# Reading Responses (Set #2)

## Reading responses 5 out of 5

### Nov 06 Tue - Dating

The fairytales we were obsessed with as children give us unrealistic expectations of love. In reality, prince charming does not exist, and you cannot run away with the love of your life when your family disapproves of them in most cases. You are also less likely to meet your soulmate whilst waiting in a grand castle, and more likely on a dating website.

The assumption that is being made by dating site is that race should not be a factor when matching with a person, because the races all match each other evenly, and reply rate should correlate to matching. Meaning, the more compatibility or matching percentage you share with other people, the more replies you are likely to get. But, we do not live in Utopia. As much as we deny that true love is colour blind, it is not. Christian Rudder (2009) in his article “[How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get](https://web.archive.org/web/20170216043333/https://theblog.okcupid.com/how-your-race-affects-the-messages-you-get-39c68771b99e?gi=86efecc4872e)”, analyzes dating patterns and response rates in between different races. According to the figure below, most people despite their race agree that interracial marriage is not a bad idea. Interestingly, there is a higher percent of white women and men who think that interracial marriage is not okay.


Despite the claim that people think interracial marriage is acceptable, exclusionary patterns in dating are very visible. For example, black women write back the most- their response rate is one and a half times the average and they reply about a quarter more often than other women. However, men do not wrote back to black women or if they do, it is at a much lower rate. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. This is prevalent in heterosexual relationships but is not confined to it. Lesbian black women also get the least amount of replies. People often prefer to date people of their own race because of shared cultures, values, and experiences. However, it is undeniable that many of these preferences are rooted in racial prejudice, especially against black women.

Another aspect of online dating is being truthful. According to Christian Rudder (2010) in his article “[The Big Lies People Tell in Online Dating](https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating-a9e3990d6ae2)”, people often lie about their physical attributes to make them seem more socially attractive. For example, people tend to add in two extra inches when it comes to their height, and men are more likely to round up their height to 6’0” if they are close to that range. Surprisingly, women tend to do exhibit the same behaviour despite the fact that shorter women are more likely to get responses. People also tend to lie about their income, when in reality they make 20% less than what they claim to make. This also increases by age, because it is acceptable if you are a young person and do not make much money, but you are expected to make much more if you are 23 and older. However, the worst kind of lying is lying about one’s age. It is especially dangerous when older men target younger and more vulnerable girls and manipulate them into dating them. According to Scientific American, 54% of online dating users believe someone else has presented false or inaccurate information on their profile.

The last aspect of online dating are the compatibility surveys. Dating websites offer the promise that by answering all of their four hundred questions, you’ll be matched with your soulmate. However, the compatibility algorithms of dating sites are not as effective as they promise you to be. Dating sites, such as OKCupid and eHarmony promise its consumers to identify specific strangers who are very likely to mesh well with them in a romantic relationship. One major problem that these dating sites fail to compile are various of crucial information. They gather data from strangers who never met, thus, the site has [no way](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/online-dating-sites-dont-match-hype.html?mcubz=3) of knowing how to people will interact with each other once they have been matched. Some aspects of relationships materialize only after two people get to know each other, such as, communication patterns, problem-solving tendencies, and sexual compatibility.

### Nov 13 Tue - Algorithmic discrimination

As an international student, I am always wary about the prices of flights. Flights tend to be very expensive, so I started following all those websites that recommend you as to when the prices are going down. However, my naivety did not register the fact that I was browsing flights on a regular mode rather than an incognito mode, thus cookies from different airline websites were saved into my computer. The more desperate I was, the higher the prices were.

Many e-commerce websites persoanlize their content to provide some advantages for the users. For example, when a user searches for an ambiguous term such as “router”, Amazon may be able to suggest the woodworking tool instead of networking devices. However, these websites also manipulate us through personalization by price steering and price discrimination. A [study](https://http://personalization.ccs.neu.edu/Projects/PriceDiscrimination/) performed by Hannak, Soeller, Lazer, Mislove, and Wilson in 2014 depicts patterns of manipulation of prices on a variety of websites. For example, Travelocity alters hotel search results for users who browse from an iOS device and favors them in terms of prices of the hotels compared to Android users. It was also concluded that travel sites show price inconsistencies in a higher percentage of cases compared to the controls.

