Social Media is Destroying Art Forms and We Are Helping
A viral TikTok of a photographer's rates has shown the side effect of the pivot-to-video movement.
The Internet of Things asks us to think more critically about the social media content we consume and analyzes how the Internet has shifted through the years.
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A wedding photographer’s video sharing her standard rate of 8.5k has gone viral, leading to more of TikTok's newest trend: mass bullying and mocking as analysis and content creation.
People rushed to find the creator and dug through her Instagram and website to see if her photos were actually “worth” 8.5k and to no surprise, the internet did not think they were.
Her style and “blurry photos” aside, why would anyone think 8.5k is a good price for wedding photos when the “pivot to video” movement has completely eroded social media users’ perception of photography?
Some of the comments on videos tearing this photographer apart:
“I am so confused why would it cost even 1k for PICTURES???”
“Time per hour for the day of and editing 500-1,000 photos” someone replied"
“Quite honestly, pretty much no wedding photographer is worth $8.5k”
“All you need is an iPhone and an art student to get these pics”
“We charge less than 2k…and people still say that’s too expensive.”
Instagram, which used to be the world’s top photo app, has since incentivized creators to create videos, or Reels, since TikTok’s popularity in 2020, completely leaving behind the type of creators who grew their app in the first place: photographers.
Everyone can take photos on their iPhone, and good ones at that. Editing on your phone is as simple as a little saturation there, a little darkening here, and that’s it. Not to mention the current trend for natural and unedited photos we’re seeing, something that will likely morph into boredom that makes edited styles return to art.
But that art will likely not be photos.
How have we gotten to a point where we gleefully allow algorithms to tell us what type of art is worth our attention? Where trends dictate who is making meaningful art?
This year, it’s a call to crafts and, ironically, AI images and videos of absolutely stupid concepts devoid of any meaning. I recently saw a photo of bejeweled fruit…what’s the concept? What’s the story? If art is meaningless in concept then it at least has meaning in creation right? But with AI, even that is taken away.
We are allowing tech to completely devalue so many art forms at a rapid pace that’s never been seen before, like writing which is apparent in Vice’s latest dissolving of its editorial branch, which is putting more money into video production and their B2B creative studio. This, in a long run of media brands that are kicking their editorial teams to the curb.
In the case of the viral TikTok, a woman’s market value and skill are completely picked apart just because a generation of instant-gratification, iPhone-only, grew-up-on-social-media people think they can take just as good of photos using sub-par tech that lets you take the easy way out.
In a Harper’s Bazaar article called, “Why are the arts so undervalued,” Marie-Claire Chappet describes a few reasons: the inability to quantify art and process into money, the feminization of art that led to its devaluing, the lack of understanding from the consumer, and the lack of research that can create funding for the arts in places like the UK and the States.
"What’s wrong with how we judge the arts is the fact that we believe something is justifiable only if it can be translated into money."
Skill, technique, the art of making something, when these are rendered useless all to gawk at a person who is creating AI jellyfish floating among skyscrapers just using a prompt, it doesn’t symbolize advancement of the human race. Quite the opposite. It points to a group of people who are letting their minds be mended by big business, capitalism, and CEOs who don’t value you, creativity, or what makes humans human.
It’s not about liking or not liking the style of the photos. It’s the fact that people have gotten so used to seeing photography everywhere that they no longer perceive it as hard work to get to a good skill level. It’s about people not understanding what it takes to make art. It’s the same reason we had the SAG Writers Strike, which had to happen because the people who make the art we consume and interact with daily are not protected from AI or paid fairly.
We are becoming more and more complicit in the genuine destruction of art under capitalism, allowing social media apps to dictate value, and I think it’s time we recognize that before we destroy the very thing we may want to become in the future: artists.
Stay tuned for more rants on why Internet culture as we know it today absolutely sucks. 🤬