If you have a social media profile picture, write a paragraph describing the ‘you’ it portrays. What aspects of yourself remain hidden?
If you were to construct a more ‘accurate’ portrait of yourself, including various aspects of who you are, what would you choose to include? How might you visualise these things?
Try creating a new, more honest, self-portrait.

I have a very limited social media profile, a half-hearted linkedin account and a twitter account set up mainly for work. I’m not on Facebook or Instagram. A large part of the reason for not being on these sites is my distrust of the businesses that run them and I remember being struck by a quote in an article I read along the lines of ‘If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product’. I don’t want to be the product.

As I toy with the idea of deleting all my social media presence I am not going to create a new self-portrait, especially as I do not curretnly have one. However, if I were to construct a more accurate portrait of myself it would be non-figurative as I do not want to reveal myself or things about myself to people or organisations I do not know. My inital thoughts were to create just a black or white square as shown below.

However, when I looked at these I thought they were too revealing! So I have decided to go with the following image.

Sources

You’re Not the Customer; You’re the Product – Quote Investigator. 2020. You’re Not the Customer; You’re the Product – Quote Investigator. [ONLINE] Available at: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/. [Accessed 12 January 2020].