Affirmation memes are relentlessly positive, aggressively inoffensive, and designed for maximum shareability they’re basically social media’s version of Ellen DeGeneres’s talk show, pre-Ellen’s cancellation.
And it’s easy to see why: in a milieu that claims to prioritize authenticity - especially if it’s presented in the most milquetoast context possible - sharing a listicle like “99 Memories All Left-Handed Nineties Kids Have” is a way to telegraph your identity in a completely benign, inoffensive way.Ī post shared by Global Self Hypnosis account, which has garnered more than 372,000 followers in less than five months, is a spin on what has been referred to as the trend of “affirmation meme” accounts, or Instagram accounts that offer vaguely empowering messages (such as “stand in your truth” or “shrinking myself for the comfort of others is no longer an option”) against tasteful neutral-toned backdrops. In the mid-2010s, about 100 years ago in internet years, one of the cornerstones of editorial strategy on the internet was to publish “identity shares,” a term used to describe pieces that were designed to appeal to a specific reader’s identity, such as “22 Reasons Why Being Child-Free is the Best” or “17 Things Only the Middle Child Knows” or “Six Questions We Need to Stop Asking Bisexual Disney Adults.” This was in the halcyon days of new media, when publications derived the bulk of their traffic from Facebook, and although people’s posting habits got a lot more sophisticated with the advent of new and diverse social-media platforms, for a few glorious years they fucking loved posting this content on their pages.
0 kommentar(er)
