# Reading Responses (Set 2)

## Mar 23 Tue - Finding Someone & Living Alone
It's easy to believe that internet dating is ruining romance, that it's defined by shallowness, vanity, and brief flings that leave people feeling hollow and isolated. Some of that is true: for example, people on the dating site OkCupid did tend to lie about their height, finances, and looks (OkCupid, 2010). But Reberto Ferdman's (2016) interview with sociologist Michael Rosenfeld suggest otherwise, with online dating actually simplifying and improving relationships, even long-term ones. Rosenfeld emphasizes that online dating, with its inherent selectivity and periods of pre-conversation before a date, can actually whittle partners down much more quickly than previous forms of dating could. Instead of dating someone for a few months (who you met at work) and finding out your interests clash too much, you can find someone from your entire metro area who shares your tastes. In terms of downsides, he refutes the shallowness argument as essentially part of human nature, and notes that the jury is still out on people still dating within ethnic groups and not being more intermingled (it could just be algorithmic selection on the apps' part).

There can be no argument that online dating hasn't completely changed how people interact with romance, and it almost certainly introduces new complications. One aspect Rosenfeld doesn't discuss is how much *work* online dating can be, how there's a lot of time and emotional labor that can go into it that conventional dating simply doesn't, at least not in the early stages. Speaking from a man's perspective (it can be dramatically different for women) it's not like matches are rushing to message you. It's not just my looks I hope, considering it's a similar story from many men I know, but I could be wrong. It can take a long time to match with anyone, and even longer to progress the conversation to a point where coffee or dinner sounds like a good idea. But a dramatic **benefit**, and one that wasn't really mentioned in the Ferdman piece is how it clearly sets the stakes, at least as one of two options. With online dating, the end result is either a temporary physical engagement or a proper relationship (unless one party is just looking for a free meal). When asking someone you know in school or work out, there are a lot more questions: Will they think this is just a friendly gesture? How could this change our dynamic in our workplace? Is this entirely within the rules of our organization (like hierarchy or disclosure rules with relationships in workplaces)? Dating apps eliminate all of these concerns, simplifying the purpose of the conversation in a distinctive way. After you've had to awkwardly navigate the dynamics of a single bad date with a colleague, it's hard not to prefer to the distance and clarity that dating apps bring.

## Mar 26 Fri - Breakup

It's a bit inaccurate to say that technology has made ending relationships more complicated. Breaking up has always been a messy, challenging affair, one prone to uncertainty and people avoiding hard conversations. However, as outlined in the chapter "How Do You Know?" by Illana Gershon, what digital communication has introduced is several rich layers of indirect messaging with varying meanings. Gershon refers to this indirect messaging as "second-order information," essentially the context and meta-intent of digital acts that can convey meanings not clearly stated by words (p. 123). Examples of these second-order messages existed before digital communication too: letter writing can have plenty of subtleties, coded messages, and accidental revelations of the writer's opinions. Nonetheless, digital communication presents several new avenues for sending new meanings to an audience, intentionally or not. This is especially important in the fraught and occasionally tense world of romantic relationships, where digital natives can use the various tools of social media to signal displeasure in a partner, such as by flicking one's relationship status to "it's complicated" (p. 134). The amount of uncertainty that this convoluted world of second-order information introduces can leave people uncertain if they've truly broken up with a partner until the other person publicly reveals they're dating someone else (p. 140).

While many of Gershon's examples are dated to the era when Facebook was a dominant platform for college-age students, many of the complications still remain. I would argue that several of the issues presented by second-order communication are inherently bound up in the cowardice and fickleness of youth. Age and maturity are what allow people to have difficult conversations easier, though I suppose plenty of people fail to ever develop those skills. I was struck by the Pew Research article by Lenhart, Anderson, & Smith, where it was found that a majority of teenagers found a breakup by text distasteful, but still several had either experienced it or done it themselves. As was also alluded to in Gershon's piece, it seems that many people find communicating through second-order information or indirect communication unpleasant and wrong, but people still readily do it. It speaks to a fundamental human tendency where we can recognize bad behavior, but if it makes our lives easier, and allows us to control how others interact with us, we'll do it. Recognizing the humanity and emotions of other people can be incredibly difficult. It's hard to really get to know people, or to see them cry in front of you when you hurt them. It's much easier to reduce someone to an item external to ourselves, a face on a page, a check-mark saying a message has been read, and a block button at the ready when it all seems a bit much. Is this a permanent progression? Are we stuck guessing at the second-order intentions of people more and more, as digital selves become real selves? Or can digital communication reach a point where those layers of metaphor and abstraction are reduced?

