Some social media platforms were created for people to express themselves  and make everything about them which is called subjectivation.The French philosopher Michel Foucault said that social media is the vehicle for identity formation. Social media platforms are a way for you to entertain and create a performance and get provided with feedback for an audience that can be from all over the world. He would say that there are no guards and prisoners when it comes to things being posted on the internet. You were able to post whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. But the way that social media evolved, people use self censorship in order to not get attacked for an opinion that you believe or feel. People behind screens and some that use fake identity are ready to rip people apart for anything they don’t agree with or feel as should not have been said but the internet is a place for people to say what they want with their platforms. This brings up the idea of the cancelled culture that has been seen lately. People are so fixated on a certain kind of image and spokesperson to be popular but once they say something they disagree with or find offensive, they want to cancel them and discredit everything they have done or said to get to where they are. Social media was supposed to be a place where you sculpt who you are by posting thoughts, feelings and opinions but people made it a scary place where people can get bullied and less confident in who they are.  

In “The Story of the Self”, Charles Fernyhough states “When our present-day emotions change, so do our memories”. Just like in the Black Mirror episode the Entire History of You, the main character Liam felt as if something was going on with his wife and her friend once he saw the way that they were interacting with each other during the dinner all of their friends were having. His wife was laughing at all his corny jokes and he became skeptical of what was going on between them and from there he started to ask questions and would even involve the babysitter. He was sure that something had happened between the two so he asked her to play back her memoirs and she tried to delete them. It turns out she cheated on him with the guy and the baby wasn’t even his. He didn’t know how to handle the stress of the knowledge after leaving her and would constantly replay his life with his wife and it got to the point that he had to remove the technology that lets him replay memories. He decided to move on with his life and try to forget the past. Memories can shape who and where we are in life. “There can be no doubt that our current emotions and beliefs shape the memories that we create.” Here is a fun video of how memories work, Enjoy.

What’s your favorite memory?