Mining All the Bits of You

“Mining All the Bits of You” is a digital drawing piece that responds to the increasing individualization and commodification of self in social media, as explored in Brooke Erin Duffy and Emily Hund’s essay “‘Having It All’ on Social Media: Entrepreneurial Femininity and Self-Branding Among Fashion Bloggers.” Duffy and Hund’s article “Having It All” examines how the rise of social media has created an idealized version of “entrepreneurial femininity” that is unattainable for many women. The article focuses specifically on fashion bloggers, who are expected to constantly project a perfect image of themselves and their lifestyles in order to gain followers and sponsorships. The authors argue that this pressure to conform to a certain image can be harmful to women’s self-esteem and can lead to feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. They also discuss the ways in which fashion bloggers use self-branding and strategic self-presentation to construct their online identities, and the implications this has for the way women are perceived in the public sphere.

The drawing features a technical drawing of a mine with a yellow canary, an animal historically used to test the toxicity of mines. This imagery is a metaphor for the toxic culture of social media and the ways in which people are forced to mine every aspect of their lives for the sake of selling an image of themselves.

The lyrics “Making an aesthetic out of not doing well, and mining all the bits of you, you think you can sell” from The 1975’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language album capture the idea of how people are expected to sell themselves through their social media presence, even if it means sacrificing their privacy and their authenticity. The pressure to conform to a certain mold of “entrepreneurial femininity” or any other standard of social media success is overwhelming and pervasive.

Through this drawing, I aim to challenge the idea that success on social media requires one to commodify oneself completely. The yellow canary in the drawing represents the voice of warning, alerting us to the toxicity of the culture of self-commodification. I wanted to convey the idea that this issue is not just personal, but also structural and systemic, affecting us all in various ways.

Ultimately, “Mining All the Bits of You” invites the viewer to reflect on their own relationship with social media and the ways in which they participate in the culture of self-commodification. It encourages us to question whether the pressure to “sell” ourselves online is worth sacrificing our privacy, authenticity, and personal well-being.