Advertisements in Social Media

“It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up”.  (279)

Feed  by M.T. Anderson tells the story of a group of teens in a life where everyone has the internet (their feed) inserted into their heads, about 100 years in the future. Throughout every moment of every day, companies are able to promote their products to these people through their installed feeds.

The use of technology has played a major role in all of our lives for sometime now. With these new changes come a new way of living, in every aspect. It is incorporated into everything and major businesses are not left out. The way companies market their products has changed so much in the digital age. They can now reach even more people through the use of social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, and even Snapchat. Now, all it takes is for one celebrity to promote their product and they have a whole new clientele. With that being said, I believe that one of the major concepts that M.T. Anderson is trying to present to us through Feed is how powerful the impact of advertising is on us and how easily we are convinced into buying products through different trends.

While strolling through social media, like Instagram, you will encounter a number of different people. There’s always the pages that take us all around the world, show us a great collection of food porn, and ones that are filled with nothing but, of course, selfies. Though every page is different, it is easy to pick up on a certain trend: advertising. Every couple of pictures consisted of someone, usually a celebrity, promoting a new product for some unknown company on Instagram. They were advertising everything from clothing and jewelry to teeth whiteners to weight loss pills. After seeing this, I didn’t really think too much of it. That was before noticing how much people actually fed into what they were promoting.

One of the first instances where I noticed the impact of these celebrity advertisements was with waist trainers. They are basically more modern versionsof an old school corset. People, typically women, are supposed to wear in order to train their waists to be smaller. When I first saw an Instagram ad for it, I never thought that people would actually buy it. That was until I saw different celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, promoting them to their fans. After that, waist trainers took off. It felt almost everyone on Instagram and their mom had one. This reminded of Feed when it came to their lesions. The text reads, “Violet was standing near the fountain and she had a real low shirt on, to show off her lesion, because the

stars of the Oh? Wow! Thing! had started to get lesions, and lesions even looked kind of cool”. (96) Even if the stars of this show didn’t know it, they were still advertising their lesions to everyone that watched that show, much like how social media works. Social sites are an amazing way for companies to network and get their products out there. All it takes is one well known celebrity to spread the word.

Another idea that is relevant to us today is the advertisement of body modification, aka plastic surgery. It seems like almost everyone these days has had a little something done but there has been a surge in a certain area within the last year. If you have spent at least even little bit of time on the internet, then you will know all about Kylie Jenner’s lips. Ever since she got them done,

they have been the talk of the town. Even though most people bash her for it, her actions did “inspire” at least some people to follow in the same direction. It became somewhat of a trend amongst females and to this day more and more women are getting lip injections. Following this, handfuls of companies decided to come out with “lip puckering devices” to duplicate her look and style. This idea of how trends can shape the decision that some people make is also shown in Feed. At one point, the text reads, “I was all going pretty good until Quendy arrived. When she got there, it was like —silence… wwwwwwwwww (wind)... wwwwwwww… ping (pin dropping) — because her whole skin was cut up with these artificial lesions. We were all just looking at her. They were all over her. She raised her arms. The cuts were like eyes. They got bigger and redder when she moved” (191/192). Quendy would have never gotten those artificial lesions without it have been advertised on TV and unknowingly by her friends. This brings me back to my point today. Kylie may not have been thinking that getting her lips done would have an effect on people but it did. It was an

advertisement for the procedure and people saw it and ran with it.

The point I am trying to make is that many of what we do and buy is just the result of what we see. Even when a picture isn’t our technical definition of an advertisement, doesn’t mean that is isn’t one. These ads really do have an impact of how trends are started, and how they integrated into our lives.

Brittany H. Prompt 4

Work Cited

Anderson, M.T. Feed. Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2002. Print.

*Disclaimer: This blog does not reflect my personal opinion on the topics presented throughout. It is strictly for educational purposes.