User:Youmnaelkalash/sandbox

= A: Photograph Manipulation- On Social Media (500 words) =

With Photo manipulation tools becoming more accessible, people have turned to social media to modify their pictures with funny or beauty filters, as well as several applications like Facetune and Photoshop. Built-in image filters and editing tools on social media platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, give users like influencers a free online makeover, exhibiting unauthentic beauty ideals and standards.

Social media influencers have been amid consumers of FaceTune and Beauty filters. The success of FaceTune is owed to its simplicity in editing images, as it is more refined than Instagram and Snapchat filters, but a lot less complicated than professional editing software’s like Adobe Photoshop. Influencers claim to do alterations on an image to heal a spot or smoothen out their face. However, 71% of people calm that they cannot post a photo of themselves without editing it due to their skin, face shape, and arms.

Body Image
Body image refers to how a person perceives their own body and how it compares to society’s beauty standards. Body image issues have become problematic on social media due to photoshopped images of people's body’s and faces, creating negative self-esteem and self-image issues, especially in girls and young women. With photoshop and Facetune being available widespread, editing images has created a double standard over what is natural and edited.

In Connie Morrison’s book ''Who Do They Think They Are? Teenage Girls & Their Avatars in Spaces of Social Online Communication'' states that girls understand that the images portrayed in the media are a form of manipulation. With that knowledge, girls use editing softwares in oder to retouch their photos as their altered beauty brings them comfort in knowing that the images being posted online are ‘flawless’ and ‘pretty’.

Several celebrities, including Khloe Kardashian, have endorsed the use of applications that allows one self’s body to be modified. In May 2020, Khloe Kardashian shared a picture of herself that was unrecognisable to the public. With 138 million followers, this photo manipulation triggered negative responses. The manipulation of her Instagram posts raised several concerns about setting unrealistic face and body standards as well as exemplifying the lack of normality with unedited bodies.

Face filters
Face filters are augmented reality filters on social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. They first appeared on Snapchat in 2011 with the introduction of face-changing effects like gender-swapping filters or animal filters. In 2016, Instagram launched a similar feature called Instagram stories, much like Snapchat Stories, which lasted 24 hours per post. With the rise of selfie culture, the consumption of face filters commenced becoming more beautified, accentuating the lips, eyes and giving the appearance of smoother skin. As face filters become more popular on social media, Instagram and Facebook alone have over half a million users that have attempted AR effects, with beautifying filters being a popular category.

The accumulation of beautifying filters has given social media users greater access to manipulate their photos, as there is little to no work involved in the process. This manipulation can be seen as commodification to an unrealistic beauty standard as they present their images in a way that may be perceived as cosmetically done. With Instagram and Snapchats rise to face filters, TikTok has also introduced a ‘beautify’ filter that enables users to smoothen their skin, add makeup, and give themselves a smaller nose or bigger eyes. The filter has been claimed to seamlessly look natural to public's eye; manipulating people's perception of authenticity.

= B: Virtual influencer (500 words) =

Virtual influencers are a computer-generated image (CGI) created for social media platforms and are used in advertisements. They have a hyper-realistic personality that is entirely fictional. These influencers are designed to look as human-like as possible while having a model-like appearance. They are given accurate animated faces to resemble a human face. However, as virtual influencers are computer-generated image and not artificial intelligence, they cannot do anything without being controlled.

These virtual influencers are frequently on social media and predominantly on Instagram as they are used for influencer marketing and campaigns such as Calvin Klein and Balmain. They regularly post images of themselves resembling the ‘everyday’ influencer from how they pose to the way that they dress.

How it works
Virtual influencers are made by creative marketers that take an unconventional route to social media fame. They have created their own brand representatives that can be modified and transformed to fit a specific appearance. Their personalities have been generated by people who have written fictional backstories for the characters to seem more authentic. The creatives behind virtual influencers give them signature looks to fit a particular persona.

The first virtual influencer was created in 2016 by Trevor McFredries and Sara DeCou. The project began on Instagram with Miquela Sousa, also known as Lil Miquela. Her profile presents a 19-year-old CGI character, model, and musician, who is half Brazilian and half Spanish, based in Los Angeles. Since her debut on Instagram, Miquela has gained over 3 million followers as of 2021, which is the most successful virtual influencer to date. She has also progressed and has created accounts on Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and most recently TikTok.

