Throwing It Back To Move It Forward

For this post I’m taking it all the way back to the spooky middle school days lol, ask.fm. Ask.fm was a social media platform that allowed users to anonymously ask people questions. This platform provided insight into peoples thoughts, beliefs, and personal lives through asking questions anonymously. I remember logging on and going through my questions to see what questions I could answer in way that made me seem deep or almost like I was too cool to be using this platform lol. The reason I decided to blog about ask.fm is because today in RHMS270 we discussed Ramiez’s 4 strategies for information seeking. The four strategies were interactive, active, passive, and extractive. The reason that this reminded me so much of ask.fm was because when I asked people questions on this platform I was able to ask questions that I might not be able to normally ask and get more information about someone.

The interactive strategy is interacting with someone face to face, or in a mediated setting, in order to reduce uncertainty. The interactive strategy is the most commonly used amongst people, but when comparing it to ask.fm, I think its the complete opposite. On ask.fm you do not personally interact with whom you wish to receive information from. Instead, you take on an anonymous profile and get to ask questions without anyone knowing who is asking the question. Although this dose allow for more questions to be asked, it also increases the chance of questions being less serious and more about being funny or putting people down.

The second strategy, the active strategy, is very prevalent on ask.fm. The active strategy is  gaining information from applying effort to find information but not directly communicating to whom the information is about. For example, asking someones friend about their friend. On ask.fm, users are able to gain information about people through anonymous questions, and this anonymity acts as a third party which allows for people to gain information from someone without directly interacting with them.

The third strategy, the passive strategy, is observing someones behavior without affecting it. This information gaining strategy is mostly seen in social settings, but I also think its seen quite often on ask.fm. When people answer a lot of questions, followers are able to see a pattern of how they might answer a certain type of question, and infer what kind of response one might give if asked a certain question. For example, if someone is regularly asked about their workout routine, and most of their answers to this question is answered in a joking way, then one can assume if they ask about their workout routine they will receive a joking response.

The final strategy, the extractive strategy, is a newer strategy that has become available because of technology. The extractive strategy is looking for information this is available on the internet. I think that this strategy applies pretty well to ask.fm because if you wanted to know more information about someone you could scroll through their answered questions to see if they answered any questions that provide information you were looking for. Also, this strategy applies well with ask.fm because the extractive strategy has to do with online research, and ask.fm being a website online, make its an easy way for almost anyone to find information about someone.

Looking back on my days on ask.fm was hard for me lol. I used to act like such a little kid on social media and I defiantly thought I was to cool for everyone lol. I thought that looking back on a funny time in my life would be a good way to end my journey as a blogger. Thats right! This is my last post on Inside My Mind! I hope all my readers enjoyed reading my weekly blogs, and found the content I wrote about to be interesting. This was one of my first blogging experiences, and I enjoyed it a lot! I learned a lot about myself, what my interest are, and how to make myself comfortable with sharing my personal thoughts with people that I may not know very well, or know at all. Thank you all for reading and following me on this journey! Goodbye Inside My Mind, its been a fun ride, gone but never forgotten.

Thoughts on Exam 2

Today in RHMS270 we took our second exam over the topics of community and identity. Overall I didn’t think that the exam was to challenging.  The two prompts we were given to write about were the topics of Networked Individualism and the authenticity of self presentation online. I was glad that we were given these two topics because these were the two I was most interested in!

On the exam I sided wth Networked Individualism being beneficial for individuals and society. In my essay I said that when people are online their reach is far grater and have access to more social support. Social Support is the connections in relationships that keep us mentally and physically well. While studying for this question I looked back at the readings that discussed this topic and found Rainie and Wellman’s article very interesting. The story about Trudy Johnson Lenz and her families amazing recovery thorough the help of online connections was really crazy to me! I used this example in my essay and explained why I thought it was so amazing, lol. While prepping for this question, I started to wonder how are my online connections beneficial to my life?

For the question on the topic of Self-Presentation online I argued on the side that self presentation online is less authentic and honest than self presentation face to face. I discussed the factors of warranting, Identity tourism, and digital deception.  If your a regular reader of my blog than you already know that I slightly discussed this topic in a previous post, so rather than repeat myself, I’m gonna keep it short, lol. I found all the readings for this topic to be very interesting and relevant to life today. The whole lesson on online dating was very interesting to learn about and made me question a lot of people I see online, lol. I’ve always known that people lie easily online, but I  never really thought of how many possible ways there is to lie!

