In this blog, Lily, Med Comms Specialist, makes a case for embracing the internet culture born ‘internet ugly’ aesthetic in Med Comms.
What is ‘Internet Ugly’, anyway?
If you have ever watched a YouTube video or scrolled through your social media feed of choice, you will probably have seen examples of ‘internet ugly’. At it’s boldest, the eclectic and diverse aesthetic looks like rough mouse-drawn pictures, text laden HTML websites or intentional misspelling and use of memes. However, it can be implemented in barely perceptible ways such as incorrect microphone use or rough-hewn editing styles.
Editing Lily here, just jumping in to say that I meant to add that putting in post-presentation corrections is a good example of these types of edits. 💡
In short internet ugly is the beauty behind bad design. It is a little wink and a nudge to the content viewer that the content creator is part of the in-crowd.
How aesthetic shapes engagement
As an example, we can look at the differences between the polished short video posts of LinkedIn, versus a science educator short on YouTube.
The former will likely have a minimalist colour palette, shiny besuited people may glide around a conference hall or some interesting graphic featuring a modern cityscape with clean bold text might appear. The text post will most definitely have been spell checked and the use of emoji’s is tasteful, just enough to let you know they’re serious… but not boring.
The YouTube content on the other hand will likely feature someone seemingly in their own home, maybe it’s messy, maybe it’s a little unrehearsed. They might be holding their lapel mic in their hand or have headphones on or be eating a snack. The background might have books or figurines on shelves that look like they’ll topple off of the edge. See science communicator extraordinaire Hank Green, for example, this video is about fish, or is it?
The delivery of the content is also pertinent, in the LinkedIn post it is likely everything will be delivered on point. Though, The YouTube creator might leave in a section where they need to look up how to pronounce a complicated word or fumble over a sentence. And this is internet ugly at it’s finest, it is an aesthetic entirely of the internet and it defines internet culture.
It might be tempting to infer that the YouTube content is less informative or less thought through. But these two posts could contain exactly the same information, the YouTube backdrop is still a set, the editing was still a conscious choice that took time and expertise. It’s a matter of aesthetic and that is determined by the audience and their engagement.
My case for internet ugly in Med Comms
So why would anyone want to make anything intentionally look bad? For the answer to this, I turn to Nick Douglas, author of ‘It’s Supposed to Look Like S***: The Internet Ugly Aesthetic’. He states that “the ugliness of the amateurish internet doesn’t destroy its credibility because it’s a byproduct of the medium’s advantages (speed and lack of gatekeepers), and even it’s visual accidents are prized by its most avid users and creators.”
I think the persistence of the style is also due to our desire to keep the internet human by celebrating error (leaving in that word fumble) and corruption of clean aesthetics (that overflowing bookshelf). And all this to say that this is also part of effective communication in an internet age, especially when the information we need to relay is as important as what we produce for our clients.
In MedComms, we are seemingly drawn to slick production style. But I would like to make the case that the internet has been the great democratiser of information and, as communicators who use online platforms, we should keep aiming to reach new audiences. If we want to reach those avid users and creators, are we not coming across as less authentic by maintaining a glossy and flawless image? We are, at the end of the day, still people sharing what we know with other people.
So, keeping the flawed, human elements in the content we produce by embracing internet ugly – when we need it – could help us connect a little more and communicate more effectively.
If you want to see how we keep internet ugly in mind you can see our meme of the month (and a lot of other wonderful MedComms content) in our newsletter.
