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Video Description
Who are you — and who decides? Long before most of us ever posted anything to a social media account, Academy of Ideas was tracing how our answer to that question forms our very sense of self. This video shows how social media has quietly rewired identity: instead of discovering who we are, we now build profiles designed to win likes from a distant crowd. Psychologists call the result ‘profilicity’ — we broadcast idealized versions of ourselves, then twist our real lives to match. The cost is a sicker self and a more divided society, where being right matters less than being seen.
Full Video Transcript
What hath God wrought? These were the first words sent over the newly invented electric telegraph
machine in May 1844. This message proved to be prophetic. For the communication technologies
that followed in the wake of the telegraph, from the telephone to the radio to TV, computers,
the internet, and now smartphones and social media have radically altered the fabric of society.
In this series of videos we are going to explore some of the effects of modern communication
technology use. For while remarkable achievements of human ingenuity, these technologies are a
double-edged sword. Communication is easier than ever, but so too is the ability of governments
and corporations to track and monitor us. The media and educational gatekeepers of old have
been irreparably weakened by the rise of the internet and social media, which was a boon to
curious minds. But these technologies are also being used to manipulate us through censorship
and rampant propaganda. And while creating new possibilities for how we work, learn,
and entertain ourselves, these technologies have an addictive side that promotes anxiety
disorders and a wasted life. In the first video of this series, we will explore how the use of
these technologies, and specifically social media use, is altering how many of us answer
the fundamental question, who am I? Our answer to this question, or the story we tell ourselves
about ourselves, forms our identity, or self-concept. How we approach the challenges of life, what
we believe we are capable of, how we treat others, what we value, and even how we view
the world, all are influenced by our self-concept, or as the psychologist Michael Mahoney writes,
Like a spontaneous projector of different light forms and frequencies, our sense of
self formidably constrains and construes the reflections of its own castings. It is an
never-present-but-invisible navigator or sculptor in a lifelong journey.
The health or sickness of a society is an emergent byproduct of the health or sickness
of the self-concepts of the people who populate that society, a society full of individuals
with weak self-concepts, self-concepts that are fearful of novelty infused with helplessness.
Riddled by anxiety, plagued by self-hate or lacking in self-reliance can only be a sick
society.
thing is needful, claimed Nietzsche, that a human being should attain satisfaction with
himself. Only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied
with himself is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims.
Our self-concept is in continuous development and it is the product of many factors, including
our upbringing, education, biology, environment, interpersonal relations, and intrapersonal
But one of the most important factors in the shaping of our selfhood is the predominant
identity formation mechanism of our society.
To understand what an identity formation mechanism is, we will examine the two mechanisms that
preceded the rise of social media, namely sincerity and authenticity.
Sincerity prevailed in the West until a few generations ago and was based on the idea
that one’s identity was intimately tied to a set of social roles.
These roles were not chosen by the individual, but given to him or her by family and community.
One’s identity then emerged in the attempt to play these roles in a sincere manner.
In earlier times, identity was typically assigned by the social roles one was born into.
Along with birth came not only one’s gender, but also one’s tribal or ethnic identity,
one’s social class, one’s profession, and one’s religion.
In the 19th and 20th centuries greater social mobility and more equality of opportunity
unleashed a newfound freedom of self-expression.
Predetermined social roles of class, gender, religion, and ethnicity declined in importance,
and the identity formation mechanism of sincerity was replaced by authenticity.
Under authenticity one discovers, realizes, or creates one’s identity, and so selfhood
formation becomes an individual’s task.
For some this proves to be a blessing as it unlocks possibilities and potentials that
are stunted when one is expected to sincerely conform to predetermined social roles.
For others, it is a burden as with freedom of self-expression comes responsibility for
the self that is created.
But a strange thing has occurred with the rise of social media.
Many people are reverting back to a mechanism of identity formation that resembles sincerity,
A mechanism of identity formation which Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul D’Ambrosio in You and Your
Profile have termed pro-felicity.
Like sincerity, pro-felicity is other-directed and reliant on the reactions of an audience.
With sincerity, one’s family and community are the audience that casts judgment on how
sincerely or properly one plays the predetermined roles.
