Suzanne Harrington: Private human moments now fair game online

Our emotions are now commodities, to be harvested, manipulated, and sold back to us

Our emotions have made a tiny number of terrible tech lords terribly rich. File picture

In 2021, the model Bella Hadid posted a series of pictures of herself crying. She said it was because she was tired of posting perfection and wanted to post some authenticity instead, so she shared crying images to her millions of Instagram followers.

And lo, the crying selfie became a thing. An emotion traditionally expressed while locked in the loo with your fist in your mouth became mainstream shareable. Ugly crying — that is, crying using your whole face, rather than prettily dripping curated tears — took things a step further.