in these social media metaphors, snapchat is an eggplant paper shredder and insta is a...

digital designers have proven recently that there aren’t enough metaphors to describe social media. last week, designboom posted mike campau’s work, where social media posts appear like sketchy vacancies with brutally honest neon signage. 

with ben fearnley’s work, we get something more tangible. we don’t get the heart-wrenching, existential sadness that we get when looking at campau’s signage; fearnley’s less-abstract metaphors describe facebook, twitter, instagram and snapchat as familiar devices: a microphone, a dinner plate, a paper shredder, and of course, that thing you put a quarter in and look through at national parks.

all images courtesy of ben fearnley

the series does not describe social media on a philosophical level, but literally, it points out ways in which we interact with each of them. according to ben fearnley, facebook is a place where we simply view. we do not touch or speak. we scroll around a digital landscape. 

twitter, like a microphone, gives us the opportunity to speak our thoughts loudly to the world. the downside? what we say is often translated and lumped into an endless pile of hashtags. gluttonous instagram speaks for itself. and snapchat — oh, snapchat — can you possibly think of a better metaphor, than an eggplant paper shredder?