‘Follow Me Blindly’ consists of a device that was specially developed for the purpose of operating social media platforms on smartphones.
A camera is used to scan the surface of the device. If it detects a smartphone with a applicable user interface, the motorised stylus begins to perform redundant movements: Swipes and likes of all posts presented to the machine, regardless of their content. The result is a continuous work rhythm that transforms the use of the platform into machine-controlled vehemence.
What has thoughtfully become the most popular way of consuming news in recent years is exposed here as a dubious game: as in ‘Whac-A-Mole’ (1976), ‘Follow me Blindly’ performs its ‘swiping’ and ‘liking’ in an ambitious way.
The arbitrariness of such an everyday ‘operation’ of platforms like Instagram transforms this activity into an indiscriminate labour process. Without a human, the fundamental premise of any social forum is corrupted. Instead, the machine becomes the labourer, the click worker, generating a currency called ‘interactions’ – they are seen as a measure by which accounts are given more visibility.
As media reach is a valuable commodity on the internet, providers of services that generate such interactions have long been established. Software solutions that rush through the stream of images are also being used and online platforms are responding to such a development by using bots to expose algorithmic interaction by end users and block their profiles.
However, the fact that ‘Follow Me Blindly’ is an elaborately developed machine instead of the much more efficient software solution simulates human operation. It hardly allows bots to reveal their interaction as auto-generated. This makes the movements of ‘Follow me Blindly’ decidedly human – or, viewed another way, the human interaction anticipated by bots decidedly machine-like.
‘Follow Me Blindly’ also stands in a time when essential, opinion-forming news flow and information exchange is taking place on the algorithms of commercial enterprises. Under the pretence of ‘community’, they have succeeded in creating needs that drive individuals to abandon their private sphere. Critical engagement with the world is reduced to clicks, likes and followers due to the prevalent ‘rules of the game’. Quality is measured quantitatively online; or political attitudes are anticipated on the basis of hearts.
This gives rise to new needs for recognition on the one hand and inferiority complexes on the other. Ultimately, only those who are conspicuous will achieve the new high score: There is no better breeding ground for populism and the right of the loudest to flourish.
‘Follow me Blindly’ is the starting point of an ongoing artistic research that I gave the working title ‘Tools for Silent Disobedience’. In the future I want to continue researching methods and strategies to regain sovereignty online.
