The Desperation for Affirmation

Kaitlyn Farley

Valdez

Writing 100

9 November 2011

The Desperation for Affirmation

            In everyone’s lives there is a point when they feel unappreciated or invisible. This is becoming rare however, because of how accessible people are through digital technologies. Through the importance of the media in today’s society, there has emerged a culture of sharing and telling. Human beings have always tried to share and document things, but this is going way past that. There has become no point in doing an activity purely for the experience or personal gain. It has become all about the story telling and sharing because people care more about the feedback they receive about the activity than about the actual experience itself. People are craving the fame that they get in return for posting a picture that people like, or telling a story that gets everyone laughing. Debord notes this relationship in Society of the Spectacle, “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images” (4). This concept is especially related to the media, and lack there of in the novel White Noise and also in contemporary culture where Facebook and other social media reign supreme.

Iron City and Blacksmith seem like typical small towns. Though that definition is abstract and subjective it has become something of a quaint idea because of the quiet small town ideal. Living in a larger city, I have gotten to the point where I do not watch the nightly news because it seems that the only news worth reporting today is about people getting killed and things going wrong in our country and abroad. This form of news creates an availability heuristic that causes people to think that there is more violence in their city just because it is on the news. We see this in many news stories where events become a big deal only because they are on the news, without the coverage no one would know or care. This current media obsession with tragedy would make a certain pen pal in Iron City very happy. Heinrich’s pen pal shot and killed 6 people. He planned the murders to seek fame but made a flaw in that there is no media in Iron City. He killed the people hoping it would plaster his face all over the local news and he would become famous. He held no value in the lives of the people he shot. He only wanted his 15 minutes of fame. Talking about doing the murders and telling the story was not as gratifying as it being shown to everyone through an authority like the news media.

The news is not the only authority in society; people can become an authority in everyday life. Heinrich experiences this when the crowd gathers around him to listen to what he has to say about the airborne toxic event. Heinrich found that his family wasn’t as interested in what he had to say as these strangers were and he craved that affirmation. Once he got that taste and the crowd started listening, he just kept going because he liked feeling important. He was famous and important to these people. He wasn’t famous to his family because they knew him and knew he got a lot of info from the radio. This crowd though became mesmerized with what he had to say, similar to how Heinrich became mesmerized with what the radio had to say.

This fame seeking happens on much smaller scales too. There have been many times when you tell a story about an experience and find that you stop talking because it is more compelling just to show the photos. You may even just pass photos around giving brief captions instead of whole details. Or you hear a story about Kim Kardashian getting a divorce and tell your roommate, just to find that she will ignore you and tell you about the same story 5 minutes later when she reads it on the Yahoo home page. Personal connections have been interrupted by images and the affirmation and recognition we crave by sharing them with others. We look at the images and media to add validation to our stories and to back them up. Spoken word is not what it used to be. Even children’s books have images in them to go along with the words because it is more compelling that way. The images are used to supplement the words and make the words have more meaning because they then have an association with images and it makes the words more vivid and easy to understand. Advertisers too know that images are more powerful than words sometimes. There are many ads that have very few words and just have an image to project the brand or concept desired.

Images have almost replaced conversation in everyday life as well because with Facebook mediating our relationships I can see people’s pictures from their adventures and feel caught up with them without ever exchanging words. The saying a picture is worth a thousand words has never seemed more fitting. At the beginning of this class we watched an advertisement for the FourSquare application on Facebook which allows you to “check in” and share your photos and experiences with your 500 closest friends. The feeling that emerged from this advertisement is that doing something just to do it is no longer good enough. If your friends cannot see you are at the grocery store or playing basketball at the park with your photo album to back it up it is not as compelling of an experience. If your friends cannot comment on the photos you posted then it is like it didn’t happen. It seems there is no other way to experience how beautiful a morning it was without posting a picture for everyone to see and comment on and “like”. We seek this affirmation and recognition by posting the photos and hoping people will like them and comment on them how great the photos are and in turn we feel great because of it.

While waiting at the airport for his daughter, Jack experienced a plane nearly crashing and killing the passengers on board. It was a traumatic experience for the passengers on the plane and for those watching as well. When the plane lands safely Jack’s daughter, Bee asks him “Where’s the Media?” “There is no media in Iron City” he replies. She responds, “They went through all that for nothing?” (Delillo, 92). Bee is more insightful and precocious than most children. She is independent minded and well aware of the spectacle we see in this novel. The fact that she could pick up on the desire to share things at such a young age is impressive. She notes how most people feel – that there is no point in experiencing things, whether they be happy, sad, or life threatening without others being able to share in them as well. Without the mediation of the images by the media and Facebook our experiences are not as rich and we are not as wonderful if only we know what we did.

This strive for affirmation is tied into the idea of fame. Even if it is just being well liked on Facebook, everyone wants to feel that they are popular and supported. Fame is the impersonal affirmation of the image presented. Famous people do not know who their fans are. They have never and will never meet 99% of the people who consider themselves fans of theirs, yet we still follow them religiously. Looking at pictures of what they wore to the award shows and out to dinner makes us feel like we know them better and have more of a connection with them. The images have bridged the gap between celebrities and their Average Joe fan base. In our everyday lives we feel this as well when someone “likes” our pictures and posts or when we see someone we know on the news or on television. It does not seem real that someone you know on a personal level is on TV. The family gets to experience this when Baba, the matriarch is on the television and they do not quite know what to make of it. That is how I feel if I see myself or someone I know on television. About a month ago a friend of mine called into a radio station after a concert we went to. Though I was next to her when she was on the phone, it was 100 times more exciting to hear the same conversation on the radio knowing that thousands of others were listening too. We all strive for those little instances of fame and validation that we get through other people affirming our activities.

The culture of society today is very superficial. Everyone is trying to impress one another and that translates to their Facebook profiles as well. We affirm ourselves with our clothes, cars, large houses and even the way we dress. Everyday instances like never going out without having your makeup and hair fully done are magnified with social media because anyone can snap a photo and post it online and link it to you. Most people take pictures when they are all dolled up and going out, not when they are lying on the couch eating chips with their cat. We are always occupied with projecting an image of ourselves that is better than the reality. The levels of superficiality and image projection vary with income and accessibility, but it can go so far as having multiple plastic surgeries and bearing no resemblance to the same person prior to surgery.

Through this validation from others, we feel that we are becoming more valid ourselves. We trust authorities like the news media to tell us things, so we feel like we become our own form of an authority when we get to report on things. Like the crowd gathering around Heinrich when he was talking about the airborne toxic event, we all strive to have a following and to have their affirmation that we are good, smart, and attractive. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and finds an outlet to do so. People seek this affirmation and gratification, and for some it does not matter if it is from friends, family, or strangers. Our society has become so desperate for this affirmation that it is interfering with our lives and interrupting our relationships and conversations, leading our connections to become less genuine and more impersonal.

Works Cited:

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1983.

Delillo, Don. White Noise. London: Penguin, 1985.