Picture Perfect & Straight to the Point

As a member of the younger generation, I strongly agree that I prefer to be told things straight up and right to the point. Social media provides people with a good platform to do exactly that. On Instagram, we post a picture that relates to the caption. Tumbler uses pictures to express feelings/moods. Pinterest allows you to make categories for your moods, ideas, and traits. Twitter has a word capacity for verbal expression. Similar to all of these social media pages, most albums of musical artists give clear, insightful, and straight to the point pictures of what their songs are going to be about and what is the meaning behind their music.

The fact that Twitter has a maximum word capacity, limiting what one can say in a single tweet, can often lead viewers to become confused about the content and intent due to lacking clarification. #Hashtags is the latest trend that allows users to apply dynamic, personal verbiage within their tweets but some are unclear and often over used. Before, during, or after the tweet, a hashtag can be used to put specific emphasis on the main point, view, mood, etc. This is most effective when the hashtag is short and concise but social media has seen many extremes of hashtags being adopted to make points or stress people’s points of view.

In a similar statement on personal opinions to hashtags, we see artists making their album covers relate to their songs and pull listeners in with the verbal and visual content. A primary example of this is the 1-800-273-8255 album by Logic. This album cover is black with Logics name on top and the number following underneath in a large font repeating itself 7 times. Much alike a hashtag, this number has a specific, very impactful and in this case, very valuable meaning. This number is a suicide hotline number and the song is all about suicide awareness, feelings, and vulnerability. This album cover didn’t need to be crazy and wild, it needed to be direct and get the message out and give listeners an idea of what the album content would be about.

The fact is, most people like to know what is going on, but nobody enjoys having to read a bunch of stuff that is not essential to something like a Tweet or an Instagram post. That’s why these social media platforms have tools set in place such as a word capacity or a picture to describe what is inside to keep the viewers’ attention. Short and sweet is what keeps the readers on their feet.