this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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The point of the joke is that it makes no difference if a persona is fake or "real". I think the issues you raise are real. But it makes no difference to unrealistic beauty standards whether artists alter an existing human body or make one up wholesale. If anything, it's more benign if people rationally know that it is all a fantasy.
This is what I'm not so sure about, as in the completely crafted one can do anything at any time with almost zero effort. They don't age. They don't have any imperfections. There's no risk (?) of them ever going off the rails. Even tho the influences project an fake front, you can still be them, as they are real. If something isn't even real, you could create things that could never possibly exist.
They have all the imperfections that the artists want them to have. They age as much or as little as they are made to. That's not so different from human celebrity personas. Sometimes we get a Paparazzi photo, showing how they really look, but is that occasional reality check so different from rationally knowing that it is all fantasy?
(I say "rationally knowing" because one criticism of unrealistic beauty is that it may be shifting our unconscious knowledge of what is normal. If that is true, then rational knowledge is not helpful.)
I think this goes to the heart of the argument. I don't think that is good.
Influencers (and other celebrities) typically portray themselves as being happy and well-adjusted, living exciting and fulfilling lives; all while being surrounded by luxury products with generous marketing departments. I don't think that the idea that you could actually be such a person is psychologically beneficial to anyone (except those brands, obvs).
No one here is saying they think this is good. Just the fact that, because a human has done it, it is something actually attainable by a human. If you remove the human, you remove that logical conclusion.
But to make myself abundantly clear, I think far too often influencers are trash doing a lot of harm to society, especially due to the deception about their contentedness.
I think I am misunderstanding something. It is not attainable to be a person like influencers typically pretend to be. It's only possible to be a pretender, just like it's possible to be a CGI artist creating AI imagery.
They still have the shackles of being an actual human.
Can you give me an example of how that makes the difference? I mentioned Paparazzi pics earlier.