## Apr 09 Fri - Collapsed Context
While social media and the digital age have democratized speech, allowing people to develop massive audiences, it has also democratized the need to control how one is perceived, just like a newscaster or a public figure. In Alice Marwick and danah boyd's (2010) analysis of the social media site Twitter, using surveys of site users, they found that people have complicated views on their intended audience and the best use of the platform. The two argue that networked communication's 'imagined audience' essentially bridges the gap between the norms of a writer's audience (similar to the writer, 'created') and a broadcaster's audience (very wide-reaching, lack of interaction), all the while moving that dilemma onto any average user (p. 129). The other fundamental struggle for many users is being 'authentic' while also balancing growing an audience by using Twitter like an entertainer or professional (p. 119). However, this is somewhat of a false dichotomy, as true authenticity isn't possible, instead largely existing as a "temporarily situated social construct" that's just as audience-based as what seems popular in a 'corporate' sense (p. 124). All the while, social media compresses the room for performance, where friends, strangers, parents, and bosses can all see an individual's posts. Strategies to deal with this reality can include self-censorship (you don't want an employer to see your crude jokes) or 'balancing,' where users juggle a mix of different contexts and intended audiences while still staying within certain bounds (pp. 125-6).

Prior to the past year, I'd have considered the intricacies and communications quandaries that social media introduces to be relatively trivial issues. However, when digital communication and networking became suddenly one of the few means of basic human interaction, those 'minor' issues become essential societal dilemmas. It was already increasingly difficult to navigate social life without the use of various platforms in pre-COVID times, but now, one would likely be in complete isolation if they refused to use Twitter or Facebook. Speaking personally, I felt like a senior citizen finally adopting Twitter. Not because I struggled with the features or UI, but instead learning how to navigate the social dilemmas it introduces, especially in a period in my life where I'm balancing trying to get jobs, but also trying to grow an audience in case I want to work in media. I very much sympathized with the people who loathe the crassness of creating a Twitter simply to develop a network and an audience, and instead try to remain authentic. But the fact is, actually authentic thoughts are very often either disconcerting to potential employers (self-censorship) or just incredibly boring. Coming up with funny or informative content that you can accept will survive on the internet forever is a very artificial process. That's okay with me, as I recognize it in my own work, but realizing that others are likely thinking the exact same way really shifts your views of other users, especially friends or people you view as non-performers or professionals. I question what becomes of a society in the long-term when most people are--to some extent or another--digital performers, acting for the amusement or attention of a wide audience. It's not necessarily negative, but a substantial shift almost certainly.

## Apr 13 Tue - Gendered Work
It's easy to think that the post-modern digital economy is simpler or easier, given that many people are able to make a living from their laptops in the comforts of their own homes. Certainly, there is a significant shift in moving labor out of the traditional office or factory, but that doesn't mean it isn't still challenging. This is especially the case for women, as noted in a 2017 study by Brooke Duffy and Urzula Prunchniewska. Despite narratives about the internet creating opportunities for emancipatory female entrepreneurship, it often only does so within the gendered mold of 'flexibility,' where women are still expected to be home-bound and domestic (p. 847). Beyond this, there is unspoken additional labor that women are expected to perform in working towards success with their business. The authors refer to this as the "digital double bind," where women are expected to pursue a balanced femininity within the tasks of "self-promotion, interactivity, and visibility" (p. 848). The distinction is that men are able to clearly state they are advertising their business, pick and choose who they mentor, and control how much of their personal lives they share. Meanwhile, women have to be non-aggressive in their promotion, feel an obligation to support other women, and worry about how much of their lives to share (both for business and personal security reasons) (p. 855). Some of the supposed timidity isn't consistent in social promotion: for example, many female social influencers will push to advertise themselves so much that they will fake deals with sponsors (Lorenz, 2018). Nonetheless, it seems clear that within the conventional entrepreneurial space, women must navigate the digital age differently to find success.

