words vs pictures
The deterioration of word vomit was heralded by the age of pictures and word limits. I was first attracted to Instagram as a social medium for the reasons that I wasn’t attracted to used Facebook and Twitter. The limiting of myself to a few words or a few sentences not only demanded concision but more significantly it demanded expression through explicit language. There’s a lot of meaning that can easily be misconstrued with the written medium. The hardest act is the balance between writing enough to sufficiently illustrate or demonstrate a point but not so much that the reader drowns in a sea of black on white, missing the entire point. So enter Instagram. It was the medium that allowed, without concerns of being responsible for what is being expressed in an image because an image without the words is much more largely dependent upon the viewer. The viewer is judge and jury. There is no space for rebuttal after the fact. There is only initial representation. And why not? Because a picture is worth a thousand words right?
But watching the increased extremist views across all mediums today where the public discourse is led by the two sides of a discussion, pitted against each other, the fear returns. This time it is the fear that in turning my back on words I was complicit to this reality today where compromise and middle ground is overshadowed by the domineering rhetoric, or lack of, from both sides. Each extremist representation has even taken the simple medium of a single image and warped it into visual shock value. That’s what a meme is. That’s what a gif does. It’s the charm of an emoji. Its everything reduced to the shell of a stereotype with little context left. A picture can be as effective a message as a thousand words. But what happens when a picture is just one. When it no longer embodies all the things it’d take a thousand words to convey into one, but rather becomes one word pretending to be the equal alternative to a thousand.
A picture like the Mona Lisa is more than a thousand words because when we see it we recognize it was the work of a master painter and it makes us ask questions of the painter’s intent. It makes us want to know more about the woman in the painting. And so much more. All of this is more than a thousand words of feelings and interconnected thoughts, ideas, symbols of culture and history. But a picture of a stick figure smiling—is that the same thing? What if it was a picture of a woman smiling that you drew yesterday when you were bored. Arguably this picture might be worth more than a single word to you. But hardly a thousand. And so the point here is that not every picture is worth a thousand words.
Then what happens when a whole platform becomes the manifestation of a medium and people stop explaining themselves. They just post a picture with no context and take no responsibility for the interpretations of the viewer. Or perhaps the poster is intentionally manipulating the user to come to a single extreme conclusion. Not to be paranoid or radical. This is just our current reality.
When the world forgets and eschews the written language that forces expressions that are structured and inherently makes room for discourse, debate, and the explanations of more than one side, what are we left with? And even as I write this, I realize that I am painting one more extreme version to prove my point of fear. But the fact, also, that it required the written form, which in turn asks of the price of time spent reading and cognizant awareness and intent in understanding, it is already case in point.
What do you think? Explain.