Emblem Theory

I want beauty reflected back upon me.

Hello all,

Recently I’ve been thinking about identity construction, often feeling struck by flashes of insight on my long walks through the suburbs. Some of the realizations I’ve come to are as follows:

—We are no longer offline people who interact on online, we are online people who interact offline. In other words, we are not uploading ourselves to the internet, we are downloading ourselves from the internet. Even those who don’t use social media are subject to this mass culture.

—Our social position is largely dictated through emblems, the physical or cultural items we choose to tether to ourselves. Being the type of girl who listens to X, or the type of guy who wears Y.

—An item becomes an emblem when someone attempts to reflect its traits back upon themselves through public discussion/sharing. The pond by my parent’s house, when I post a picture of it, becomes an emblem for an appreciation of nature. Posting does not make this appreciation any more or less genuine, it just creates a signifier for it. And because we are online people, this signifer is important, particularly if we are feeling restricted or isolated in the real world.

—If I talk or post about the pond, it’s because I want its beauty reflected back upon me. In my experience, the things we emblemize are things we really love; the styles, images, clothes, songs, books, and movies that engage with with our sense of what is beautiful or true. Emblems are formed organically through the activities, spaces, media, and people we sustain in our lives. They are an expression of personality.

—In her essay “On Style,” Sontag writes “In almost every case, our manner of appearing is our manner of being.” We employ emblems to project our being into the world.

—The proper employment of emblems allows us to form communities both online and off. (If we both carry Freitag bags, we might have something in common.) All of social culture rests on emblems. This has been true since people started to decorate themselves; but like everything else in the world, I think these codes of style are heavily complicated by social media. With constant access to the digital world and all of the people and images within in, endless niches form.

—The ‘like’ feature allows users to endorse emblems subtly, without needing to share them themselves. This is best exemplified on Twitter, where likes are not only public, but displayed on others’ timelines.

—There is the occasional unsaid accusation that someone may be overplaying their interest in something just to “seem a certain way.” I think we all want to seem a certain way and so this critique is moot.

—In my experience, the use of emblems is heightened in Americans. Because our national identity is lacking (we do not have the strong sense of community/ widespread national pride that I’ve seen elsewhere), we coalesce around products and a nuanced pop culture social scheme.

—To summarize, we all employ emblems to publicly signal our identity, be it in the most obvious sense (sandy liang=coquette) or the most covert (old high school tee shirt=disinterest in fashion and its symbols). In our digiculture, even the old tee shirt is imbued with meaning. The choice to disengage is still an active statement. There is no way to exist anonymously, neutrally, or silently.

It is not only possible but likely that all of this has been ironed out by someone else in slightly different terms. Please comment and let me know if this is true/what I should read.

Love, Jillian