(B8) Social Media: Researching (Our Happy Life & The Social Media Memorabilia Auction House)

Our Happy Life: Architecture and Well-Being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism: https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/63178/our-happy-life

How do we measure the quality of our lives? What is the data behind happiness? Over the last decade, lists of indicators, indices, and rankings, commissioned and produced by public and private entities alike, have changed how we perceive and design the spaces we inhabit. Key to the development of these lists was Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2008 formation of a committee to rethink GDP as a measure of social progress and David Cameron’s 2010 initiative to collect national statistics on well-being. Both of these projects can be seen as early markers of a new Happiness Agenda.

'What we measure affects what we do.'
- This is a really interesting quote, we all are now aware of how social media is a new way of measuring, but the idea that this further impacts what we do creates a paradox around social media and the real world. 
Say something gets more engagement online, are we more likely to do that thing again? We see this becoming apparent with trends, they're very visible online and so we copy (particularly on social media like tiktok).

An idea of creating new ways we can measure from by checking in with ourselves.
- Again an interesting topic that intertwines with social media. A lot of the help and support now if delivered via a screen, often advertised on social media, so how does this impact our way of life? 

This exhibition focuses on architecture and how the way cities and buildings can be changed to better our happiness. But some of the ideas and themes (mentioned earlier) are very thought provoking and present question surrounding to topic of social media. 

Design agency T&T&T's auction website lets you buy social media influencers' personal possessions: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/talmor-and-talmor-and-talmor-the-social-media-memorabilia-auction-house-graphic-design-150419

 The Social Media Memorabilia Auction House (SMMAH) is a fake auction site selling fake memorabilia pulled from the account of prominent social media influencers. A “sort of Planet Hollywood-meets-Sotheby’s-meets-Instagram-sponcon” project, SMMAH is intended as both “a form of satire” and a “homage to the wonderful world and industry of social media influencers”.

...the website offers the chance to bid on a plethora of different objects originally seen on the Instagram account of big names. “We tried to find accounts and people that represent certain social media “archetypes” (the fitness influencer, the bodybuilder, the teen heartthrob, the living-my-best-life-bro etc), the objects we chose were then meant to serve as mini-portraits of said archetype or person,” explains T&T&T founder, Morey Talmor. “For the objects, we tried to find things that say something about the influencer’s world and environment, we also tried to highlight objects that felt unimportant, mundane or silly – hoping to poke some fun at the self-serious nature of some of these Insta posts."

The playful nature of the project is really interesting to me as the content seems to be rather twisted, I love the idea and completely get the humour but there's something about it that seems very wrong.
It showcases the addiction and fascination people have with the internet and online influences as people would genuinely be interested in paying for this stuff. 

This project shows a completely different take on approaching social media as a topic but I think it's important to look at the scope of design that's out there so we can take a new direction but also to be informed about the different approaches people have taken.