Besides price manipulation, people also claim that algorithms can be racist. In an article, “[This Is Why Some People Think Google’s Results Are ‘Racist](https://www.buzzfeed.com/fionarutherford/heres-why-some-people-think-googles-results-are-racist)”, Rutherford and White explore racist patterns in google searches. A simple search on google images for “hands” showed mostly white hands. When people searched for “black hands”, they found that it came with an extra context, such as a white hand reaching to out to offer help. This subtext enforces the white savior phenomena, that black and coloured people need the help of white people to “escape poverty”, because they cannot do it themselves. Moreover, when you search for “beautiful women” on google, the results are mainly white women, and when black women are included, the models’ skin color tend to be on the lighter shade spectrum.


The project was not meant to illustrate racism within Google. Most google results depend on the the popularity of the image, how frequently it is shared, context such as text around the image, and meta-tagging. The project was meant to highlight wider societal biases that are brought in by the algorithm.

Media bias also factors into the results, as news report about violent crimes are likely to be prioritized by the algorithm because they were heavily clicked on and shared. Media is also more likely to share the crimes done by black people, and often do not report ones that are done by white people or if they do, race is usually not mentioned or the crime is attributed to a “mental illness”. Thus, it was found that results for "three white teenagers" showed mainly stock images of white teenagers looking happy, whereas a search for "three black teenagers" showed mugshots.

Unfortunately, it is people that are creating Google in a way. However, I believe that Google should also shoulder some of the responsibility and alter their algorithm to be less biased.

### Nov 20 Tue - Haters
“Don’t read the comments” is becoming such a popular statement whenever someone sends a video or a post to their friends and family. I often disobey that, and proceed to peek at what eventually makes me lose faith in humanity. The comments section, especially on YouTube is awfully brutal, hateful, and does not contain a shred of common sense, empathy, or critical thinking.

Social media has given a platform for hate speech to become more prominent. Under a simple anonymous disguise, one can spew racist, sexist, and homophobic comments without any severe consequences. Civil discourse is often surprising and people compare and get compared to the Nazis and Hitler ever so often. Anonymous hate can be explained by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo conducted an experiment in 1969 in which people were asked to administer shocks to others. Researchers found that participants who wore large lab coats and hoods were more willing to shock others compared to the participants who wore a name tag. Zimbardo concluded that people experienced “deindividualization”. Deindividualization is a loss of sense of self and social norms, especially when one’s true identity can be concealed.

Many haters wouldn’t dare to say the hateful comments during face to face interactions, but because the screen allows them to disconnect from the other recipients emotions, words, and facial expression, they are more likely to treat them as an object to release some pent up anger and bigotry. For example, Star Wars actress, Kelly Marie Tran, [left social media after months of online harassment](https://https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/star-wars-kelly-marie-tran-leaves-social-media-harassment-1202830892/). She has been heavily criticized for her race and looks. ALt-right internet personality Ray Ramsey took a jab at her appearance publicly, and the “Wookieepedia” page for Tran’s character was altered by contributors with offensive, racist language. Moreover, Daisy Ridley, one of Tran’s co-stars, deleted her Instagram account in 2016 when she faced similar harassment for a post about gun control. Looking over hate comments, there is a general trend that can be displayed. Men are the prominent attackers on the internet and women are the recipient of that hate and bigotry, especially women of colour. Being a woman raises the risk of cyber harassment. Am I surprised? Definitely not.
Social media websites, such as Twitter, has started enforcing stricter rules in regards to hate speech. Many people called them out that they are limiting the freedom of speech. However, Twitter also have a right of association. If a platform provider or community decides that it does not want to associate with ignorance and bigotry, they have every right to block them.

### Nov 27 Tue - Shaped

I don’t know how to study. As a kid in elementary school, I have been praised for “intelligence”, but not for effort. Subsequently, whenever I faced my a hard problem, my first instinct was to quit rather than try once more. How do these affirming comments affect our self esteem and do they lead to bad habits in the future?

