When you think of social media depictions in film, one particular image comes to mind: a woman’s face, lit by blue light of the screen. The ubiquity of this image — a woman, scrolling forever — is perhaps not unexpected, given that social media has grossly exaggerated pre-existing societal beauty standards that, to a large extent, put pressure on women. But what may have started as an intuitive exploration of our relationship with social media, has become a cliche trope for films wishing to explore this topic to rest their laurels on: women love to post.
Now well-worn, this is the kind of social commentary that’s been appearing since the mid-2010s. In Black Mirror’s 2016 “Nosedive”, for instance, Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) tries desperately to improve her social standing through her online image. Or in 2017’s Ingrid Goes West, Aubrey Plaza plays the titular role of a young woman who tries to ingratiate herself into the life of influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) by mimicking the lifestyle that she presents on Instagram.
In the last year alone, three separate films have attempted to tackle the idea of a curated online identity, all with female protagonists. Not Okay (2022) follows Danni (Zoey Deutch) who, in a ploy to get into the right social circle, fakes a trip to Paris on Instagram, unintentionally on the day of a terrorist attack, and then revels in the limelight she receives as a survivor. The more recently released Norwegian body horror film, Sick of Myself (2022), centres Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) a woman so desperate for attention she goes as far as giving herself a rash with banned pills. And the simply titled Influencer (2022), a slasher movie in which a young woman picks off influencers for fun, just landed on Shudder.
Notably, these more recent editions have little to no psychological investigation of why their characters are like this. Danni has no friends at work for no apparent reason other than she tries too hard. There is just one moment where we get a slight inkling into Signe’s psyche, in a scene where she asks her boyfriend to describe her funeral and the many mourners in attendance while they’re having sex. After this though, the film chugs along with no further introspection into its protagonist. The idea of a woman obsessed with social media is so normalised it doesn’t even need explanation anymore.
Suffice to say we have grown accustomed to a highly feminised social media manipulator. But why is it that the social media depictions in film and TV are overwhelmingly female? Aren’t there just as many Very Online mean as there are women? You can list Caroline Calloway and Anna Delvey against the likes of Joe Rogen or The Tinder Swindler.
Our movies reflect how society has deemed this obsession a woman’s problem. In Ingrid Goes West, the extremely online girlfriend is offset and complemented by an obligatory extremely offline boyfriend. Not Okay’s Danni, meanwhile, may harbour a crush on an Online Man, but his social media persona appears effortless and he is passively idolised by the influencer crowd. It’s Danni, the woman, who stresses over seeming cool on her own grid.
What does this speak to, if not inherent societal misogyny? Instead of questioning a supposed growing narcissism in society, film now resorts to simple mockery — Danni herself is nothing more than a Gen Z cliche, covered head to phone in microtrends — of female characters, often under the guise of satire. These same films do little, meanwhile, to unpack the appeal of the influencer culture or societally enforced loneliness of the individual. The message has simply become that society is turning people into narcissists, or rather, that society is turning women into narcissists.
If the film industry were to look beyond Instagram as their main subject for social media cinema, directors and writers would discover a treasure trove of contemptible men for their focus. Subjects like incel culture and the worrying spectacle of Andrew Tate and the manosphere have been widely untouched. Toxic internet cultures are not simply a women’s issue. We know men suffer from similar online pressures. In cases of the green line theory — a misogynistic semi-conspiracy theory which places worth on how closely a woman leans into a man in a photograph — and manosphere’s alpha ideals, men are shamed for any perceived femininity and encouraged to covet their own extreme body types just as much as women are pressurised to be thin.
And yet, when we think of depictions of men on social media, just two films immediately spring to mind: The Social Network (2010) and Don’t Worry Darling (2022). The former however, doesn’t truly count. It’s the story of Facebook, and by extension the birth of social media, not the way men use social media now they do have it. Granted, the movie does dedicate a lot to showing how Facebook’s nascent beginnings were misogynistic and puerile (a “hot or not” game for students at Harvard to rate their female classmates). Still though, the representation it offers is not men as social media users, only creators.
Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling then arguably stands alone (so far at least) in its explicit exploration of Men Online, and specifically of incel culture, even if not specifically social media. But its focus and setting within an alternate reality means that Jack’s very real life indoctrination is seen in just a small flashback in the third act. The revelation of his incel status then, becomes nothing more than a meme about Greasy Harry Styles and his hotly debated acting skills. The performance then doesn’t serve as a threatening force that incel culture should incite, it is simply funny to see a popstar so known for polished looks to become a shaggy pimpled internet gremlin.
Alongside the judgemental tone that has kept extremely online girlfailures at the forefront of this subject, there is mostly likely a reticence to depict the more insidious Men’s Rights Activist groups on screen. Whenever toxic masculinity is depicted in film — think American Psycho, The Wolf of Wall Street — there is always a certain set of men who idolise these toxic central figures, despite the fact they are meant to be antagonists, cautionary tales. Within manosphere circles, Patrick Bateman is one of the heinous male archetypes regularly glorified. Some argue that depicting male violence, incelism, misogyny on screen then, is simply justifying that behaviour and attitude, feeding it back to the internet where it can fester and grow.
But to avoid even trying for fear of that misreading is to do a disservice to social media onscreen. If we only explore the grid’s toxicity through the prism of women and girls, then audiences miss out of the full picture. There’s so much to be gained from directors focusing their attention on the as yet untapped discourse of male social media relations before they consider creating another aesthetically pleasing film depicting high femme insta-influencer culture. But sadly, to paraphrase critic, author, and lifelong critique of capitalism John Berger, it’s a lot easier to depict a woman with a phone in her hand and call it narcissism, than to reckon with indoctrination into male supremacist groups.