The cult of the dissociative pout

Social media’s combination of global reach,

performance metrics, platform design, content

format, and algorithmic interference have changed

how creators make for others, and how others

perceive and interact with creators' work.

The results are an eternal presence, persistent

feedback, an unrealistic expectation of virality,

harmful social comparison, crea

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“Where we once justified our daily anxieties by doom scrolling through bad news, we now post memes that epitomise our sense of mass existentialism, taking part in a sort of performative negativity that, as a result, protects us against reality,” says Holly Friend, deputy foresight editor at futures consultancy, The Future Laboratory.

Whereas the millennial women of Instagram — the millennial women associated with the “that-girl” trope — would strike the perfect pose and use filters to enhance their natural beauty, Gen-Zs use their phone cameras to distort the natural ideal of the human face, obscuring their features with emojis, cartoon glitter, surreal lighting and other disto... See more