“Shitty Graphs”: Data Intimacy and the Feeling of Numbers in Type 1 Diabetes

Abstract

Diabetes is a self-quantified chronic disease, where measuring blood sugars is the very grounds for understanding and surviving the condition. This article analyzes how people with type 1 diabetes who use continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) share their CGM data visualizations on social media platforms and develop data intimacies with other diabetics around the visual vernaculars of CGM graphs: the “flat line” ideal and the “shitty graph.” CGM graphs mediate relationships between people with type 1 diabetes and how they feel their numbers. Based on a review of posts on r/diabetes_t1 over a period of nine months (August 2022–April 2023), the authors identified and analyzed two recurring visual vernaculars in screenshots of CGM graphs and the talk that occurred around them. As “domains of affective practice,” these subreddit posts and talk around screenshots of CGM graphs mediate the “bad feelings” of diabetes and materialize the charged platform data intimacies between diabetics.