Some time ago, I talked about these YouTube channels run by housewives, which gave me a general feeling of unease. In the meantime, I’ve given in to a new cute sin: housewives’ Instagram accounts.
The magic of algorithms
I don’t limit my Twitter account or my LinkedIn account. But, voluntarily, my Facebook account and my Instagram account are restricted to people I know “in real life”. I share very little there. However, I prefer to restrict access. After all, I don’t feel obligated to accept everyone.
It all started very innocently: an account following a cooking account. And hop ! Recipe ideas in my favourites. Then, a sports account. A hairdressing account. A makeup account. Then, accounts that give tips for Excel. And one evening, the drama: an Asian account featuring a young woman, in a sparkling interior. I was screwed.
Since then, every night, it’s been my new ritual. I turn off the computer, I put myself on the sofa and I decompress, sometimes for a good hour in front of Instagram, in a state of fascination in front of these women who clean their interiors, give household advice. I discover things that I did not know, me who spends part of my free time cleaning my apartment.
Enchanting Technology
Why such fascination? In a word: appliances. Apart from housewives (often American) who give low-cost cleaning tips, I often find myself in front of publications which highlight household appliances, which look fabulous. A mini-washing machine, a device for cleaning an Italian shower — I hate mine — a mini-dishwasher, a device for measuring rice, a steam pressure cooker, etc.
I was an easy target for this kind of publications: cleaning the house relaxes me. When I start to feel anger rising to the point of not being able to type properly on my keyboard, I either climb on my treadmill or I clean the house. But, there are some tasks that I like less than others. So, anything that can allow me to dose my effort is welcome.
Fortunately, if I’m addicted to cleaning and my treadmill, I have a big flaw. I’m a little miserly. I’m not going to deprive myself of something that makes me happy. But, before making a purchase, I always ask myself: do I need it? Do I want it? Can I afford it by paying cash? (I’m allergic to credit, which I perceive as the antechamber to personal bankruptcy and the beginning of death in a hospice) Am I going to use it enough to justify this purchase in the long term? Do I have the space to store it in my apartment without tripping over it? (Parisians who read me know what I’m talking about) If I answered yes, I take the leap.
digital tabloid
When I was a teenager, I bought what are commonly called women’s magazines. It must be 15 years since I quit. Instagram has replaced this distracting reading. Insidiously, he targeted me. I still wonder how I came to have an Instagram feed that looks so much like the old women’s magazines I used to read.
We talk a lot about influencers promoting various products, but, in fact, before, it was in women’s magazines. It was a very good “hideout” to work there, given the number of free products that you could collect there. The very tone of the articles gave the impression of a friendship between the magazine and its readers, a tone which I have always found unbearable and hypocritical.
So why follow the posts of an Asian influencer, who promotes high-tech household products? Because she looks like me. The videos she shoots show her in her daily life, which is not that of a housewife. It may also be for this reason that I did not have any revulsion, unlike the YouTube channels I was talking about previously. She comes home in the evening, she changes, she tidies up, she makes dinner. And even if we spot that she lives with someone—two toothbrushes in the bathroom—she doesn’t put herself at the service of a man. Nor is she a beauty cannon or a fashion freak. He is an ordinary person, who has significant financial means, given the size of the apartment.
Inner battles
I dream in front of these Instagram publications while being torn by several problems, apart from the one I mentioned before about my consumption habits. On the one hand, I am fascinated and grateful to all those people who have invented machines to make our daily lives easier, especially women’s lives. I remember my great-grandmother washing her clothes by hand. We forget the extraordinary comfort it is to have a washing machine.
On the other hand, all these devices are tools for collecting personal data. We talked about it in the article on connected household robots, which are very greedy in terms of personal data. And if they learn about us, we don’t necessarily learn more on our side. We can do very good things with all these devices, but without them, do we know how to cook? We can draw a parallel with plagiarism and the debates around ChatGPT. Yes, the tool, properly configured, can produce a very good article or a very good school assignment. However, what will we have understood? What will we have memorized?
And there is the environmental issue. All these devices in front of which I am in awe and which allow us to save time and comfort, how much do they cost ecologically speaking? How many are made up of rare minerals? What is their power consumption? As much as I know that ADEME’s figures are completely bogus, especially when they say very calmly that one hour of streaming on Netflix is equivalent to a round trip from Paris to New York, as much as I know that the very manufacture of certain devices is really energy consuming. So where to place the cursor? How to arbitrate between our individual comfort, towards which we all tend and it is human, and the preservation of our species?
I admit I don’t have the answer and basically, these are petty bourgeois problems. In the meantime, I will not sulk my little guilty pleasure of the evening. And if you have maintenance problems, know that white vinegar, baking soda, salt and lemon work wonders.