AI Jumbotron Trend: Candidly Artificial
People on social media are using AI to create posts of themselves on a Jumbotron at a baseball game. What is making this prompt so viral?
No one knowingly tries to make themselves look bad on social media. If anything, typically people try to make themselves look as good as possible, whether it be through presenting photos where they look happy, sociable, and most of all effortless. A common way that people do this is by posting sought after experiences in their daily life such as posting their time at a concert or sports game.
Through posting these experiences, they are telling the world “I am adventurous and live a fun life” without leaving any regard for the mediocre and generally undesirable parts of life. And through this repeated documentation of the positives, they hope that people will look at them with envy for their “idyllic” lives and beauty.
This further connects to the AI Jumbotron trend. A trend where people use AI to create photos of themselves on the Jumbotron at a baseball game looking completely glamorous without trying. Fulfilling the requirements of appearing as having an interesting lived experience and being beautiful. Although why would it be necessary to use AI to meet these standards? Well, the most obvious answer would simply be that it is a rare occurrence to get featured on the Jumbotron and maybe people just want to see how it looks. However, it can be argued that the novelty of appearing on the Jumbotron is what makes this experience so alluring, so by faking this moment, it should hypothetically lose all of its appeal. Yet, people keep using AI to replicate these experiences and still get millions of likes and views.
This is in part because of a shift in what people consider “flexing”. Historically, social media flexing usually consisted of material items such as luxury cars, bags, and clothing. But as of recent peoples’ flexing has been experiential. People are growing to understand that people who have hobbies are generally more interesting than people whose central character trait is owning an expensive item.
This means that the new social currency is procuring special moments as opposed to possessions. Unfortunately, because special moments (such as being featured on the Jumbotron) are highly unlikely, a supply and demand problem arises. For the average person, the demand to actually experience unique moments outweighs the likelihood of them actually happening on a regular basis.
This is the logic that requires people to use AI to mimic these moments, to keep up with a posting schedule of interesting events that neither the viewers nor the content creator can realistically keep up with. Further displaying the message that it is more so the social credit that comes with having hobbies that is more important than actual participation in hobbies. With the focus on perceptions over reality negatively impacting our perspective on our own experiences.
Ultimately, the rise of the AI Jumbotron Trend reveals how we calculate social status in the new digital age. As we pressure ourselves to constantly curate adventures, we lose sight of why we wanted to participate in these events in the first place; to have fun. We risk becoming spectators of our own simulated existence for the immediate validation for a like instead of the long term validation of a memory.
The ultimate irony of the AI Jumbotron trend is that in a rush to show the world how vibrant our lives are, we stop living them altogether. To break this cycle we must choose when to log off of social media or take a break from our phones. Let’s start investing our time into actually living our lives, rather than performing for the algorithmic perception of them!