Lies and Deception on Instagram
Trail thesis into Essay
Your essays should have a Works Cited (not an annotated bibliography) in MLA format.
MLA FORMAT: https://owl(dot)english(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/resource/747/01/ (Links to an external site.)
Please include an explanation of your experiment (a paragraph or two).
Please include an explanation of your experiment (a paragraph or two).
Please include an explanation of your experiment (a paragraph or two).
The Writing Style Experiments
In each of your essays you are required to conduct some kind of writing experiment. That is, that each essay must contain something stylistic that you’ve never done before as a writer. Here are some examples:
Incorporating some aspect of a writer’s style into your own essay. For example, you might read Dan Ariely and write an essay from his point of view, or incorporate a similar sense of humor into your essay. Stylistic experiments can be important and can help you grow as a writer. They can include humor, rhetorical questions, varying sentence length/variety, using subordination, word choice, colloquial language
Using pictures or other visuals in your essays.
Creating a sound recording or video.
Writing in boxes or writing in the margins or formatting your text in a way that helps explain or support your thesis/slant.
Writing a poem or song lyrics or a comic.
Creating any kind of artistic representation—be it a drawing, sculpture, painting, photograph—to include in your essay.
These are only a few ideas. Don’t just pick one from above and do it unless it really fits your essay and slant. DO NOT just tack on a poem or a drawing to the end of an essay. Each experiment needs to be incorporated into the essay. It must be a part of the project and add something to the project, not be a separate project.
The way to approach this on all your essays is to think about what kind of experiment would help us, the readers, further understand your arguments, points, and ideas. Think out of the box, and use writers that you like as inspiration.
It’s important to remember that in this course a failed experiment in one of your essays will not negatively affect your grade. The only thing that will affect your grade is if you don’t experiment. It’s also important to remember that in this course each essay still needs to have the fundamentals of an essay. The experiment doesn't make it a free-for-all.
Try something. In this course, you are always rewarded for trying something new, even if it fails.
Criteria:
The essay contains a clear and appropriately-specific thesis/Slant that suggests original and independent thinking. The writing and ideas are dynamic, varied and creative.
The body offers detailed and meaningful support for the argument, and uses that support logically and insightfully; it offers progressive and unified paragraphs, and clearly connects the support with the thesis/Slant.
The conclusion provokes the reader, leaving him/her with a question or idea about the bigger implications of the essay’s thesis/Slant.
The essay contains clear logic, appropriate grammar, and correct spelling. The language, tone and argument are appropriately tailored to its intended audience.
Professor’s Name:
Date Submitted:
Lies and Deception on Instagram
Social media is public suicide. We are so obsessed with how we appear and somehow lose sense of reality. – Courtney Ludlow
I must say you and I are already used to that; don’t you think? However, Instagram is on another level. In Instagram, you scarcely come by the truth. It is a platform of lies and deception by showcasing everything, from looks, lifestyle, attributes, etc. to be more appealing than what they are in reality. Instagram embodies the fake lives people are living in the world today.
Have you noticed? If it is not that obvious to you, well let me enlighten you with some examples. There is already a saturation of photo editing applications in the app store. These are used to morph the photos into something else. Something more aesthetic and desirable to the public’s eye. These applications go hand in hand with Instagram, promoting unhealthy behaviors such as lying about their lifestyles, places that they have been to, things that they have bought, and even the food that they have eaten, to showcase “perfection”.
Sellers now are even using Instagram to display their products in a way that a lot of people edit their photos. The sellers lie about the true appearance and quality of their product by enhancing the aesthetic pleasure that it gives off to the audience, to entice them to purchase their goods. This kind of strategy and scam by sellers almost always leads to disappointment from the buyers’ side. Yes, we are aware of how natural it is for humans to lie but who can blame the buyers, right?
From the beginning, human beings have always lied, and there is nothing new or shocking there. But why do people do it? The individuals on Instagram use lies and deception to create a more powerful persona in the virtual world, than what they really are in the real world. According to Ariely, "Once we are painted as cheaters in our own eyes, we start behaving in more dishonest ways." It comes down to wanting to be more captivating and worthy of the attention of Instagram viewers. In other cases, some people lie as a form of defense mechanism against bullies and internet trolls. Instagram greatly affects the lives of people on a personal level, and it influences how they live their lives. These people do not live their lives on their own terms because of the various insecurities and perceived weaknesses that they are ashamed of. These people want to hide their perceived negative traits from the general public, and they do so by manipulating Instagram photos and social media presence to fabricate awe-worthy lives on screen.
Instagram embodies the fake lives people are living in the world today. A lot of individuals lie because they badly want their fabricated online lives to be their reality. There are many reasons and each one differs depending on the person but some of the reasons include avoiding embarrassment, hiding awkward circumstances from the public, and saving face in the public eye.
In line with deception and faking lives on Instagram, Photoshop also comes into play as a big contributor to this behavior. The changes that people make truly vary. It is intended to look natural and effortless but actually took a lot of effort. From hiding imperfections, cloning areas in an image, replacing colors, changing the background, softening parts of an image, and enhancing the photo to alter how the viewers see the pictures posted online. Photoshop had already become a common application for people because they feel that there is still a need to change things and hide reality from the viewers on the internet. This kind of behavior reflects how the individuals in society perceive their true selves.
The lies and deception of people feed the unhealthy cycle of discontent, envy, and fraud. But looking at it at a deeper level, these negative aspects of Instagram also ruin the lives of people offscreen. As an individual scrolls through his or her Instagram feed, the insecurities rise and when the person gets a glimpse of his or her own body in front of the mirror, questions and unempowering statements come.
“Why am I not skinny enough?”
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