While I'm not overly familiar with the world of internet entrepreneurship or influencers (not a very big Instagram user personally), I do have some awareness of the kind of gendered issues women face in being successful in their careers while using social media. One of the most important digital hate campaigns of the past decade, Gamergate, was very much a reflection of what can go wrong for women in a professional space. The sheer level of vitriol and threat that female game developers and journalists faced at that time was staggering. Multiple developers or community-relations employees ended up forced out of the industry, some of them [fired by their own employers](https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/20/20808875/gamergate-lessons-cultural-impact-changes-harassment-laws) simply to make the issue go away. Women who raised concerns about the 4chan and Reddit-based hatemob, or even women who had made basic artistic critiques of the medium's treatment of women, came under fire. While video games are a uniquely masculinized space due to decades of advertising towards young men, it's easy to see how there would be similar strategic concerns for women trying to be vocal members of any industry. Besides just the threat of revealing too much of one's personal life and putting herself in harm's way, women can also be smacked down for being "outsiders" in business, sports, or entertainment spaces. I ultimately think (or at least hope) these conditions will improve, but for the moment, women simply cannot be their whole or authentic selves on the internet without facing professional challenges or bottom-up attacks.

## Apr 16 Fri - Bemused
There are few things more subjective than what is good humor and what is in good taste. Opinions of such things are naturally divisive, with people having starkly different opinions on what's worth a laugh. As discussed in the chapter "Bemused: WTF!" by Joseph Reagle (2019), the internet has collapsed a lot of the context for subjective materials on the internet. We are exposed to the opinions and tastes of others in a far more noticeable way than in non-networked life. Reviews are a key example: often based on a star or score ranking, it's hard for people to match their subjective sensibilities of quality with the reviewer. This is all the more diluted by, as Reagle mentions, a very common tendency for Amazon (and other e-commerce sites) users to essentially joke-bomb bizarre products with reviews. The questions of subjective ranking and the risks of pranksters can make the supposed utility of reviews for solving information asymmetry fall short. A further, much darker example of subjective context collapse Reagle discusses is clear misbehavior or offensive commentary by internet users. People can be joking in bad taste and make people concerned that they're threatening terror (Justin Carter) or people can make statements that are just plainly poorly-planned. An example of such comments includes Geoffrey Miller claiming overweight people are not cut out for Ph.D. work. A common excuse presented for behavior that gains a negative reaction is to invoke the idea that 'I was hacked!'. While such events do happen, it seems to be a disconcertingly common line of defense for offensive comments or accidental postings of nudity. Perhaps some hacker group in Macedonia is just staying quite busy.

When examining the many ways that internet communication can backfire for users due to subjectivity and the ease of spreading one's (often poorly thought out) ideas, I'm tempted to evoke a classic 1980s film starring Matthew Broderick. To quote *Wargames*, it seems like "the only way to win is not to play". It would be much easier for all of us, offenders for poor speech or no, to just simply use social media and internet communication less. No more gaffs, no more debate about what someone actually meant. Yet, we still keep using social services and comment sections. It seems we're almost compelled to, even if it's to our deficit. Why might this be, knowing the many downsides? Why do we feel the need to put our personalities, our thoughts, and our divisive jokes, out into the public sphere? One easy explanation is essentially unintentional context collapse, where people forget that they are not among like-minded friends, that they will be perceived by parents, employers, and strangers. It's also possible to try laying blame at the feet of platform owners: they have designed websites that have built-in mechanisms for rewarding engagement and constant expression. Are a few likes worth risking dooming your career? Put that way, most people would probably say no, but in reality, many of us take that gamble on a regular basis. Divisive content, as has been noted in numerous analyses of political posts and stories on platforms, is what gets shared. While such material may be divisive, there is that chance that it will at least get someone a bundle of likes, if not also more material benefits in the long run through micro-celebrity. There's no easy answer to deal with the (for lack of a better term) crisis of posting, where many feel the need to push boundaries for notoriety, but it will need to be considered if we want to create more welcoming and useful communities in the future.