ABSTRACT

This paper identifies an affective aesthetic of “quirkiness” that femme meme authors popularized on Instagram. Building on feminist scholarship that reads new media through affect theory, this paper isolates quirkiness to understand how social media impacts Millennial and Generation Z understandings of intimacy and creates digital intimate publics. The femme memes analyzed as quirky create a similar experience for viewers because their authors express a frustration with navigating social expectations as a non-ideal neoliberal subject, especially as an individual dealing with mental illness. Quirkiness, I argue, engages the tension of social contra private by proliferating dissonance through frank revelations, satires of postfeminism, and ironic detachment. In this dissonance, quirkiness reads as absurd and bizarre and yet also—if understood properly—authentic and relatable. Quirkiness deploys the author’s affective labor to create intimacy for the viewer, who relates positively with the author’s cathartic expression of non-normative perspectives. Through the mechanics of Instagram, quirkiness inadvertently undergoes commodification and re-packages intimacy as cultural currency.

摘要

本文确定了女性模因作者在 Instagram 上流行的一种“古怪”的情感美学。基于通过影响理论解读新媒体的女权主义学术研究，本文将怪癖隔离开来，以了解社交媒体如何影响千禧一代和 Z 世代对亲密关系的理解，并创造数字亲密公众。被分析为古怪的女性模因为观众创造了类似的体验，因为它们的作者表达了作为一个非理想的新自由主义主题，尤其是作为一个处理精神疾病的个体，对驾驭社会期望的挫败感。我认为，古怪通过坦率的揭露、后女权主义的讽刺和讽刺的超然激增不和谐，从而引发社会对立的紧张局势。在这种不和谐中，quirkiness 读起来既荒谬又怪异，但如果理解得当，它又是真实的、相关的。怪癖利用作者的情感劳动为观众创造亲密感，观众与作者对非规范观点的宣泄表达产生积极联系。通过 Instagram 的机制，古怪不经意地经历了商品化，并将亲密关系重新包装为文化货币。