# Reading Response Set 2

### Oct 25 Tue - Shaped

Self-esteem: The self-evaluation of one’s worth (Reagle, 2015). As digital communication grows bigger and bigger, we tend to have more and more questions. How do we conceive ourselves differently now that digital communication has become such a staple in everybody’s lives? The question boils down to, “Am I Ugly?”

All of us have been there at one point or another; your friend or family member posts a picture of you, and you hate how you look. Digital communication is an outlet for pictures of us to be posted online, and you have zero control over what someone can post online. Being that we are on devices all the time, we and others see pictures of ourselves. Whenever I see that I have been tagged in a post on Instagram, right when I get that notification I run over to the post because A: I’m curious, “what did they post?” and B: “How do I look in the post?” I don’t take the time to look at the minute details of my friends or family; rather, I look at myself. “Why does my smile look like that?”, “Why am I standing like that?”. Therefore, some claim that “This online hall of mirrors is driving the current craze for chin augmentation, the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery in the United States.” (Reagle, 2015).

Since the use of social media has only recently gained popularity in the last decade, ten years ago we probably wouldn’t be judging ourselves so harshly as we were in control of what photos of ourselves were released to the public and we never took a second look at “bad photos”. Today, it is too easy to access all the things we are self-conscious about.

It is easy to compare ourselves to others through social media and we must be mindful of this. There are an unspeakable number of factors that go into pictures or videos that we don’t see which is why comparison via social media isn’t healthy or beneficial. We should try instead as best we can to be happy with who we are, and only to self-better ourselves through healthy means. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”.

### October 28 Fri - TikTok, Fakes, and Appropriation
Social media has created a false narrative of identity. That is, it is easy for one to portray themselves in a different light online than they do in person. Before the popularity and rise of short-form videos, videos used to be around 10 minutes long and posted on video platforms such as YouTube. Today, there is still content like this, but the popularity of short-form videos has made it exponentially easier for creators to not be authentic with their work.

For example, in 2019, YouTuber Austin Jones plead guilty to child pornography charges. Online, he seemed like he was an innocent man who made a Capela video to popular songs, but according to the Chicago Tribune, Jones used his fame to coerce 6 underage female fans to send him sexually explicit videos and attempted to do the same to as many as 30 other victims (Meisner, 2019).

Following trends that are in have benefits that include growth and monetization, many of the time people overlook if these trends are culturally appropriate, setting us back in the push for everyone to be treated equally. Blackfishing is a term referring to the practice of mostly White women pretending to be Black by using makeup, hairstyles, and fashion that originate from Black Culture to gain financial benefits (Cherid et al, 2021). This is a prime example of how people follow trends no matter how culturally appropriate. Trends are trends because they are the most “in” fad at the time, meaning that they will generate the most views and the most money. There are also trends that demean Asian culture, such as the “fox-eye trend” which many Asians including me have had to deal with as a gesture of racism. But in the mind of people that haven’t had to go through these hardships, many don’t see what is wrong with a lot of these things, which is sad as social media has normalized this type of behavior. Along with this, creators edit their faces to look a different way, baiting their audience in a different way. Creator Coconut Kitty edits her face to look more like a teenager, baiting her audience to try and buy her OnlyFans subscription (Jennings, 2021). Do you think this is morally correct? If not, how do you think we can change the stigma? For me, I’m still looking for answers.

