This is beyond disgusting. I am a women who practices amateur photography, to the level of keeping my own home studio with strobes and backdrops. One of the consistent struggles with this hobby is the fact that the model who is most easily available to practice different forms or lighting or ideas is myself. Yet posting even the most innocuous photos online puts me at high risk for exploitation, to the point where maintaining social media for my portrait portfolio frankly seems more risky than it’s worth.
The downside? I’m limited in how easily I can connect with other photographers and I did have to figure out another online solution for sharing my portfolio with others. I lose the potential publicity I would get on social platforms. But I’ll take that trade off.
I am an older millennial. I’ve seen the early days of MySpace and the first iteration of Facebook and I was online with AIM was one of the main messaging platforms. Social media all feels like it’s stagnant and rotting today. Passive income streams producing slop to perpetuate a pipe dream that benefits only a few at the expense of many others. The sooner we can move away from this addicting poison as a society, the happier I’ll be.
