This exhibit aims to examine everyday writing in the digital age. Social media is increasingly being utilized in a diary-like manner and private accounts are a popular way to express and archive one's thoughts. Over the last 5 years, many users of Instagram have created "fake" (otherwise described as private) accounts where they can be more selective with their followers and content. Many people began using "fake" accounts (also known as "finsta" accounts) to post more intimate accounts of their lives to a more select group of individuals. The increasing popularity of such a phenomenon brings to light many questions about everyday writing in the digital age. When considering how "finsta" accounts function as a new age diary and form of digital everyday writing, it is important to explore the way that elements like text, images, and the promise of privacy define this new form. As a scholar of rhetoric and composition (with interests specifically in visual and digital rhetoric), I have decided to examine "finsta" accounts as new-age diaries. The exhibit attempts to explain why "finsta" posts are everyday writing in addition to explaining how text, images, and privacy settings shape and impact the form.
"Finsta" accounts are a new and modern form of everyday writing. Emerging onto the social platform late in 2011, "finsta" accounts were a concept that invited users to engage in more private and personal posting on social media. "Finsta" accounts presented themselves as an alternative digital space where the user could maintain more control over the audience and their posts. For many people, the concept of "finsta" accounts is inviting. The form offers more privacy because of the user's ability to be more selective with who follows the account, what the profile picture is, what the username is, what the biography states, and what type of content is posted. "Finsta" accounts are digital spaces where users can post intimate details about their lives that are vastly different (and more honest) than their public persona. Additionally, they can market such posts to a more selective audience as a way to maintain the intimate and personal nature of the posts. As the form became increasingly popular, it was only natural that people saw the "finsta" form as an invitation to a space where diary-like entries could be posted and only the most inner-circle of a person's friend/family group could access them. Soon after their advent, people were using "finsta" accounts to post diary-like content that gave updates on their lives, their emotional states, their hidden interests, and more.
Credits
Emily Tomczak