In the end, I’m just happy that test is out of the way! Now only two more days until the weekend! Hopefully I did well on the exam, and I hope everyone else that took it did well too! Also for anyone who took the exam, where there any parts you found hard?

 

 

CyberSpace Costumes

The concept of leaving our bodies behind when we go online is fascinating to me. I have always believed that when we go into cyberspace we are usually somewhat of the same person, but after reading the article by, Nakamura, I now think otherwise.

In this article, Nakamura, explains how when users get online their identity and real life body can be left behind. Once online the user has the ability to take on any persona, or identity that they choose. The idea that through this identity change one can experience life in a new way is not sitting well with me. Being an African American, I do not like the thought of people going online and putting on a “digital blackface” to experience what it is like to be black.

In class we talked about how these users who leave their physical body behind when online are simply putting on a costume, and trying to be someone they are not. The major factor that makes me the most mad about this is the fact that being a certain race online is very different from being a certain race in real life. Online, I have been discriminated, and have had racist comments thrown at me. But because these were online experiences, I was able to ignore them easier and they had much less of an effect. In contrast, when I have been treated poorly for my race in real life, it has a greater effect. I was once told I wasn’t allowed to eat in a McDonalds because “My kind wasn’t allowed to eat here”, now I kept in mind that the man saying this was white male who was at least 70, so his views on the world were quite dated. Although the mans believes were dated, it still effected me.

Being a minority or any other race online is far more easy than it is in real life. Online, users have the ability to mute content that might be offensive, and hid things they don’t agree with, but IRL, these factors are almost completely opposite. The article also discusses the idea that eventually there can be a place online where race and socio-economic status do not matter. I don’t believe this can ever be true. If you look at the world and media today, race is almost always a topic that is discussed, and imaging a world or place, where race isn’t discussed or doesn’t matter seems impossible. Not only do I find it impossible because the world seems to revolve around race, but also because many people are proud of their race. For example, many African Americans are proud to be black, and for the women in the community there is the online hashtag, #Blackgirlmagic. The #blackgirlmagic, brings together the community of black women and empowers them online.

Even though I don’t believe that there can ever be a race free, or judgment free internet, I  do like the idea. The idea that when users go online they don’t have to be afraid of who they are, and act as themselves. I have yet to experience and hope I never do experience, anyone putting on a costume online.

SecondLife is a Community of Catfish

This week in RHMS 270, we discussed Walter & Parks, and their idea of warranting online. A warrant online is the strength of the connection between the embodied self and  self presentation. In simpler words, warranting online is the how much truth someone is giving to us about their true identity. I found this idea of a warrant to be very relevant with todays use of the internet and social media. Instead of talking about those two topics, which I cover weekly, I wanted to connect warranting to our class when we played SecondLife.

SecondLife is an online virtual game in which you can create an avatar, and play in a world with almost no limits. In this game you are able to essentially do everything you can do in real life, but have no consequences and no judgment from peers or people around you. Another interesting feature of SecondLife, was the ability to change your avatars appearance to either perfectly match your true self, or to not resemble yourself at all. For example, when I was playing SecondLife I chose to be a vampire, and other people in the server were horses, aliens, and all most any other creature you can think of. This ability to change your appearance so drastically instantly made me think of warranting online.

With this warrant available in SecondLife, people can be who ever they choose to be, instead of being who everyone else thinks or says they are. Because SecondLife has this warrant the physical self and the cyber self become very disconnected. This allows for people to portray themselves as someone that they are not, but to be viewed by others as themselves. This lack of honesty in identity is near to impossible in face to face interactions, but online it is very easy. Seeing the hundreds of avatars in the game and the distinct features that each had made it very difficult to tell what avatars were made in the likeness of someone, and which avatars are made solely for achieving the purpose of creating a new identity.

