I never know in advance what is going to tickle my funny bone…what little comment, event, or random encounter is going to start my brain churning, and get my creative juices flowing…
Having spent the last two months battling the winter bugs, I have been preoccupied with the business of fighting for each breath, keeping each meal down, and imploring the pounding in my head to just stop already. No time or energy for writing, and thinking just made my head hurt more. I spent every possible minute in bed, sleeping and reading. I mostly stayed off social media, because rolling over and picking up my phone just seemed like a little too much work. When I was finally ready to re-engage with my life, I felt like my creative side had been on hiatus, and I wondered when I would stumble upon something that would pique my interest…when the need to drop everything I was doing and start writing would strike. What finally did catch my attention was a flurry of Facebook posts of online quizzes, and the similarities between the results of my friends’ posts, which made me curious. I have never been tempted to take an online quiz, but the idea popped into my head that maybe it would be funny to make up my own version. The most recent popular quiz happened to be “What Would Your Hollywood Movie Poster Look Like?”, and an idea began to build. I mentioned it to my husband, who was not very enthusiastic about the idea, and didn’t think it would be all that funny, that people wouldn’t get it. However, his lack of enthusiasm rarely gets in my way, so I bulldozed ahead. What started out as just a fun project and a funny (even if only to me) joke, soon became a social experiment and a research project, one that led me to push the panic button on my Facebook privacy settings…
The Movie Poster Project
The Poster Project reminded me of the old first-week-of-school collage project. The assignment instructions usually consisted of “cut out pictures from magazines and paste a bunch of stuff on a poster board that represents who you are”. I used to love those projects, and would put a great deal of time and effort into them. But even back in the old days, it was a crock of shit assignment. The magazines we cut the pictures from were full of idealized versions of how we wanted to see ourselves, and the finished product advertised how we would like others to see us. The models with the perfect hair, the athletes captured making the impossible kick or catch, the professional (fill in the blank) standing and looking like the iconic version of (whatever, fill in the blank again). Like an astronaut, gazing out to space, helmet tucked under arm, an expression of bravery and adventure on his face. Where were the pictures of the bad perms, the braces, the acne? How to portray loneliness, stress, insecurity, a longing to fit in and belong? Even if one could find pictures of those secret truths, nobody would dare put them on a poster board that was going to be tacked to the back wall in homeroom…no way.
When my first son was in kindergarten, the same classic assignment came up. My husband and I went overboard, trying to help him come up with the perfect storyboard of his life, all five years of it. We posed him, laying on his side across the kitchen counter with his head propped up on his hand, then blew the picture up to nearly life-size. We cut it in half to make it look like he was holding the collage in front of him, his head poking out on one side, and his feet sticking out the other. It had pictures, stickers, Legos, and who knows what else glued on…most of the trinkets fell off long ago, but the original photographs glued to the collage stayed intact. I kept that collage around for years, and only dismantled it when Ruben graduated, removing the precious photos that were still glued on, to put together a photo album for him. I kept his blown up head, for good measure.
I wish I had kept all of my old collages…it would be interesting to go back and study them, to see what I thought was representative of me at each stage, to see if there was any truth to that story of the moment. I also wonder if any of those teachers really looked at the finished projects, looking for clues to who we were, if they were a tool to get to know us, or if they were just filler assignments, something to keep us busy at the start of a school year, while the actual curriculum was being cranked up. Or maybe they were just something to furnish the bare classroom walls. Those snapshots in time, those advertisements to our peers, were temporary and disposable.
These days, using social media, we have the ongoing opportunity to recreate that collage, to keep enhancing our story, to make it less disposable. And we do it the exact same way. We edit out the bad, promote the good, and present the picture of how we want our life to be, and how we want others to view us. Instead of being limited to using images gleaned from old magazines, we can now use our own images and ideas. The only thing is, just like the those old cut-and-paste collages, made up of pictures of not-us, our online collages are filled with pictures of edited-us. When the posts pop up on our friends’ feeds, and we click the link to join in, taking a test about our facial features or the words we use, the top-secret algorithms pick up the bits and pieces of the collage. Our favorite pictures, carefully chosen and edited, are enhanced even more. It is like taking the storyboard we have presented, polishing it up, and presenting it in a fun recap, but using someone else’s formula.
