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Aside from the digital biometric of Likes and followers of the digital self-concept, internal self-construct can be influenced by the bombardment of images curated by the algorithm on the platform’s feed. Respondent Rachel reports the feelings endured when she used Instagram in the past year.

“It amplifies the shame that I already feel…I don’t know how shame plays into decisions as for how we interact on social media. That crosses many different threads for me. Shame for not having a family, shame for not being married, shame for being in the same sex relationship, shame for my body, shame over changing my careers, so it’s kind of everything for me.”

The algorithm overpowers feeds based on past user data. However, users can outgrow the algorithm of past self-constructs. Individuals can evolve identities, but the algorithm is still a collection of data that the user has liked, viewed, or clicked on in the past, among other data points called PII data (Personal Identifying Information). By viewing the posts a user maybe trying to evolve from, the user remains in the desire loop of past unrealized desires by the repetition of confronting the Digital Mirror Stage every time a user views their profile or main feed.  

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Rachel, who has reduced her consumption of social media on Instagram dramatically in the months leading up to the interview noted,  

“It affected my mental health and it still kind of does. It’s just constantly being confronted with all these expectations that I could never meet [and are] still alive. I’m glad not to look at it every day to be honest, because it is somewhere else now and it’s me, myself, and I that I have to deal with, and not me, myself, and I, plus what that tells me I should be doing, also look like, or supposed to be eating, or be exercising.”

Rachel’s current self-construct was not congruent with what the algorithm was showing her on her main feed of Instagram. The addictive nature of Meta Inc.’s platforms can coerce users to continually confront the neurosis of unachievable desires, including the fiction of celebrity.