the fashion systems’ (algo) • rhythmic gaze
de-mystifying algorithms’ propagandistic core & its influence on the consumers’ digital agency

Investigate personal digital footprint by scraping online environment for 2 hours a day.

At the end of the day, I found out that there were lots of fashion ads and campaigns shown on my instagram. So I decided to focus on scraping more fashion ads and campaigns and see how it goes.
Make skin colour palette on every pictures.

Classify all the pictures by gender.
WOMEN
BOTH/
CAN'T TELL/
DIGITAL HUMAN
MEN

AND THIS IS WHAT WE GET !

SKIN COLOUR
PROPORTION
GENDER
PROPORTION

FIGURE
None of the models in the ads
and campaigns which were
shown on my instagram are fat or
curvy. All of them are tall and
skinny, even the digital human.

What’s priming? On wikipedia you will see “priming is a phenomenon
whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent
stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention.” Studies have
shown that based on things we have read, watched, and heard we can
be primed to behave in certain manners. This made me wonder, Instagram,
one of the most popular social media with over 1 billion monthly
active users, what has it done to me? As a heavy instagram user, I spend
hours scrolling and investigating my personal digital footprint over the
past few days trying to figure it out. By scraping hundreds of fashion
advertisements and campaigns on my instagram, I then classified them
by the gender of models, also their skin colour. In the results, more
than 75% of the models are females, only 17% are males. And even
though there are multiple different skin colour models shown on my instagram,
the percentage of the dark skin models is obviously lower
than the others. Moreover, while scraping, I found out that most of the
fashion campaigns used white skin or dark skin models but asian
models. In contrast, most of the fashion advertisements for selling
products used mainly asian and white skin models instead of dark skin
models. Besides, none of the models are fat or curvy. All of them are tall
and skinny, even the digital human.
Now I wonder if I am influenced by instagram that’s why I only tend to design women’s clothes. I wonder if I am idolizing the bony gaunt body type without awareness. Am I racist? Or is instagram making me racist?