In the offline world, our physical traits generally influence how people perceive us. The online sphere offers more flexibility in how we can express our identity. Photography, emojis, stickers, GIFs, and memes have become a language of their own, helping us express emotions, ideas and how we see ourselves. Through digital self-expression, we can also share various experiences of gender. In the past years, this has increasingly been based on more traditional gender norms. We recognize this in the rise of terms such as girlboss, tradwife or sigma male. 

These shifts have also impacted the images we use to express ourselves online. We use images to communicate and convey meaning, but how are these images interpreted by others? Do we truly understand each other? Foam, in collaboration with the online platform The Hmm, has created an online mapping game to explore this: Metaphormaxxing. The title refers to how online images are used as a metaphor for ourselves. Foam and The Hmm invite you to examine the collective meanings we assign to images.

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