In an age where most things are attainable with the click of a button, how exactly are we to manage these impulse based decisions and instant gratification interactions that are so effortlessly facilitated by digital technologies?
Kate Wagner’s "
404 Page Not Found" describes Web 1.0’s death and the emergence of a new internet dubbed Web 2.0. This web describes a “participatory and interactive” design “where users became active consumers, creators, and participants of a service in which they had very little, if any, agency” (Wagner). This type of web propagated the ‘prosumer’ – an individual who both consumes and produces in a digital landscape. And the prosumer was only reinforced by the growing popularity of smartphone applications.
“Today, roughly 90 percent of time spent on our phones is devoted to apps – not the web” (Wagner). What’s worse is that these apps are built on competition and profit ideals, motives that are “completely misaligned with the earlier ethos of the internet”. Web 2.0 and the newest version of our constantly evolving digital age creates massive profit for some of the largest global companies. But there’s more to it than that. Tech companies are richer than ever, selling ‘us’ as the product and generating ad revenue, and at the same time, multi-million dollar companies who are buying the ad space profit off our product purchases. And this all happens directly within one single app.
Take
Instagram for example. In May 2020, the app introduced their
Shop feature, where stores can list their items as products and users can browse, add to cart, and pay. The Shop feature includes huge brands and small businesses pretty much selling anything you can think of.
This feature is enraging to me. Mainly because it really knows how to prey on my vulnerabilities. The Shop page has taken over the ‘Activity’ tab – an underhanded manipulation of muscle memory and habit for its millions of users. People accustomed to scrolling through their likes and follows are now redirected to… buying stuff they don’t need!!!
Of course:
But seriously, the app is moving further and further away from a social media platform, and instead, creeping toward an algorithm driven personal shopper. As the app introduces more ad features and shop tools, it’s clear that the focus is shifting from sharing to shopping.
By transforming digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram into catalogues and wishlists, capitalist financial agendas are once again imposed upon human activity across digital platforms. I’m calling it c-APP-italism.
The new app-driven purchasing market is motivated by psychological loops of urge, buy, and reward. And I am most certainly guilty of this. As people scroll through Instagram, looking at perfect people in perfect places using the best products and the living the most unattainable lifestyles, we build up a desire for the impossible. And lo and behold, just as we are wishing for the things we don’t have… Instagram makes these products directly available to us! It’s just what we want and need! Not really.
But this process is addictive, we scroll, we want, we buy, we get… and we STILL don’t look like the pictures on Instagram. This is exactly what tech companies, advertisers, and businesses want. They have us coming back for more, fuelling the c-APP-italist APP-ettite.
And so where do we end up? Well, I am maxxed out on my shopping budget, have more sweatpants that I could possibly need, a new dress that doesn’t fit me, and a void in my life that I keep trying to fill with online shopping.
But the first step is to admit we are powerless. And hopefully, that is the beginning of positive change.
"In the age of smartphones and apps, our agency is only more limited; even what we see is limited, restricted by the proprietary designs of a small handful of companies" (Wagner)