With pro-felicity, the audience is a generalized peer group consisting of hundreds, thousands,
even millions of social media users. And this audience plays a somewhat different role than
under sincerity. Not only does the audience judge the identity one forms, but it also helps shape
the very roles one strives to play. For profilicity entails creating profiles on social media
through the selective display of pictures and other bits of information, or in a more passive
manner merely observing the profiles of admired personalities and then using these idealized
profiles as roles to play in real life. Or as Jeremy Weissman explains in the crowdsourced
Panopticon, a simultaneous exchange occurs between the two entities, our digital profiles
and our in-real-life self. As we broadcast idealized portraits of our in-real-life self
online, we then in turn adjust our in-real-life self so as to meet with popular approval when
we are broadcast online again. At a certain point, our in-real-life self and digital profiles
practically merge. Forming an identity through the mechanism of profilicity has serious drawbacks.
Firstly, it promotes an unhealthy degree of conformity. For to succeed in the world of
social media is to conform, as a successful profile is measured by metrics such as likes,
shares, and follows. But profilicity necessitates not just conforming to the preferences of one’s
peer group, but also conforming to the standards set by those who manipulate the algorithms
of social media, or as Weissman writes, through the ever-increasing gaze of a pervasive audience
online, we may become overly pressured, even coerced, toward collective opinion.
As social media’s mechanisms of likes, dislikes, friends, and followers constantly
subjects us to the crowd’s judgment along with that gaze.
By promoting a hyperconformity, profilicity limits our potential as the generalized peer
group of social media users and the manipulators of social media algorithms have no interest
in many elements that comprise a healthy sense of self.
With profilicity if we step too far out of line, if we are too unique, or if our value
system diverges too far from what is deemed acceptable, we will be shunned, shamed, and
ostracized. Appearances, superficialities, and adhering to the values of popular culture
are what matter with profilicity, not cultivating a harmonized mind, a healthy body, and a fulfilling
life. What is more, if we live in a sick society, this sickness will be embodied in the preferences
of the generalized peer group, and so in seeking validation of this crowd and embodying their
preferences, we lock ourselves into a sick sense of self.
Once we give up our true self to play a role, writes the psychologist Alexander Lowen, we
are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves. Yet we will struggle to
make the role more successful, hoping to overcome our fate but finding ourselves more enmeshed
in it. We are caught in a vicious cycle that keeps closing in, diminishing our life and
being. But the flaws of profilicity are not limited to the stunting of our potential,
as this method of identity formation also promotes a rigidity in belief systems that
hinders social progress and generates social conflict. For integral to the construction
of a successful social media profile is the display of virtuousness through supporting
the moral values of one’s generalized online peer group. Unlike times past when virtuousness
was displayed through actions or verbal statements that were ephemeral in nature and limited
in reach to one’s family, friends, and community members. Social media creates a permanent
record of one’s moral stances for all the world to see. On social media our moral stances
follow us into the future with a tenacity previously unknown to most people. As a result,
even when presented with facts, information, or experiences that run counter to the narratives
used to support one’s views, many people refuse to correct them as this amounts to
denying an important aspect of their social media constructed identity.
Or as Mweller and D’Ambrosio explain, Identification with the cause becomes so central and primary
in pro-felicity that, strangely enough, one prefers news that the problem is really as
bad as one fears it is, since this affirms the value of the cause and thereby of one’s
identification with it.
If climate change or civil rights should turn out to be no longer an issue, the identity
of those identifying with these causes would be undermined and deflated.
One’s profile, built and maintained with sometimes a lifetime of effort, and in which
one is thus deeply invested, would lose its social validity and become obsolete.
The stronger the identification with a cause, the more the care for the cause also becomes
the care for oneself.
Under pro-felicity, the pursuit of truth has given way to the maintenance of identities
and this is a recipe for a polarized society.
To make matters worse, with social media algorithms being manipulated by tech companies in ways
that serve powerful institutional interests, many people fail to realize that the moral
stances of popular culture are merely stances that further the agendas of corrupt corporations
and governments.
But the societal impacts of modern communication technologies run even deeper than this, for
as we will explore in the next video, these technologies may be leading us into the dystopian
and prison-like conditions of a crowd-sourced panopticon, into a world where we are both
the prisoners and guards in an all-pervasive mass surveillance state.
Source: Academy of Ideas