### November 1 Tue - Finding someone & living alone

Tinder, OkCupid, and Bumble. All apps that have changed the online dating scene for the better… right? Well, some may beg to differ. There was once a time when partners would meet through friends and mutual friends, which reminded me of the six degrees of separation that we talked about in class; how all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. Even my parents met this way; they met through a mutual friend. But as the online dating scene has skyrocketed in the recent decade or two, there have been significant changes in how we meet people.
##### *Figure 1: Same-sex couples and meeting* (Thompson, 2019)

Figure 1 shows the correlation between same-sex couples and how they have met over time. As you can see, there is a new norm in today’s age. But is this a good thing? I don’t see any problem with this, especially with the record proportion of adults living alone, 1/7 of adults (Chamie, 2021). In my opinion, it just gives people more options, which would help this proportion. Although we are only separated by six degrees, reaching those degrees of connection is still much harder than a few taps on a screen. Before social media, we were trapped in chambers and bubbles that we didn’t have the option to escape, kind of like echo chambers and filter bubbles we talked about in class and how it is hard to escape in the news. The introduction of media to the dating scene allows us to pave the way for our own lives, however we may want it. The Atlantic calls it, the “age of DIY-everything” (Thompson, 2019).

But there are a few downsides to digital dating. People often exaggerate traits to sway in their favor. According to an OkCupid blog, people make 20% less than they say they do, males on average are 2 inches shorter, and older users use older pictures to make themselves appear younger. Therefore, the introduction of digital media toward dating has an overall positive effect on how we connect, although we should take everything we see with a grain of salt.

### November 04 Fri - Ads & social graph background

Why is it that every time I scroll through Instagram, I see an ad for an apartment complex for sale that is way out of my budget? Well, it’s probably because I’m looking for apartments that are way out of the budget that I cannot afford. That, and the fact that third-party cookies are used to track what I search for on my browser (Vox, 2020).

Advertising has changed remarkably since a few decades ago. As the digital age has taken over, advertisers have adapted to the change. One way is by creating online ads. Some of the main types of advertisements that are available online today include banners, popups, pop-unders, floating ads, map ads, and wallpaper ads (Strokes, 2013).

Banners are an image or animations displayed on a website 

*Figure 1: Example of banners. I see banner ads often on many web pages that I view.*

Pop-up and pop-under ads typically pop up on your screen straight away. From personal experience, I usually experience these when going on news sites such as and the ad usually asks me to turn off my ad blocker to support their service being “free”.

Floating ads appear over content, and the user can close the ad after. In my experience, I usually get these above a video as the advertiser probably knows that I am engaging in a video, so I am actively looking at my screen.

Wallpaper ads are what they sound like: the wallpaper is an advertisement. I feel like I don’t see these ads that much, and considering this article was written almost a decade ago things do change.

Lastly, map ads are ads that are placed on a map. The article gives the example of Google maps, but I have seen this type of advertisement expand toward social media specifically Snapchat. Snapchat has a feature called snap maps, and you can tap on this virtual map to see businesses, their hours, reviews, etc.

### Nov 29- Collapsed Context

##### Time sensitive
### ⚠️**Time to BeReal⚠️**
2 min left to capture a BeReal and see what your friends are up to!

This is essentially the notification I’ve got once a day every day since April of this year. The app pitches itself as an app that is different from all other social media apps which they claim are magnets for inauthenticity (Duffy, Gerrard, 2022). But does the app really promote authenticity?

From my experience, it promotes a mix of both authenticity and inauthenticity. The reason is that as the article states, you want to post something interesting. If I’m doing something cool at one point in the day, I sometimes catch myself thinking, “Damn, I hope the BeReal comes out now.”, and if it does come out,p it is extremely satisfying. But majority of the time, I catch myself something like, “I hope the BeReal comes out at (Insert time) because that’s when I’m going to be (Insert something cool).” This sometimes just leads to me not posting the BeReal so I can wait for something eventful to happen.

Does this mean it’s impossible to be authentic online? No, it does not. If this reading response was given before apps like BeReal were made, I would have a different answer; but with apps like BeReal, it is possible to be as authentic as you can just by posting your authentic self. And in my opinion posting late still doesn’t mean you are being inauthentic; it just means that you are not being as authentic as you can be. Reason being that authenticity is defined as “conforming to an idealized representation of reality “(Boyd et al., 2010). To me, this definition proves that there is a spectrum of authenticity, and there is no clear-cut answer.