The Watching Issue / 01
“Can you turn that off?”
Kylie Jenner just debuted her “Starfire” Meta sunglasses with the dystopian slogan “Designed for Privacy, Controlled by You”.
Pinning such a controversial product within the world of one of the most influential women in media fashion today seems nothing less than a recipe for disaster, or at the very least a confession of the surveillance culture controlling our internet society.
“When you are in this cycle of comparing and recording and scrutinising, you can’t ever let yourself be.”
The campaign lingered in my head, and it got me thinking about the boundaries between what we consider to be “on” and “offline”.
Social media allows your online self to be whatever you want it to be. You can choreograph story posts and spend hours contemplating the perfect song, or finetune your photos so people can only see the perfect version of yourself. Being online is a performance.
Offline, however, is raw and unedited. Your offline self can be embarrassing, messy, and untidy. 30 years ago, we could separate these two sides of us through the boundary of the ‘internet’ being a place confined to a 10-inch screen on your family’s computer. You could create this persona and walk away with ease.
Now with the online world being inches away, tucked in your pocket, or staring at you through a camera on a pair of sunglasses, it’s becoming harder to accept the fact that you are not what your Instagram page says you are.
If these types of casual surveillance become marketable enough within these online personas, you become familiar with the idea of being recorded. In this case, would it ever be possible to stop performing?
While the concept of letting your ‘dream’ online self become real sounds enticing, I’m concerned that it instead prevents us from truly resting. Being aware of potential scrutiny or silent judgment forces one to look inward.
I know I have been guilty of it before, becoming acutely aware of it after looking at my tagged posts, or seeing a new photo reel from one of my favourite ‘fashion-fluencers’.
When you are in this cycle of comparing and recording and scrutinising, you can’t ever let yourself be. This could result in a total loss of authenticity.
Meta glasses force us to perform for an audience all the time, which will inevitably affect where you shop, who you hang out with, and what to eat, in order to impress a faceless body of endless critics.
This goes beyond the level of performance familiar with an Instagram dump or a TikTok post, as it infiltrates the way people live every second of their lives. On a safety level, this intense surveillance makes the performer vulnerable to revealing too much of their lives.
Their neighbourhood, their body, and their family are displayed to anyone who chooses to watch. As the antithesis of the “Starfire” slogan suggests, without privacy, there is no control.
This all accumulates into a desperate desire to turn off my phone and sit outside. I want to make a promise to myself not to take any pictures, despite how pretty a cup of coffee looks on a cafe table.
Hopefully, the peak of social media will arrive soon, and then it will pass, rolling back down the bell curve into a culture of closed curtains and living for comfort instead of style.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that this will happen. So instead, I block the Meta hashtag, turn off my phone, and try not to look in a shop window to check my outfit as I walk past. I guess cameras do have off buttons for a reason.