The rise of Q&A sites gave permission for many people to go under anonymous and attack random users with hurtful messages such as “kill yourself.” Many of these comments are notoriously malicious and thus, many young people are advised to stay off such sites. However Danah Boyd in her book, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens,” mentions a strange phenomena. She concluded that some teens appeared to post mean questions to themselves as a type of “digital self-harm” to garner sympathy and attention from other users. The attention received from such posts have come to define how people see themselves and quantify their worth and self esteem. Self esteem is part of self concept, which is one's collection of beliefs about oneself.

Researchers have used mirrors to study self-esteem. Researchers Amy Gonzales and Jeffrey Hancock compared people’s exposure to a mirror and to Facebook. In their experiment, sixty three students were divided into three groups and were given a survey with questions to measure self-esteem. Members of one group were placed in a room that had a mirror. The students in the Facebook group were instructed to open their Facebook profiles on a computer, and were left unattended for three minutes without any instructions. Results of the experiment confirmed that students exposed to their own Facebook profile enhanced their self-esteem, especially if there able to edit their profile during the experiment. In a situation where students were able to alter their online persona, their self-esteem thrived, but when they were confronted with unchangeable truths such as a mirror, many students began nitpicking their own faults.

This obsession of people with their need to edit themselves to fit into societal expectations of eurocentric beauty standards is giving a huge growth to the cosmetic surgery industry. There is also a surge of photo editing apps, where you can edit yourself to being almost unrecognizable, which can be demonstrated in a [video](https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYbot1VxB84) by a famous YouTuber, James Charles. He face tunes his photos to accentuate his features or hide some others, which might seem harmless, however, it is a snowball effect. Once one starts with pointing out their minor dissatisfactions in their appearance, they are prone to find many more. Ironically, the paradox of choice is that more choice does not necessarily make people happier. Moreover, it has been found that excessive praise in form of comments in regards to fixed factors such as beauty can backfire. People on the receiving side of the compliments are easily threatened by someone who will attract more attention and comments, which leads to engaging in risky behavior, have more sexual partners, and exhibit aggression.

### Nov 29 Fri - Collapsed Context

How can one be ‘authentic’ on Twitter whilst maintaining a consistent level of engagement from their followers? People might think that their Twitter or Facebook audience is bounded by just their followers, but that in fact, the audience is limitless. Technology has complicated the concept of audience. In a digital space, the audience is usually imagined because one cannot have certain knowledge about who is reading their blog post or tweets. Thus, the need for a dynamic self-presentation is crucial to bring commonly distinct audiences together.

Many people create a “personal brand” on Twitter to maintain followers. Jodi Dean calls this ‘the ideology of publicity’, in which we value whatever grabs the public's attention, and are then rewarded with jobs, dates, and attention. In contrast, tweeting for oneself suggests authenticity that is untainted by the public’s expectations. However, Grazian (2003), states that authenticity is a social construct and Twitter users could not tweet context-independently with no concern with towards the audience when our comprehension of an audience is what shapes our self-presentation. Thus, our concept of “authenticity” is what Twitter deems to be ‘authentic’. Authenticity is constantly shifting, and what signifies authentic or inauthentic behavior depends on the context of the situation. For example, your interactions with your book club or gym partners are not less authentic because you only discuss certain topics of them.

According to Marwick& Boyd (2010), in their paper “[I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience](http://www.tiara.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Marwick_boyd_TweetHonestly.pdf)”, collapsed context complicates the individual’s shift between their different interests and come off as authentic and fake. Collapsed Context refers to the limitless audiences online compare to the limited number of people we talk to face-to-face. To navigate through this issue, many Twitter users with a larger following use self-censorship and balance. Self-censorship is when one would not approach certain topics on Twitter, as the imagined audience might include parents, employers, and significant others. For example, famous YouTubers would refrain from talking about their political views because it might alienate some of their followers. The other technique is Balance. Balance is used to build an equal mixture of personal authenticity and audience expectations. The mixture can be altered based on audience feedback. For example, a well-known journalist can tweet about current events, but can also tweet sometimes about their music taste to retain an ‘authentic’ voice.