We’re only into the second hour of The Exhibit, MTV’s new art-world reality competition series, and… is anyone getting negative vibes? Jennifer Warren, who won last week’s challenge, certainly is. Walking into the Hirshhorn Artist Studio, she picks up on an icy atmosphere she interprets as competitive jealousy from her peers. Which, sure—there’s only $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn at stake, after all.

“If I win, I earned it,” Warren insisted. “I don’t feel intimidated anymore.”

With that bit of ginned-up drama out of the way, there’s now art to make and the next great artist to uncover. This week’s episode goes right into the commissions, asking the contestants to create work around the theme of social media. In line with the immediacy of the subject, they’re only given seven hours to complete their pieces.

But they have a rich enough field to mine. Social networks, while easing connections, have proven damaging to users’ senses of self and reality, if not the political and social fabric. “Social media sucks in a lot of ways, but it’s given voice to people who are oppressed,” Jillian Mayer said. “It’s not really about [its] pros and cons, but about an intertwined experience.”

JiaJia Fei, digital strategist and this week’s guest judge, also surfaced how social media has given us “unprecedented access to images,” becoming a channel through which a lot of art is now platformed and discovered, bought and sold.

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