Although creating a new identity online because of warrant is not always a good thing, some good can still come from it. When this “fake” identity online becomes more comfortable doing things that one would not normally do, these online behaviors can carry over into the real world, and change a persons life. Warranting online also reminds me of someone that is a catfish, or someone who is not who they say they are. SecondLife is clear example of this! Imagine you meet a beautiful woman with large angel wings in SecondLife. You hit it off and begin chatting daily, and one day you decide to meet in person. Except when you meet this “avatar”, in real life, they don’t have wings, and are actually very different from their avatar.

The thought of meeting up with anyone in real life via SecondLife scares me. lol. From my experience playing I felt very strange seeing all these avatars and their different features that made them unique. The idea of warranting is not only seen in SecondLife, but it is seen all over the internet, dating profiles, social media sites, and even in face to face interactions. Learning about how people can differently portray themselves online in order to achieve a certain reaction is slightly scary. It makes me question who is really telling the truth about themselves, and who is not?

Side Note: I tweeted about everyone being a catfish last week and that tweet is more important now than ever before, lol. Check it out below!

So everyone is kind of a catfish..?#RHMS270 #rhms270 pic.twitter.com/90kQnRVoIi

— Michael Abraham (@michael70699747) October 26, 2018

 

Comparing Identities: Online vs. Offline

In RHMS 270 this week we discussed the idea of identity and audience online.  We were given an assignment which was to find someone we know offline and compare their online identity to their offline identity. In completing this assignment I was very surprised to see that some people I know are the same online and offline and some are two completely different people. I assumed that my friends were different online than they are in person because of the audience they have online, and the concern of controling how other people view them, which is harder to do in offline relationships.

For example, Friend A has an Instagram account with 700 followers, most of which are family and friends. Friend A’s post were drastically different than friend B, who has 2,000 followers and uses his Instagram to promote himself as an artist. Both regularly post content, but the content they post is different. Friend A will post nice, loving pictures that he wouldn’t mind his mother or grandma seeing, where as friend B post videos of him and his music that only shows his musical abilities and not much about his life, and not much content that is appropriate for everyone to see.

Seeing these two differences in my friends made me resonate with Baym’s ideas from chapter five, about the disembodied selves and disembodied audience. The disembodied self is the idea that online we have far more control over how we portray ourselves, what we share, and how we can change our identity through online platforms( a.k.a the Windows Metaphor).  The idea of a disembodied audience is fairly similar to the disembodied self. The disembodied audience is the theory that online we have a general idea of who are audience is, and have less control over who can access personal content. Also, with the disembodied audience we are able to build a public brand and represent ourselves to an audience a certain way.

In my everyday use of social media, I can clearly see the disembodied self and audience. How I use my social media platforms defiantly varies upon who is viewing it, and how I want people to think of me. An example that explains what I mean is Twitter. I might have a funny joke I want to share with people that are close to me, but if I post this tweet to the world, I have no real control of how some people will interpret it and no control over who can access this tweet. Because of these unknowns, I feel as if I am a different person online than I am in person. It’s not so much a different persona, or identity, but it is defiantly a more filtered and thoughtful version of my true self. I believe this to be true because going back to the Twitter example, if I was in a room with my friends I would not hesitate to say the joke aloud, but on twitter I would be more careful with the words I use, I would think about who might see it and how they might react.

In the end, I have always believed that who people online are never their true selves. I see famous people on Instagram all day long, who portray to the world and their fans that they are perfect, and everything in their life is perfect. When in reality they are just normal, and experience the same everyday things that non-famous people experience. I do also believe that there are exceptions to this, and some people are the same online as they are in person. They don’t try to use social media and the internet as a way to create a new persona, they use it as a way to express themselves to the world and show people the insides of their daily lives.

 

GAMER BOYS NEED LOVE TOO

In class this week we discussed the topic of video games, and how the are effecting the world we live in, and our personal health. For my post this week I thought would be fun to blog about my best friend in middle school who actually met a girl whom he dated for several years on a video game server. When we learned about Shen and Williams 3 theoretical predictions(displacement, augmentation, and social information processing) about video games, I instantly thought of my friend, we’ll call him Tom.

