Profs and Pints Online presents: “Our Social Media Posts, Ourselves,” a provocative look at how our identities get packaged and consumed online, by Jenna Drenten, associate professor of marketing at Loyola University Chicago and scholar of digital consumer culture.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

The phrase “pics or it didn’t happen” captures the idea that consumers’ experiences and identities are validated through visual evidence.  Likes, shares, and comments are the social currency of the internet, and the magnetic pull of ‘going viral’ inspires over-the-top gender reveals, choreographed TikTok theatrics, and meme-ified images of Bernie and Baby Yoda. In the modern social media landscape, innocuous posts can turn everyday people into microcelebrities—at least through a bit of algorithmic luck.

Join Dr. Jenna Drenten, a scholar focused on the intersection of consumer culture and social media, for an interactive and entertaining exploration of the capitalist underpinnings of online visual content, covering both the historical evolution of visual social media and how technology-mediated consumer culture is evolving today.  She’ll tackle the big questions related to how we present and think of our online identities, and she’ll look at the roles that our psychological needs and the decisions and interests of tech firms play in shaping our online personae.

She will start by looking at how the visual language of the internet has changed over time and how the content we share online symbolically reflects our social identities—not just who we are, but who we could be. She’ll discuss how social media platforms, in giving visibility to once-private life experiences, enable them to packaged and propagated for financial gain. And she’ll examine how a ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ culture is monetized on modern social media platforms like TikTok, Cameo, and OnlyFans.

Regardless of whether you post online about your attendance at this talk, you’ll want to share what you have learned with your friends.

Profs & Pints Online: Our Social Media Posts, Ourselves