In deciding to create my own movie poster, since I am not proficient at any complex editing apps, nor patient enough to sit through a tutorial to learn one, I was going to have to come out to the world as the tech illiterate that I am. Oh, everybody already knew that? Obviously, I could use a few pointers. If there are any elementary school kids out there, who could take a brief respite from solving equations to mine bitcoin and teaching themselves how to develop apps, I could use some help. The high school kids are busy, finally putting an end to gun violence, God bless them. And the middle-schoolers are busy doing…actually, it is a mystery what middle-schoolers do.
Once I was done with the creation of my movie poster, and had posted it, I began to think more about the concept of the online quizzes. I studied my friends’ posts more closely, and noted how many people had practically the same results. The quizzes that tell you what your ideal job would be all seemed to come up with the jobs of FBI Agent, King, or President. Nobody who did the age test got a result that said they looked older than they are. Or, at least nobody posted that… I noted that almost every movie poster included a shout-out from Oprah. Did she give the developer permission to use her name? In the spirit of investigative reporting, (because one of the jobs I truly want, and think I should have, is being Lisa Ling), I thought about trying to contact her office with the inquiry, but realized that the chance of getting through was nil. @oprah. (Just in case.)
Again, in the name of research, I made inquiry with my coworker, who admits to being a frequent partaker of such tests, and she assured me one could take the quiz, and choose whether or not to post it. My biggest fear was that if I took a quiz and got an unfavorable result, it would automatically post. I didn’t want any accidental posts saying that the celebrity I looked most like was Elvira, or my favorite song was “The Hokey Pokey”. She also informed me that if you didn’t like the first result, you could keep retaking the test, and get different results, “until you get one you like”.
Feeling confident that I could keep the results private and off my Facebook feed, I took the plunge, and sampled many of the popular quizzes. I found the selection of pictures that had been culled from my Facebook page, for use in the test, to be a random and odd assortment. I also found the available categories of quizzes strange, and mostly quite dumb. I thought it was interesting that several of the different apps used the same quiz, such as “Which Mean Girl Are you Most Like?” Are all the sites run by the same company? Did one person stumble upon an algorithm that matched hair color to Regina, Gretchen, Karen or Cady, and then sell it to all bidders? I’m no programmer, but to me, none of these algorithms resembles rocket science or brain surgery.
I took eight of the most popular tests, and ones that I had seen friends post. The results were not surprising, and many were identical to others I had seen. My Facebook vocabulary concluded that I, too, should be a FBI Agent. Another analysis showed that I should be an “Educator”, and helpfully added that the accuracy of that conclusion was 91%. (I would never be that patient.) My favorite song is apparently “Piece of My Heart”, by Janis Joplin…I was able to recall about nine words of one stanza, and hum a somewhat close approximation of the hook. Oddly enough, I have actually posted the lyrics to my favorite song (Feeling Good, sung by Nina Simone), a fact not picked up by the moronic calculation of that particular quiz.
Disappointingly, in my Hollywood Star result, they failed to make me slimmer in one picture, and did not remove the barely visible black sesame seed stuck between my teeth in my profile picture. My age, based on my five assorted pictures, came in at 18, 19, 20, 20, and 29. Naturally, I threw out the 29, because if you are going to guess my age, and make me feel good about it, it is better to estimate at roughly one-third of my actual age, versus one-half. And all five came back with “Your picture is stunning! It shows your youthful side and your modern attitude towards life. Everyone wants to be like you!” Repetitive, unimaginative, and smells somewhat like the English interpretation of care and laundering instructions on a garment from China, purchased in error. For my “Royalty Portrait”, the results were bizarre, because in each of my five pictures, I am wearing a hat or a helmet, and the app just put the crown on top of the hats.
