Photography’s Damage on Intellect
Currently, I'm reading the book 'Figuring' by Maria Popova - an author I much admire. Like most of the non-fiction I read of late, I am taking this slow too. I try to imbibe the words on each page, sometimes each paragraph, and give myself time to draw parallels to modern day life. Philosophy transcends time, and I have found observations made in the 19th Century to hold as true today. It is only contexts that have shifted.
One such observation by Virgina Woolf on celebrated poets and couple, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning -
Passionate lovers, in curls and side-whiskers, oppressed, defiant, eloping-in this guise thousands of people must know and love the Brownings who have never read a line of their poetry. They have become two of the most conspicuous figures in that bright and animated company of authors who, thanks to our modern habit of writing memoirs and printing letters and sitting to be photographed, live in the flesh, not merely as of old in the word; are known by their hats, not merely by their poems. What damage the art of photography has inflicted upon the art of literature has yet to be reckoned.
What Woolf was likely trying to say was that the public had become so enamoured by the Brownings as a couple that they took to writing about their appearances, and photographing them. Many had not even read their poetry. Their visual appeal eclipsed their literary genius, a move towards all things pleasing to the eye over the intellect - something Woolf foresaw happening even back then.
Sure enough, these days when I open LinkedIn, I almost always cringe at people putting up completely unnecessary pictures of themselves with life updates or lessons, in a bid to gain traction. The same is massively true for other social media platforms, especially Instagram, where number-crazed creators go on creating content in a struggle to keep up with an algorithm that rewards aesthetics and dramatics, and has an almost punitive space for posts of real value and intellect.
Even the news has not been spared from this. Bollywood gossip now routinely floods my news feed. When I saw news on a 'fitness freak leopard' that was just stretching like all cats do, I knew something was very very wrong with how we're consuming and creating media. But it is tough for newspapers to remain physical in a rapidly growing digital world, and it is tough to reach viewers digitally without partaking in the gimmicks, and titillating viewers' senses visually. And we welcome this. Our ocular senses are always in overdrive, yet we can’t seem to get enough.
It seems that there is in fact, a scientific explanation to this. Our brains absorb and process visual information faster than any other stimuli. It takes approximately 1/4th of a second for our brains to process visual cues, and it becomes the type of stimulus our brain craves. Being a design professional, I see the tremendous value and potential in this. Great design can and has influenced people much more than just words. It also has a much higher retention and an addictive appeal. Capitalizing on this game-changing insight, social media has ensured that we get hooked to the visual stimulus that it not only provides, but also promotes. How influential social media is, is evident in how it changes consumer behaviour. We are now left with an entire generation of young people dancing in malls, and spending hours on a photograph.
When I see another influencer (whose insights I value) dance to a popular song on Instagram, I've had enough. It feels as though intellect is dying a slow death, and that the burden of spreading knowledge is shifting to those who are more knowledgeable. Previously, those hungry for knowledge had to seek it - through gurus and tutors, libraries and schools, eventually even encyclopaedias and Google. They went to great lengths to obtain it. Today, despite the convenience that the digital world affords us, we are in fact lazier. Those with knowledge are taking to social media to monetize that knowledge, and all we are willing to do is spend some social currency like likes and saves on whoever tries the hardest to appeal to our senses.