We’ll begin with displacement, which is the idea that there is only 24 hours in a day so if you are using those hours to pay video games, what are you not accomplishing in the real world? At first, Tom was not too much of a video game guy. He would maybe play an hour or two every few days. This limed amount of time playing allowed for him to still accomplish things in the outside world, and continue to enjoy the video game. It wasn’t until Tom had joined in online sever for an Xbox game called, Minecraft that his displacement started to increase. He would begin to play for a little longer each time he played, and started to accomplish less and less in the real world. This displacement only increased greatly when Tom met a girl from California on a server. According to him, they instantly clicked, and from that day on they began to play  with each other more and more. It finally got to a point in time where Tom was now playing video games daily for multiple hours a day. Him meeting someone online was a positive thing for him, but he never saw the detrimental side of this displacement. He was missing homewirk assignments, not sleeping some nights, and even skipping meals to play the game.

The augmentation piece of the theoretical predictions is fairly obvious in this story. lol. Once Tom was online and met someone who caught his interest, he was hooked to the game, and the online profile whom he had yet to see in person, he had only heard their voice. The idea of the “3rd place” was very evident in Toms life. He had his first two places, School, and Football, and then came his third, Minecraft. I always questioned going online to meet new people and how it would work or effect me, and after seeing how it effected Tom, I understand that someone of these online ties are not as strong as ties that I have with people whom I interact with everyday, or have face to face contact with.

Finally, The social information processing theory in the theoretical predictions. At the start, Toms goal was just to escape from the real world, and enjoy his favorite video game, Minecraft. When Tom met his girl on one of the Minecraft servers, his goals changed drastically. Instead of using Minecraft to escape from the world, he used Minecraft as a means of communication and hanging out with the girl whom he liked. By playing the game together, they were able to interact and speak through microphones to one another. I used to go to Toms house and at a certain time every day he would run to his xbox and say, “it’s 4:30, Im suppose to meet ***** online!”. I never thought anything of this transition of goals at the time, but as I reflect back on it now, I understand clearly how his goals of using this technology shifted and how his view of Minecraft had shifted from a game, to a place where he can hangout with the girl he likes.

All in all, Minecraft was Tom’s safe place. He would go online to have fun and escape from the real world for a small amount of time. When he met a girl he liked online his uses of Minecraft shifted and so did his displacement. He now used this medium as a way to communicate and “hang out”, with his online girlfriend and dismissed task in the real world to be with her in this virtual world. Okay, so now anyone who was made it this far reading deserves to know what happened between Tom and the online girl. They actually ended up dating from 7th-9th grade, and met for the first time in person in the summer going into 9th grade. Tom was in LA for a family vacation and they met up to see each other, and play Minecraft together. lol. Sadly, after freshman year that could not continue doing long distance, and only seeing each other on Minecraft, so inevitably they went they separate ways. This story is defiantly a classic middle school memory. Shoutout to all my online girlfriends that I had over they years, gone but never forgotten.HAHAHAHA. 

After the Test…

Having completed my first test for RHMS 270, I feel great! The two essay topics that were chosen were fairly easy for me to write about, mostly because I stayed up very late working on my note sheet.lol. Although I had an easy time writing about the prompts chosen, I was hoping to be given the prompt about the digital divide. The topic of the digital divide was very interesting to me. I never realized how much these labels of “Digital native” and “Digital immigrant” could effect society. Without knowing these labels existed, I automatically labeled my parents and the adult figures in my life as “digital immigrants”, or in my own words, slow with technology. After reading the articles again more throughly before the test, I was able to see that I wasn’t the only person who used age as classification for who knows how to use a certain technology and its affordances.

In the end, I feel as if I did great on the test! My essays were lengthy and I barely finished on time, but I do feel as if I answered the questions throughly. The topics we were promoted to write about were fine, but I would have like to write about the topic that interested me the most, and that I can relate to the most. I shared the article about the digital divide to my father, and attached to the link I sent a message: ” Study up, learn how to use your phone, social media, – A Digital Native”. He got a laugh out of it, and from reading the article he is now motivated to learn more about new technology and their wide variety of affordances. I am excited to see my score on the test and to learn more in the fast changing world of technology.

Social Cues in Non-Face to Face Mediums

I found our class discussion on social cues to be very interesting. The idea that how someone says something, or the non verbal actions they use can help us infer a lot about what they are talking about or how they feel. I find that to be pretty neat. When we began to analyze how we can express and understand social cues over a medium that is not face to face, a light in my head flicked on. I was going to blog about the cues I use on my non face to face mediums.

