Jia Tolentino, who has critiqued our online behavior in her “Trick Mirror” essays and for The New Yorker, said there was another social media-driven behavior she has mixed feelings about: People hiding any behavior from their online communities that would draw shame during the global health emergency.
“I think that a lot of people are hanging out in ways that are not socially prescribed, but hiding it from social media,” she said. While she loved the idea of people concealing more of their lives from surveillance giants, she hates that people are also secretly running afoul of safety guidelines that help reduce the spread of infection.
“The social desire to not get shamed is overriding the social incentive to show your life,” Tolentino said. She thinks that short-circuiting that impulse will be more interesting in the long run.
“Although, of course, nobody should be hanging out maskless,” she added.
Photo by Elena Mudd
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