The culmination of my hands on research, and the catalyst for my curiosity, was the movie poster test. I took it three times, changing the picture each time. Again, not surprisingly, the results were repetitive: “SHE ROCKS!” (Gal Gadot, Chris Pratt). “SO BEAUTIFUL” (Meryl Streep, Megan Fox). “SHE’S INCREDIBLE” (Johnny Depp), “I LOVE HER!” (Emma Watson), and “WOW. JUST WOW. WE ALL WANT SUSAN AS OUR BEST FRIEND” (Emma Watson, and the obligatory shout-out from Oprah.) Tom Hanks added “GLORIOUS. HER POWER, STRENGTH, BEAUTY & KINDNESS ARE MIND BLOWING”. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, everyone. I would like to thank the Academy… I was particularly amused at the ad next to one of my results, which helpfully showcased a sample of what I should look like. Or what I should want to look like. An ironic jab next to a fake write-up of my purported virtues. The tests had as much credence as a telephone psychic or the Wizard of Oz.
I wonder, if Oprah took the movie poster quiz, she who actually has a number of her own movie posters, would the app give her a shout-out from herself? Would her job quiz tell her she should be President? Would she get the same vague, generic quote that I got, that could apply to anybody and everybody? Answer: Probably.
“Like reality, but distorted.”
I decided that I needed to learn a little bit more about how these tests work. I read a smattering of online articles about social media, algorithms, and techie type stuff that mostly went right over my head. I was informed that there are roughly 2 billion Facebook users, and 1.5 billion YouTube users. What I found odd was, with that many potential quiz takers, the best the app writers could do was come up with a pool of between 3 and 10 results, and in some cases, less? I did not have to read too many articles to realize that the purpose of these quizzes is not to provide social media users with a fun little time-filler…”The most unusual, random and funny quizzes – non-stop laughing is guaranteed. Take off and have fun! … Then it is just time to relax and smile a little (you know smiling and laughing prolong your life significantly) with this fun tests collection.” – (Fun Tests – AllTheTests.com). Another weirdly worded description targeted at English-speaking users, but written by someone from who knows where. These tests are really designed for the purpose of mining your personal information, interests, and buying habits, information which they will go on to sell to any and all buyers. And a lot of those buyers will not have good intentions. I immediately went to my Facebook settings, scrubbed the permissions for all the quiz apps, and tightened up my privacy settings.
The other facet that I found disturbing, and this is not new news to anyone, I am sure, is how much online content is subject the filtering and categorizing that is being done by the minds behind the apps. In an interesting article by Paul Lewis*, “Fiction is outperforming reality: How YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth – an ex-YouTube insider reveals how its recommendation algorithm promotes divisive clips and conspiracy videos”, he talks about a former YouTube insider, Guillaume Chaslot, a “36-year-old French computer programmer with a PhD in artificial intelligence”, who was let go for trying to shake things up. He writes “During the three years he worked at Google, he was placed for several months with a team of YouTube engineers working on the recommendation system. The experience led him to conclude that the priorities YouTube gives its algorithms are dangerously skewed.” In the interview, Chaslot says “YouTube is something that looks like reality, but it is distorted to make you spend more time online…The recommendation algorithm is not optimising for what is truthful, or balanced, or healthy for democracy.”
I heard once that the jobs our kids will have when they grow up do not even exist today. As I was reading the online articles, it struck me that as a person growing up in the literal cut-and-paste days, the phrases “Ethics of Artificial Intelligence” and the “University of Oxford Digital Ethics Lab” did not exist. The kids who have been born into the social media age are being brain-washed, herded, and desensitized by the time they spend on social media. I know (or at least I think I know) how much time my sixteen-year old spends watching YouTube, and the thought that the “Next Up…” algorithm has been designed to entrap and manipulate his thinking and his view of the world scares the hell out of me.
It also sheds a bit of light on why teenagers spend so much time posting selfies, adding to their story: It is an act of pure self-defense.
I am always amazed when I see young people, out in public snapping selfies, with no inhibition at all. They fluff their hair, they turn and pose, taking picture after picture. They feel absolutely no shame in what they are doing; they appear completely consumed in what older generations would consider narcissistic and self-absorbed behavior. If I even admit to taking a selfie, it has been done in private, literally dozens of attempts have been made, and if I post one, you can be damn sure it was analyzed beforehand like an ancient manuscript.
