A couple of classes ago we discussed the film called ‘Her’. Jonah HIll created a spoof entitled ‘Me’. Personally, I find the spoof funny, and the idea of the movie, Her, somewhat scary, but in actuality, like we spoke about in class yesterday, more and more people are becoming married to their phones. When with friends they spend more time talking to people that are not there than you. Face-to-face contact seems to be diminishing. I just thought the video was a funny take on the film, enjoy!
Thought this would be interesting: a woman from South Korea who makes upwards of 9,000 per month letting others watch her eat online. What do you think?
I came across this video “Facebook Manners and You” and while it is SUPER corny it raises an excellent point that we discussed in class today. Face-to-face social cues are something that we have all come by and learned naturally for it is a language that we speak everyday. We know what is appropriate and inappropriate, what people are feeling based on their facial expressions and what people need based on their body language. With the introduction of more and more digital forums however, we are forced to learn new social cues.
I am confident in making the assumption that nearly all of us use Facebook and with that being said we have all been forced to learn proper “Facebook etiquette.” With the introduction of this new digital forum we were forced to learn a new language that tells us how to deal with a breakup for example, which is what the video suggests. Facebook forced its users to learn the different connotations of a “poke” and the proper way to interact with friends via “wall posts.” These social cues are very new to society and with the constant invention of new social media applications more and more new social cues are presented to users everyday.
I find this to be very interesting for I use several different social media platforms everyday and the social cues associated with them have become second nature to me. It is weird to think that there was a time when Facebook was new to us all, and we were forced to awkwardly navigate through the site trying to make sense of the different ways to interact. It is quite literally the process of learning a new (digital) language.
I think we can all agree that social media has changed the dating world. It is becoming more and more popular to meet people online then every before. In class we discussed how much we as a society rely social media to connect and form social connections. There is the whole idea of creating a profile that represents not only your digital identity but your actual identity as well. This eHarmony commercial really shows up how interactions would be if we simply spoke the way our profiles speak about us… cutting to the chase.
After seeing the commercial, I personally thought the interaction was foolish and really awkward to watch. It just shows how different our face-to-face interactions are compared to our digital interactions.
I recently found this calculator on my Facebook newsfeed, ironically. It was brought to the attention of Time Magazine that individuals spend a lot of time on Facebook. Considering the discussions we had in class today, it made me think about central themes of alienation, isolation, and digitize forms of communication. Our culture appears to communicate more and more through digital technologies. Whether it is through our mobile phones or the computer, we remove ourselves from the stress of having to look into someone in the eye or ‘fake’ laugh to someone’s joke in an effort to avoid confrontation. It appears that people choose to use this synchronous/asynchronous form of communication to possibly avoid anxieties or social pressures.
That being said: it calculates the number of days, hours, minutes one spends on the social media platform. In addition, it calculates the number of things you posted on your page, timeline, wall, etc. When you think about it, an hour doesn’t seem like a lot, but when it is totalled together over the span of 4 years, the sum is remarkable.
It says the average person spends about 17 minutes on Facebook – this I don’t really believe. So, a friend and I decided to look into this differently. Approximately, we figured we spend about one hour a day on Facebook. This includes, Facebook Chat, surfing on the news feed, and “creeping” on photos/timeline. And this is my result… I’ve spent 109 days, 19 hours, and 47 minutes on Facebook. What is yours?
In class today we discussed the numerous different dating apps and how in today’s society it is a lot more likely to meet your significant other on one of these apps. Tinder is one of the more popular apps as of recently, where users are able to swipe right to ‘like’ a person or swipe left to ‘pass’ on a person. Tinder finds your location via the GPS on your phone and links up to your Facebook so that users are able to see your ‘About Me’, your age and where you are from/how many km away you are from each other. The GPS aspect of tinder relates back to one of Baym’s concepts on ‘Storage’, in the sense that the app has the authority to store information on your exact location whenever you open the app, as well as your Facebook information.
As I was in class today I stumbled upon two articles by a comical website called ‘Betches Love This’. In the first article I read pertaining to storage, they wrote about how the National Security Agency is able to get hold of your information via common mobile apps. Apparently when you press on agree for Angry Birds to access your address book and location you are also allowing the NSA to look at your phone activity as well. In addition, the website has a section where people can anonymously ask questions, in this section a girl asked about whether or not it was ‘sketchy’ to meet with a person they met on ‘Hot or Not’. It is truly amazing how so much of this class is so prevalent in our day-to-day lives. Take a look at the articles they are quite funny.
I also added a video entitled “Tinder: The Movie” which is a parody on “The Social Network”, enjoy!
NSA article:
http://www.betcheslovethis.com/article/the-nsa-is-stealing-your-info-via-candy-crush-and-other-news
Hot or Not article:
http://www.betcheslovethis.com/article/okay-meet-up-guy-met-app-ask-a-pro
In this video, Larry David exhibits how people using their devices can be annoying to the outside public. It is funny to see in their disagreement how the man talking on the Bluetooth feels he has more legitimacy to speak loudly in a restaurant over the phone than Larry, who is mockingly speaking to himself. The man on the Bluetooth asserts he his actually conversing, which somehow makes it appropriate to have this private conversation so loud in the public restaurant. The man on the Bluetooth feels he is entitled to speak that loudly, as he is talking with another person, which gives him the intimate privilege. In turn, the man is denying Larry David to speak loudly, as he is not talking to anyone.
Despite their hostilities, both can agree that it is annoying when the other person is speaking loudly in the restaurant.
The other day I was scrolling through my Facebook home page and came across a suggested video that was released by Facebook. The video is titled “One Friend” and is captioned, “love can be tough, but friendship lasts forever”
Here’s the video: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=648655905172664&set=vb.116489971722596&type=2&theater
After watching the video, it reminded me of something that Baym said in the first chapter of her book which is the idea that technologies and digital media are increasingly “changing the nature of our social connections” (Baym 1) and our relationships
The video seems to indicate that the girl in the video just changed her relationship status on Facebook to single and that now she is messaging her friend to tell her the news for the first time. This video really illustrates how our communication, connection and interaction with one another are increasingly becoming digitally mediated
In class we discussed the concept of intimate privilege, which “occurs when the intimacies of certain people or groups hold power or status or legitimacy specifically because or through denying that same power, status or recognition to others” (Nathan Rambukkana, January 14/14) This concept reminded me of a documentary that I recently watched on Netflix. “Bridegroom” tells the story of a young gay couple, Shane and Tom, that was tragically cut short due to Tom’s accidental death. Shane’s experience after his loss tells a story of how people without the legal protections of marriage can find themselves completely shut out and ostracized. The documentary started out as a short youtube video titled “It Could Happen To You”, and from the large amount of funding and support the video got, “Bridegroom” was created as the full-length documentary that is now featured on Netflix.
I thought this was a good article to post for this week because I think that “sexting” is not only becoming a very popular and common thing amongst young adults, but its now very popular with teens. The problem with this is that teens are not mentally mature to understand the repercussions of their actions, nor do they realize that what they say can be screen shot and sent around, and any pictures they take can be very damaging in the future. The article shows how teens have been charged with child pornography for resending images that they received while sexting, as well as other issues that can occur from sexting. If you’d like to read the article you can find it here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WorldNews/sexting-teens/story?id=6456834
Digital Intimacies 