When I text, to help ensure the person on the receiving end really understand what Im saying I use emojis, or special punctuation. For example, If I am trying to show someone over text that I am angry, I might use a mad emoji, or maybe even end my text with a period.Ending my text in a period would require the person on the receiving end to have some idea of how I normally text, so when they sew the period they would see that something is out of the ordinary. Another simple example I use almost daily is the use of an exclamation point. If I want to convey to someone I am happy or excited, I would use an exclamation point to ensure they don’t think Im trying to be sarcastic, or so they understand my excitement. Heres what I mean:

Friend: Hey wanna go some food?

Me: Sure, I’m so hungry.

VS

Friend: Hey wanna go some food?

Me: Sure, I’m so hungry!

One of my favorite emojis to use

On social media, social cues are a lot easier to understand. The reason I believe that social cues are easier to understand online is because often times they can include a picture, meme, or video that goes along with the text provided. For example, I could understand someone trying to be sarcastic when they post a picture of a stormy cold day, but caption it “Beautiful Day Outside”. Also, another way to share a common joke, or thought that can be understood by everyone who reads is to include memes. I believe that memes are a super great way to get understand social cues online. Many memes are supposed to be things that are very relatable to everyone and that can convey a feeling or emotion often felt with a certain action.

“Beautiful Day Outside” *laughing emoji*

 

This ones pretty self explanatory…mood.

Referring back to class and the idea of media richness, I believe that the still developing social media platforms, and text messaging apps can allow great understanding of social cues. Not only are they a convenient and fun ways to communicate and understand social cues in a non face to face way but the main factors of media richness are also addressed throughout different communication mediums.(Speed of feedback,Multiple cues,Natural language,Ability to convey emotions(personalization). In the future, I hope to see great advancements with non face to face social cues, in result there would be little to no confusion about what someone is trying to say, or how someone feels.

 

 

My Instagram Decline

In RHMS class this week we discussed Baym’s idea of Social Shaping. Social Shaping is how technology enables/constitutes the users society, and how the user society influences technology. So basically, they both have mutual influences on one another. Learning that social context plays a major role in social shaping was very interesting to me. It made me start to question how the culture around me has influenced my use in technology, and how technology has influenced me. This gave me the idea for this blog post. Instagram.

I remember finding this throwback picture from 6th grade and thinking “I look hella cute in this. I’m posting this on Insta”. Looking now, this picture hurts me.

I decided to take a long scroll to the bottom of my Instagram page. This was much needed, I had no idea that I had such old and embarrassing photos still available for people see (Deleted those very quickly). Anyway, I looked at the dates of all my post to see how often I was posting. What I found was kinda of interesting. When I was younger, I posted almost daily, but as I got older and Instagram became more domesticated, I began to post less. I believe this had to do with the increased use of Instagram, not only by me, but by every user. I used to be able to take a picture using the built in camera in the Instagram app, throw a filter on it, maybe add a blur effect, and post it. But now the pictures that are posted on Instagram are no longer simple, and easy photos. They are photos taken with nice/professional cameras, and edited with multiple photo editing apps before being posted to Instagram.

My younger brother and I…One of the not so embarrassing photos I found on my Instagram. 

From this Instagram culture change, its caused me to post less pictures. Now with these well shot and edited photos all over Instagram, my sorry little photos don’t even come close to comparing. I noticed that I began to post less, and less every year, but could not come up with a solid reason as to why. After learning that culture is a major factor in Social Shaping, it made a lot of sense to me as to why my influence and use with this technology decreased. And of course, I use Instagram daily to like, and view pictures, but not so much as to post my own photos. Who knows, maybe the trend of using the built in Instagram camera and filters will come back, and I’ll be the next Instagram Guru.

Get to Know Me..

My name is Michael Abraham. I am currently a sophomore at Lewis and Clark College. I created this blog to share my thoughts, and experiences on a wide variety of topics. The topics I will be blogging about could range from music and fashion, all the way to current events in the world and what is happening in our local community. I have no guidelines for the content I write about. The topics I choose are topics that catch my attention and make me feel a certain way, and hopefully after reading my post make you feel some type of way(whether you agree with me or not). Although I have never blogged before, I look forward to sharing my thoughts and beliefs with you, so stay tuned for more exciting post!