Instagram is a social-media platform that, in the novel, turns private unease into a carefully managed public image. After a party at which Alexandre Farel is troubled by his uncertain memory of what happened with Mila Wizman, he uses the platform to present himself as disciplined and happy, then retreats into looking at and judging women’s photographs. The account’s polished surface stands in sharp contrast to the distress and unresolved conflict that its images conceal.
Self-Presentation and the Fitness Image
After returning to his family’s apartment, Alexandre books an earlier flight back to San Francisco and tells his parents that an important interview at Google is the reason for leaving. Neither responds to his message. He has learned to contain the sadness their silence brings, but Instagram offers an immediate audience where his family has offered none. Scrolling through other people’s accounts, he sees enviable restaurants, fashionable friends, beautiful girlfriends, and apparent happiness; the comparison depresses him.
He then puts on sports clothes, goes shirtless to the exercise room his father had installed at the back of the apartment, and takes around ten photographs of himself. He chooses one only after trying filters and adjusting its brightness. The filter “radieux” seems suited to disguising his anxiety. He publishes the image with hashtags invoking discipline, perseverance, motivation, well-being, happiness, and his identity as a Stanford student. The caption presents not a record of how he feels but a counter-image: a composed, flourishing young man whose life appears to be under control.
The response is swift. Red hearts, approving comments, and new followers arrive, mostly women pictured in yoga or fitness clothes or swimsuits. Instagram supplies Alexandre with visible affirmation at the very moment his offline relationships feel distant and uncertain. Yet the attention is not simply reassuring: he sorts the new accounts by appearance, returning follows only to profiles he likes and preferring models under twenty-five.
Looking, Ranking, and Sexualized Attention
Alexandre’s use of the platform shifts from displaying his own body to assessing other people’s. He avoids fashion bloggers who promote major brands, regarding that kind of commercial placement as vulgar, but follows two American models whose posts emphasize their bodies and poses. Their photographs excite him, and he leaves a brief approving comment. The sequence links his self-presentation to the sexualized visual economy he consumes: his own image solicits approval while other users’ images become objects of selection and appraisal.
That habit echoes the party culture surrounding the events with Mila. At the gathering, Alexandre’s engineering-school friends take part in a challenge devised by Rémi Vidal: each is to seduce a woman and return with one of her undergarments, or else post a photograph of himself in his underwear on Facebook or Instagram for thirty minutes. The game turns sexual pursuit into a test of masculine bravado and a wager in which women’s intimacy becomes a prize. Instagram is named alongside Facebook as a venue for the threatened public exposure, connecting the platform’s ordinary circulation of images to the group’s coercive, competitive idea of “action.”
Mila’s Account and the Contrast Between Their Images
Alexandre checks whether Mila has an Instagram account. It has only twenty followers and a few photographs: landscapes in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, and Paris, along with prepared dishes. He privately dismisses this modest account as belonging to a “poor girl,” a judgment that exposes the classed and status-conscious scale by which he reads online presence. In a moment of guilt, he follows her. His account, built around a filtered shirtless portrait and aspirational hashtags, and hers, composed of places and food, offer sharply different forms of visibility.
The contrast matters because Alexandre has just left Mila’s company after a night involving alcohol and drugs, and he cannot stop recalling her in tears or wondering whether he went too far. His return to Instagram does not resolve that uncertainty. Instead, it places a crafted image of confidence alongside the possibility of harm and guilt that he is trying to push from his mind. The platform makes the discrepancy visible without making it legible to the people who respond to his post.
From Personal Image to Public Case
Instagram also belongs to the wider digital environment in which the Farel case acquires a public life. When Alexandre is formally accused and the investigation becomes news, the accusation and the competing accounts of what happened move through media attention and online reaction. During the trial, Jean Farel’s remarks are rapidly circulated on social networks, prompting hundreds of comments within minutes. Mila publishes a text on a newly created blog directly addressing Alexandre and disputing his account; the novel thus sets individual online self-presentation against public testimony and political argument.
The platform’s significance is therefore not that it independently determines what happened, but that it is part of a world where identity is displayed, ranked, and circulated at speed. Alexandre uses Instagram to manage how he appears and to seek affirmation; the public case shows how online visibility can outlast an image’s intended meaning and attach reputational consequences to a person’s name. At the same time, the novel places this digital judgment beside the trial’s demand to assess evidence, keeping social condemnation distinct from a judicial finding.
