Digital environments offer spaces to disconnect from your body, to ignore physical anxiety by letting your mind be simultaneously occupied and vacant. ‘Ambient television’ provides constant stimulation with minimal intellectual investment, playing in the background while you continue to scroll. It is only at 04:00 when Netflix shows concern that I’m still watching that I recognise I should have stopped several hours ago, and that I don’t really remember much of the plot anyway. As my screen fades to black, I am rudely confronted by my own reflection, and uncomfortably reminded of my physicality.

We expect to engage with online spaces seamlessly, and for our virtual realities to be instant and gratifying. When videos buffer, loading bars never complete or you are hit by a 404 error, our engagement becomes disjointed and frustrating. The unfulfilled anticipation of a broken link leaves the discomfort of a bated breath. These interruptions puncture our virtual reality, and disorient us in these spaces. Waiting for them to resolve holds us in a static momentum, an appearance of movement without progression.

Digital spectatorship and online dating growingly facilitate a marketplace of bodies. To scroll through Grindr is to have potential romantic or sexual partners codified through a grid. Squares of torsos cut soft edges of the body into boxes to pick and choose from. In these spaces, our understanding of our body is mediated through its online reproduction. Our self-perception becomes distilled through the images we chose to represent ourselves. The nature of these platforms encourages self-regulation of the body. To be muscular, to be completely hairless, to be ‘masc’ enough or ‘femme’ enough are all pressures to compete, to present, to perform, to constantly monitor your body in relation to its digital manifestation. In these spaces, your body becomes your brand.