Generalized Other

At the turn of the 20th century, American-born psychologist George Herbert Mead introduced the generalized other—a concept that refers to the mental role that humans take on in part to speculate how others may perceive us. Often, when individuals state “What will they think of me?” and “That’s what they say!”, they are referring to a generalized other—an amalgamation of abstract opinions and beliefs. Surely, the digital age that we are in makes Mead’s concept both more intriguing and more complex; the line between the digital and the non-digital, between the mind and the internet, between thinking and scrolling are increasingly blurred. So, do we cater more to this generalized other through our social media profiles? Have our generalized others become based off of digital interactions more than our in-person interactions?

In order to form a visual representation of my generalized other, I pixelated 100 photographs of Facebook friends using an iPhone editing application. The individuals that I chose to include are those who I imagine make up my generalized other. That is, their points of view have seeped into my mind, forming the basis for my unconscious and conscious personal reflection and behavioral policing. What were originally profile pictures slowly formed into visuals with vibrant colors and abstract shapes. The countless hours that I spent pixelating these images on the phone is reminiscent of the lost hours spent scrolling on social media platforms. In both cases, the original entity (the photo or the person) turns into a dramatic abstraction (a pixelated graphic or a mental caricature). After the pixelating, all of the images were shaped into the generic Facebook male silhouette (this figure appears when someone has not yet added a profile picture on the website). These pixelated images were then printed out, cut, and transferred onto a large wooden canvas in the shape of my silhouette. Though this canvas is to-scale, my silhouette is significantly enlarged—alluding to the dominant role that this generalized other has taken in my life. Multiple layers of plastic resin were applied to the surface, unifying the 100 abstract faces into a single generalized other.