Abstract: Throughout the 2010s, a number of series branded as “quality” began to adopt a range of new aesthetic practices that simulate those of smartphone photography, manipulating color and saturation to produce something akin to the “Instagram effect” for television. Hunter Hargraves examines one such series, Looking, which focuses on a group of gay men living in San Francisco during the height of the city’s Silicon Valley transformation, and questions how such aesthetic techniques speak to the series’ ability to represent authentic queer life in San Francisco. Smartphone aesthetics, he contends, may curtail a series’ potential to develop nuanced political critiques relating to the representation of cultural minorities, much like the social media platforms they attempt to emulate.