Miquela's overall image on social media is based around fashion and music. Her growth has led to many advertisements and campaigns, as she is used, by brands, as a marketing tool. She has been a product to various brands finessing campaigns from #teamgalaxy 2019 with Samsung to #Mycalvins  with Calvin Klein alongside supermodel Bella Hadid.

Advertisements and Campaigns
Due to Miquela’s rise to fame, there has since been several other virtual influencers that have been generated. The top influencers include Imma with 330,000 followers, Bermuda with 290,000 followers, Shudu with 215,000 followers and Blawko with 153,000 followers.

The gain in popularity has led to numerous campaigns for virtual influencers, notably in the fashion industry. Virtual influencers, are be customisable to brands as they can tailor-make their models to harmonise with their vision to create an explicit image. Virtual influencers such as Shudu has received recognition with Balmain and Rihanna’s makeup brand, Fenty Beauty.

Balmain has been influential towards the virtual influencer industry with their 2018 campaign featuring all virtual models, including Shudu. This campaign led to an uproar in the fashion industry as real models start to worry about the effects that it could have on the future of modeling. Besides fashion, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) came out with a virtual influencer in 2019 as a way for their followers to engage with the personality of the fast-food chain. With 1.3 million followers, their influencer regularly collaborates with brands like Dr Pepper, Old Spice and TurboTax.

= Response to my peers' Contribution A (250 words) =

Hyperreality- Reality Television
An example of hyperreality is Reality Television. Jean Baudrillard coined this theory in Simulacra and Simulation, in the chapter: ' THE END OF THE PANOPTICON'. His philosophy is based on the 1971 reality television show 'An American Family'- The loud family. Baudrillard claims that Reality Television and other forms of media in a post-modern culture are all a manner of simulation. The way things are portrayed can be replaced by the things being portrayed, and the portrayal becomes more significant than the thing itself.

The reality television show based on the Loud family is labelled as "utopian" due to the family's portrayal of a lack of acknowledgement for them being filmed. Baudrillard argues that the deception of no acknowledgement of an active audience fascinated viewers to watch, as there is pleasure in violating the privacy of others, viewing them as a form of simulacra; "TV is watching us, TV alienates us, TV manipulates us, TV informs us". The Loud's are presented as a typical American family, creating a hyperreality of what is familiar rather than viewing them as models on television.

The act of watching television has been dismissed as we do not longer watch television, but television watches us. Thus, causing there to be a blurred line between the viewed and the viewer, as one does not enter into passivity "but into the differentiation of the active and the passive". The distinction between the awareness of what is real and hyperreal have subsided, with the truth no longer being the 'reflexive truth of the mirror' but the manipulative truth.

= Response to my peers' Contribution B (250 words) =

The Culture Industry- Television Lifestyle
Television in American media has portrayed lifestyles in an idealistic manner, transforming truth into imitations of what the culture industry believe consumerists should receive from characters presented. The productions of culture have transformed into an industry, appealing to an aesthetic appearance that has simplified the nature of their content, delivering a capitalistic message on how society is supposed to live and dress.

In the book Dialectic of Enlightenment, the chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, argue that all forms of entertainment are similar, as they all conform to the functions of a capitalistic society, generating homogenous products which generate homogenous people. The role of film, television shows, music and others, portrays sameness and familiarity as the standard for consumerists and the unfamiliar as a ‘risk not worth taking’. Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture manipulates mass society into passivity, becoming a part of a capitalist system, that profit over consumers ‘adapted to the needs of the capitalist system’.

The portrayal of good-looking people leading the standard, successful life on television promotes the ideas that contemporary society have demonstrated, as ‘the dream’, such as the ‘American dream'. “The dream industry does not so much fabricate the dreams of the customers as introduce the dreams of the suppliers among the people,” write Adorno and Horkheimer. Since popular culture functions as an industry, the promotion of successful characters on television sets standards for the general public, creating a capitalist society, normalising and commodifying the culture industry.