Social media, in short, has completely changed the way that people, especially teenagers, communicate. Moreso, it has dominated the lives of teenagers so much so that it has started to act as something of a panopticon design: no one really knows who will be viewing what they post, or, more importantly to some, what people will think of it. You can perfectly select a 15-second music clip to put on your Instagram story all you like, but there’s no sure way to know that your crush will pick up on the signal, or if they will view your story at all. People are no longer alone when they go home for the day from school or work. They will open their phone, seeing everyone’s updates, maybe post an update of their own.

As Shakespeare in As You Like It put it, “All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." However, when considering publicity and privacy, there used to be a backstage, for the very reason of letting go, and taking off the role of the person you may desire to be perceived as, and allowing oneself to be who they are under the mask. Ben Agger, in his book Oversharing: Presentations of Self in the Internet Age, argues that there is no longer a backstage. He writes that “the world invades our living rooms and psyches,” (Agger, 2011). Everyone, in some way or another, is constantly aware of the way they are being perceived, or even perceive themselves being perceived, due to having an online presence. This is an incredibly new development in human history. In their Substack article, “against the cult of personal style,” SJ, a prominent fashion influencer, asks the valuable question, “when was the last time you bought a garment purely for its functionality without thinking about how people will perceive you in it?”

It can reasonably be said that women and girls have it the worst. The roots of my western patriarchal society rests upon the shoulders of women being judged as a means to an end. “Objectification occurs when an individual is perceived from the viewpoint of their utility to achieve people’s needs and goals,” (Gruenfeld, Inesi, Magee, & Galinsky, 2008; Nussbaum, 1995).

I was in sixth grade when I first started being active on Instagram. I remember being completely sucked in: posting selfies with dog filters of my newly straightened hair with the caption “this took 6 hours!” Or posting my thoughts on the newest season of stranger things (season 3 came out around the time I started 6th grade.) For the first time, it kind of clicked that my online persona was essentially an extension of real life. So much so, in fact, that I had a boyfriend in school that I really didn’t talk to other than on Instagram direct messages and in group chats with other friends. Things ended fairly soon after he confronted me about it. These unspoken online rules still apply today: plans are often made over messages instead of real life, and if you happen to have your phone on do not disturb or just weren’t online, you’d miss it. If you don’t put in the effort to respond to direct messages soon after you receive them, it’s often perceived that you don’t like the person. If you don’t post about your opinion on a controversial topic, you’re seen as ignorant; or worse, if you do, and you have the wrong opinion, you’ll be confronted with hate, often by people you don’t even really know - people who wouldn’t bring it up in person, either.

Aesthetics can be defined by a “collection of images, colors, objects, music, and writings that creates a specific emotion, purpose, and community,” (Aesthetics Wiki, “Aesthetics 101”).

There are also different levels of having an aesthetic, some of which include running a blog that “posts and reblogs aesthetic content that is consistent with a community or the user's own unique aesthetic, having a fashion style that is distinctive and predictable,” and “following a certain stereotype or subculture,” (Aesthetics Wiki, “Helping You Find Your Aesthetic”).

Aesthetics can also be categorized by suffixes: “-core,” “-wave,” “-goth,” and more. Examples include “fairycore,” “vaporwave,” “pastel goth,” and non-categorized aesthetics such as “morute,” a cross between morbid and cute.

The Aesthetics Wiki, hosted by the for-profit parent company Fandom, was created in 2018, and contains over a thousand pages of Aesthetics that one can explore. According to The Atlantic, the page’s traffic grew by 9,974 percent in 2020, and is only becoming more popular (Tiffany, “Cottagecore Was Just the Beginning”).