Screenshots: virtual Kodak, real moments
All of today’s computers, phones, and other devices come equipped with buttons or shortcuts that make it easy to capture some contents of their screen. Screenshots are a convenient way to bring information from one platform to another: many Instagram meme accounts, with follower counts in the multi-millions, use screenshots to regurgitate posts from Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook. My camera roll (Figure 1) is chock-full of cropped conversations, an occasional Snapchat deemed worthy of preservation, and excerpts of readings I wanted to share with friends. The screenshot is ubiquitous and perhaps deceptively simple, but beneath the surface are frequent negotiations among the person taking the screenshot, bits of the surrounding context, and the anticipated audience. As screenshot creators, we exercise the technique of cropping to construct personal meaning. As both creators and recipients, we grapple with how screenshots change notions of public and private.
Figure 1. A screenshot of my camera roll, retrieved 9/29/2020. Almost all the recent items happen to be screenshots.
Every screenshot asks us how we wish to embed the “subject” in context. Full-screen shots can expose the time at which the shot was taken, suggesting whether a celebrity’s clichéd “Notes app apology” was a late-night ordeal. Desktops can reveal a miscellany of downloaded files, and browsers may show extensions and bookmarks. Just as paratext — the “threshold” material such as the copyright page and blurbs of a book — affects one’s reading of a literary text, peripheral information influences screenshots’ perception. A visible low battery indicator or a desktop with unusual contents are likely to provoke comment and commentary (Figure 2). Recently, people have shared their meticulously customized iOS 14 layouts across social media. In an age where our devices are our most personal objects, these screenshots speak volumes about what matters to us.
Figure 2a. If someone posts a screenshot with a low-battery icon visible, others often remark on it in the replies, ignoring the main message.
Figure 2b. A “screenshot” (photo of screen) of a comically saturated desktop (commonly misidentified as Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz’s) during an MIT Town Hall webinar in summer 2020. Courtesy of Shayna Ahteck.
Or, one can intentionally exclude context. This kind of screenshot is likely to be used to support an argument or convey something about the sender, but with narrow intention. A screenshot of a funny conversation implies that the sender is funny. “Dunk tweets” criticize someone usually by taking that person’s quotes out of context. One kind of context removal strips personally identifiable information, producing dismembered screenshots. These retain just enough context to still have meaning for their intended audience and can be disseminated as lone units or part of larger pieces (Figure 3).
Figure 3a. A dismembered screenshot of the Snapchat interface uses a pop culture reference to remark on the ever-worsening nature of 2020.
Figure 3b. Dismembered screenshots are combined to pretend to believe that a girl someone is Snapchatting with just went to take a very long shower. In reality, the sender has been left “on read.”
Making the public private is among the most powerful abilities of screenshots and their inherent insight into the digital. In the book Archive Fever, French philosopher Jacques Derrida connects the concept of the archive to authority and power. In ancient Greece, archives themselves were located in private, privileged spaces. Today, digital technologies and their norms have turned archiving into an activity regular people are constantly doing, often via screenshots. We are also in the habit of making the content of our archives public by sharing them on social media. This even carries over to private conversations. While there’s no “Share” button built into messaging apps, many people want to share their conversations anyway, and screenshots fulfill that need. Though we generally consider texts to be private spaces, these snippets turn out to be widely relatable, allowing them to succeed as public content, like an Instagram meme, outside their original contexts.
The transformation of something from private to public is not new in the history of screenshots. Photos of screens were pioneered in the 1960s to show and thus market the computer-aided design (CAD) capabilities of newly interactive computers. Using a computer at this time “typically meant dropping off a stack of punch cards with a technician; a print-out would be waiting to be picked up the next day… computers were nowhere to be seen, much less interacted with” (Allen 644). Scientists in the MIT CAD project diligently developed protocols for taking photos of what was displayed on a computer, adopting conventions that emphasized the alterable nature of the machine. Their screenshots made “something exclusive and intimate — the rare interactive computer… present in the public realm” (Allen 664).
One common type of screenshot today captures what Twitter user @nnnnicholas calls “humorous juxtapositions in feeds.” These juxtapositions can easily be created on purpose if the platform uses reverse-chronological feeds: a user simply needs to post one thing and then another in the right order (Figure 4b). On the other hand, screenshots of juxtapositions that follow by accident from an algorithmic feed “carve space for human experience (perhaps) outside the algo’s [sic] intention,” @nnnnicholas says. Today, social media feeds by default do not use chronological ordering. TikTok is perhaps the most notorious example — their algorithm is their product, capable of getting to “know” the user in minutes. Because one’s feed is determined by a black-boxed algorithm, it is unique and thus private. For someone else to witness the exact same feed as you, following the same accounts as you is insufficient. The only way for this to happen is for them to log into your account — or for you to share screenshots.
Figure 4a. A screenshot showing a humorous juxtaposition from my YouTube recommendations.
Figure 4b. A screenshot showing a humorous juxtaposition that was likely constructed intentionally by a user reblogging the two posts in succession on a reverse-chronological feed.
We arrive at a meaning of “context” beyond the battery percentage and bookmarks on our screens. In the context of society at large, where platforms measure and nudge our every move, screenshots can make the private public, the temporary permanent. They capture exchanges, isolate units of meaning, and enable rebellion against black-boxed, allegedly optimized feeds. Screenshots are borne out of negotiation between people taking a screenshot, pieces of the surrounding context, and the expected recipients. The nearly built-in ability to crop makes us consider what information to include or exclude each time. Dismembered screenshots neatly capture content that, despite often coming from private spaces, can speak to universal experiences. Shifting the private-public divide has occurred in both the past and present of screenshots, from introducing people of the 1960s to the interactive computer, to “carving space for human experience” amid algorithms that are cruelly perfect.