They are growing up in a world in which it is possible, probable, that every app is conspiring to use them, steal from them, change what they think and how they act, trick them into buying, believing, doing. They are influenced by “influencers”, and by merely viewing their posts, they feed the beast. They live in a world where one negative post can ruin them, a world in which gangs of bullies, unlimited in number and with potentially fake identities, can destroy their sense of self-worth. Where an unfortunate post today can derail an employment opportunity tomorrow. And the pressure to perform, holy cow! The average freshman feels obligated to make a grander gesture in asking out a prom date than I got for my marriage proposal (no offense intended to my sweet husband). Those grand gestures are fully documented by members of the accompanying entourage, and posted for public scrutiny and comparison. Do the boys feel pressured to outdo each other, and do they fear not living up to the expectations of their intended target? Do the girls measure their self-worth by the size of the gesture? Undoubtedly. In the old days, if we wanted to turn off the negative media influences, we just stopped reading fashion magazines and took a break from MTV. Now, there is absolutely no way to escape the bombardment. So what else can they do, but flood the market with their own carefully crafted images, controlling their own story, fighting to keep some sense of their own identity?
So, why do we take these tests? I have seen them on the feeds of friends who are prolific social media posters, and friends who hardly post anything at all. I am sure the reasons are as varied as the people who post them. We all want to be seen as smart, logical, capable, deep, thoughtful, likable, lovable, beautiful, funny, influential, ageless, worthy of befriending. The fun and seemingly harmless tests are an easy way to flood the market with good propaganda about ourselves, without it seeming too self-promoting. We sprinkle in the selfies, carefully chosen from multiple tries and angles. We use filters that brighten our faces, smooth out our wrinkles, warm up our skin tone. Cropping out the undesirable edges that might show a bingo arm, a muffin top, a less than desirable backdrop, the person standing next to us.
I did my poster project as a fun pun and play on words, a jovial poke at my friends, and a poke at myself, because I am guilty of altering my own story, just like everyone else. I admire people who aren’t afraid to put their worst on display. It’s why we love Will Ferrell and Amy Schumer…they are willing to expose their hairy bowls-full-of-jelly, and shake it all about. We laugh hysterically, because no way in hell would a sane person actually do that, we admire the balls it takes to pull it off, and a little bit of the hysteria part comes from our fear that someday, someone will pull back the curtain, and we’ll be forced to expose a side of us that is raw and real.
Back to the subject of grade school kids, here is a message to them:
It will be up to you, in the future, to craft the social media world we all now live in, to rewrite the algorithms. You were born into it. You know nothing else. You have never known a world where gossip moved from mouth to ear, from person to person, at a speed that seems glacial when compared to “going viral”, like a global pandemic. You live in a world where every single person is armed with a miniature mobile camera/audio/video device, ready to document the good, the bad, the ugly, and you inhabit a world where most people are compelled to post the bad and the ugly. You have to be on guard, at all times, ready for your closeup, ready to be tagged. You were born into a world where it is made far too easy to believe everything you read, and everything you see. How are you ever going to be able to sift through the blizzard of misinformation and redirection to find your truths? How are you ever going to feel like you measure up? By continuing to be the author of your own stories, using your words and your thoughts and ideas, not relying on recycled quotes. By illustrating your stories with authentic portrayals of you: your best, your worst, the raw and real. By not falling into the trap of trying to emulate professional influencers, people who can only stay relevant by making it their mission to promote impossible ideas, because if you can achieve what they are dangling in front of you, they will no longer have power over you. By shaping and documenting the world as you hope and pray it can be.
So go forth, be genuine, be kind and tolerant, be a friend. No matter how big or small your sphere of influence, you can influence your sphere. Use your power for good, not evil. A worthy goal for us all.
Tag, you’re it.
*Paul Lewis, San Francisco; https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth
Owl Picture borrowed from Pinterest, saved from coffeelovinmom.tumblr.com; UTL original photographer
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