Here's an idea, a tagged Instagram
is more than just a photo.
#IdeaChan-- oop, sorry.
Though it might be the greatest thing to ever happened
to photography, there's tons more
going on Instagram than just artsy photos of people's cats
and sandwiches.
Instagram has its own communities, celebrities,
approval system, double tap, and of course
it's own tagging mechanic.
Placed in the caption field of the photo
that you're uploading, hashtags organize
the snaps snapped by an army of thumb
wielding proto-Cartier-Bressons.
And while there are tags on Instagram
like there are schnitzel in Germany,
there are a good number which stand out like Uber Schnitzel.
We're going to talk about three common hashtags that
say something about Instagram and also
maybe a little something about how we
think about modern photography.
First we're going to talk about latergram,
a hash which is tagged photos which were taken in the past.
Up until Instagram or maybe just before,
photography was the practice of capturing images
for the sole purpose of having them for later.
Every Ansel Adams photograph is a latergram.
Heck, every photograph is a latergram.
#latergram shows that photos maybe
aren't as strictly atemporal as they once were.
Now, there's this weird feeling that if you
post a gram of where you're not and you don't #latergram,
it's like your lying.
You sit on a throne of lies.
Meaning the photos, especially Instagram photos
have become just as much a declaration of the present
as a visual memento.
It also means that people are taking photos with their phones
and saving them for later.
I mean why not post all the photos of your cousin's
quinceanera at once.
Well, maybe if you post too many great photos all in a row,
you won't get as many imaginary internet popularity
points, which brings us to tags for likes.
One of the central features of hashtags
is that they create impromptu communities.
They allow people to gather around and track
specific topics, sports events, adorable things, music tastes,
you name it.
And the more hashtags you include,
the more communities you are potentially reaching out to.
And the more communities you reach out to,
the greater chance you'll get yourself some likes.
Heart this, yeah.
The hope is to play the numbers.
You include a ton of tags, get in a ton of searches,
get a ton of likes, a ton of followers and then blam,
you become InstaFamous
Like Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube,
Instagram users love making things.
But they also love recognition.
Tags for Like, Instagood and InstaFamous
are part of the ever shifting shifty shape of fame.
For every public platform on the internet,
there is another road to global recognition.
And Instagram is no different, as long
as of course your photos look good.
Which brings us, actually to no filter.
#nofilter indicates that the photos uploader decided
not to use what is arguably Instagram's central feature,
the application of an old school nostalgic filter.
No filter is kind of like saying naw man, this photo is so good,
it don't need no filter.
But aside from being a little braggy, in my mind at least,
is it also strictly speaking not possible?
Between an awe-inspiring vista and me
commenting cool photo bro, are they're not filters
upon filters upon filters?
What about camera lenses, image capturing hardware
and software, rendering this and that?
And if you want to get crazy, what about your own perception?
No filter invokes some sort of trueness or verite
as if to say no, no, no, no, no, this is the actual photo
and maybe tries to inch the no filter photo closer
to not phone photo snapping, which is itself also
a series of filters.
OK so these tags why are they important or interesting?
Well, besides providing searchable collections
of images-- though I'm not really sure you'd want to see
all of the latergrams in the same way you want to see all
of the #HarryStyles-es-- they also provide a context
or commentary.
Think about all of the meaning they attache to their photos.
Now, this is true of all hashtags on all platforms,
but especially neat for Instagram
because hashtags are frequently the only textual content
on a post.
They are the only thing with a literal meaning.
Sure, a lot of the time it's #Sunset on a picture
of a sunset and #Swag on whatever swag is.
But like our examples, they also can make explicit a meaning
which was otherwise only implied or totally
external to the picture or didn't even exist
until invoked by a hash tag.
And tags do this in a way that normal caption text can't.
Tags are a bit of what Espin Aarseth calls Cybertext.
Cybertext quote "posits the intricacies of the medium
as an integral part of the literary exchange."
This means tags also make Instagram photos
different from normal photos.
Photograph and tag and comment all become part and parcel.
Like how different would our experience
of all of these famous photographs
be if we only knew them with tags?
All of this stuff adds layers of depth and relationship
to what otherwise might just be a photo.
How great that depth is and how meaningful it might be,
well that depends heavily on which tags you're looking at.
[CAMERA SHUTTER SNAPS]
G-P-O-Y. What do you guys think?
How much additional meaning is added by tags?
And what can we learn from some of your favorite tags?
Let us know in the comments.
And if you love Idea Channel, you
know what to do, double tap.
I might not pixel agree with what you have to say,
but I will defend until my pixel death
your pixel right to say it.
Let's see what you guys had to say
about the morality of buying video games.
First and foremost, a big thanks to Jake at Vsauce3
for shouting out last week's video
and to all of the Vsauciers in the audience,
we're happy to have you guys.
Anybody who hasn't seen Jake's video
about the cost of "Call of Duty" in real life,
you should watch it.
We'll put a link in the description.
Koroistro says that if you want to escape this moral conundrum,
you can do so by just pirating the game.
And that makes me wonder whether or not
that sort of files under two wrongs don't make a right.
A lot of other people also said that you could do it
by buying a game secondhand, which yeah,
I mean that provides a little bit more distance.
But then in some way, you might still
be supporting an industry that supports an industry you
don't want to support.
I don't know, yeah, some levels.
There's levels to this one.
To Jphugo and everyone else who recommended "Special Ops The
Line," actually I haven't played it,
but I have heard that it really responsibly interrogates
the moral choices of shooting pixels at other pixels.
So is now, on my list now.
LiemenColour says that this moral conundrum is rendered
null and void by the fact that the amount of practical effect
you will have by purchasing games
is actually very, very small compared
to a huge number of other factors, which,
yeah if practical effect is what you're concerned with,
then that might be a way out of this moral problem.
To YingofDarkness, I think the point you were trying to make
is that realism contributes to certain kinds of games
and not to the quality of games overall, like if Minecraft
or Starseed Pilgrim or other games were realistic,
yeah, they wouldn't be, they wouldn't be happy the games
they are.
Michael Clark wonders in modern society
with so many moral land mines, is it even
possible to not be a hypocrite.
Is hypocrisy just a state of being?
And I think, yeah, depending upon your belief system,
life can get real complicated, really fast.
Relatedly, Graham Wallace and a bunch of other people
point out that paying you taxes could even be a moral choice.
And I think this is a little complicated
because you could argue that paying your taxes
isn't really a choice.
But if you really don't like the way your country conducts
itself, then, I mean, you could choose to not pay your taxes.
And you certainly wouldn't be alone,
you know you'd just be in the sort of civil disobedience
Thoreau-style kind of thing.
But yeah, you might get yourself in some trouble.
To daveythebro, thank you so much for being
with us from day one.
That's so awesome.
And to anyone else who missed the memo,
we got nominated for two Webby Awards, which we are doing,
you guys are awesome.
So we're doing really well.
But if you haven't yet, you should.
We'll put some links in the description.
We hope that you want us to win.
And also we recently hit 200,000 subscribers,
so that's a round of applause for everybody, for you guys.
Thank you so much.
We're going to make a video celebrating this thing,
but we just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you to everybody for being just
like literally the coolest.
This week's episode is made with the awesome work
of these handsome and talented people.
I was also on NPR this weekend, so we'll put a link
to that in the description.
And this week tweet of the week comes
from DaThings who I'm not even going to describe it.
You should just watch it.