Reflection on feedback

Reflect upon a specific piece of feedback you received after presenting your proposal.

The feedback I received from the panel was quite different. While one panelist generally praised my idea, the other panelist raised some good criticisms which I will have to address before I begin the final stage of the assignment. She said that the world I have created is not too dissimilar to the real life status quo – that social media has largely become a primary focus for society in general and already provides a means of economic advantage for many social media celebrities. I agree with this, as this is what inspired my idea. Having recently done an assignment for another class on Instagram micro-celebrities, I learnt in much more depth what goes on behind the scenes of these popular social media stars and their efforts towards creating the perfect image for themselves. Often the photos posted on such platforms are highly contrived, and supposed relationships between Instagrammers are publicity stunts created for the sole purpose of posting photos together to enhance their social media presences and boost their followings. I wanted to take this lesser known side of social media and make the principle of it the focus of my world, the idea that things are being taken too far and becoming more and more disingenuous, almost as a way of showing what our world might become if we continue in this direction. She then pointed out that, therefore, I should push this idea to even more of an extreme. I will definitely consider ways that I can do this as it is true that my world might not be as distant in the future as we expect. However this was sort of the angle I wanted to come from – if my screen work were to be watched by young adults I would want them to be discomforted by how familiar the world feels as it is almost the direction we may be headed in as we become increasingly reliant on technology and engrossed in social media.

She also pointed out that if in my world, the social media followings and likes we gain on our profile are our form of currency, then do people still have jobs? I thought this was a really good point to make as I had unintentionally glazed over this detail and will be something I need to figure out in order to make my world work comprehensively. She also raised the point that if everything is ostentatious and trying to attract the most attention, then why are the inhabitants of my world monotonous? Again, I thought this was valid although due to the time restriction on our presentations I was unable to tease this detail out further. I agree that if the internal logic of this world is that people are competing to be the best, it makes sense that everyone should be totally different, to be even more “out there” than the rest and attract even more attention. However, I wanted it to be more in line with our real life world, which I believe is headed in a slightly different direction. My own interpretation of the influence of these social media celebrities is that everyone is striving to be the like them; there is a standard perception of how females (in particular) should look and a particular lifestyle they should lead, and most people aim to emulate this. In real life, those that have fully achieved it are the ones that have the highest followings, and for that exact reason. I wanted this to be translated into my world, therefore I think the inhabitants of my world should be more alike than they are dissimilar. I think this detail is important because it taps into the overall lack of genuineness that my world sort of characterises.