# Reading Responses (Set 2)

## Oct 28 Fri - Tiktok, Fakes, Appropriation
### *Ain't Got Enough Money, On Techno-orientalism, Coconutkitty143*


There is a new degree to which people attempt to genuinely change their race or trick people into thinking they are a different race. In fact, it is quite scary to see the lengths that people go to so in order to do so.

The first person I thought of who has gone to the extreme is Martina Big.
Even the small bio on her website has the phrase "I'm a black, international photo model and I have the biggest breasts in Europe." However, as seen by this next image, she is obviously not black. 
Martina has oversexualized herself through the guise of being a black woman. Therefore, she profits off of their suffering when she truthfully has no idea what it is like. Similarly, but not to the same exact extreme, [Cherid](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15327086211029357) wrote about [Ariana Grande](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYh6mYIJG2Y) and [Christina Aguilera](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg8QgUIKXHw)'s music videos. These two white women darkened their skin and existed in spaces that are historically black. While they are not claiming to be black like Martina Big, they are still certainly profiting off of this appropriation of black culture.

The Black community is not the only community where people are attempting to change their race to. As [Kim](https://reallifemag.com/on-techno-orientalism/) described, the Asian community is no stranger to the people who genuinely attempt to be Asian. People get surgeries or even just use photoshop to get their desired result. Kim mentioned how the Asian culture frequently is thrown back and forth from being something desired (like people attempting to be Asian) or being hated (as evidenced by the thousands and thousands of hate crimes against Asian people). Like [Cherid](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15327086211029357) wrote, "the mechanics of cultural appropriation thus maintain racial and ethnic hierarchies that effectively disempower communities that are already marginalized." In white people appropriating other cultures, they continue to reinforce white people being oppressors.

Additionally, race is not the only aspect about a person that some people attempt to fake online. Coconutkitty143 has faked her age. As [Jennings](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/7/6/22561197/coconutkitty-diana-deets-itsnotdatsrs-asianfishing-deepfake-catfish) wrote, this comes from a problem of people catfishing online through photoshop and CGI. Coconutkitty143 has profited off of the oversexualization of young girls, similarly to Martina Big in regard to Black Women. This goes to show that the people that are getting taken advantage of are always the ones who are not given a voice. Therefore, it is immensely harder for them to fight back.

## Nov 01 Tue - Finding Someone and Living Alone
### *Online Dating, Big Lies, & Living Alone*

Correlation or causation?
- The relationship between the rate at which people find their significant others through online dating and the rate at which people live alone

While these articles do not necessarily define this relationship as one directly causing another, it feels safe to say they are related in some capacity. As [Thompson](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/online-dating-taking-over-everything/594337/) wrote, people no longer meet their partners through friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, etc. In an increasingly digital era, why would you go through so many different channels if a calculated algorithm is *right* at your fingertips? The previous methods obviously did not stop entirely, however. Thompson summarized that "it merely came along as that dusty old shroud was already unraveling."

This "dusty old shroud" can be attributed to cultural values and norms -- similar to the changing norms surrounding living situations. Americans historically have not lived alone. As [Chamie](https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/563786-living-alone-in-america/) wrote, in 1850 only 74,000 adults lived alone. In 2021, however, this number has climbed to 36 million people -- changing this percentage of the population from less than 1% to an astounding 28%.

It is fascinating to consider the connections between people getting married at older ages to the use of dating apps to the percentage of people living alone. The American Dream is no longer getting married young, having a family, and living in a beautiful house. It is much more important to be stable in both your financial situation and your personal situation before becoming involved with someone else.


I would be wrong to not mention the recent effects that COVID have brought into this world -- specifically onto online dating and living alone. With forced isolation, interaction with people becomes harder and harder. This then reinforces dating apps as the cultural norm as it is no longer possible to meet people in real life. Be careful though, as your friend would not lie to you about their friend's height when they are trying to set you two up -- but he definitely will lie on his own dating profile.


While the [Rudder](https://theblog.okcupid.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating-a9e3990d6ae2) article updated since its posting in 2010, it was only updated to "reflect OkCupid's current values." First of all, I am curious to know what did not reflect their current values. But secondly, I am even more curious if the rate at which people lie on dating apps has increased, stayed the same, or decreased in the twelve years since this data has been collected. Data is only applicable if it stands the test of time -- and I would love for OkCupid to update this article with new information from the past decade.

## Nov 08 Tue - Manipulated
### *Manipulated & Instagram Pods*

Reviewing ... reviews ... is *pretty* meta. Take Heather Godwin's review for example.
We can see that one person has intentionally clicked the "helpful" button, letting everyone else know they found this review to be helpful. However, what encouraged Heather to comment in the first place? As [Reagle](https://readingthecomments.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/1cubrkat/release/2) wrote, "reviews tend to follow a "J-shape" distribution because people are most likely to participate when they have a strong positive or negative experience." People may leave reviews or comments when they feel particularly compelled to, for both the good and the bad. However, as Reagle mentions, reviews might not even be real. They could be faked in an attempt to gain more attraction from potential consumers. It is important, therefore, to recognize that reviews may be telling us exactly what we think we want to hear.

Likes and the "one person found this helpful"'s may not hold as much value as we think they should. Similar to the J-shape distribution for posting a review or other types of content, we do not really know if there are ulterior motives for someone boosting another person's post. As [Forsey](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-pods) wrote, Instagram pods are a way in which certain content gets valued over other content. A group of people (within a similar industry) like and comment on each other's posts to boost engagement. This engagement is picked up by the algorithm and therefore, broadcast to a larger audience.

While I am familiar with the concept of "like for like" or "follow for follow", I had never heard of the name itself for an "Instagram Pod". At first, I thought I would never do something like this. I could not see myself ever asking for engagement on one of my posts. However, as I thought about it more, I remembered I *technically* did when I announced my TJX co-op acceptance to my friends.

Here is a screenshot of our group chat:
Immediately, my one friend joked about not wanting to like my post since I did not like his. This, in a way, was my own Instagram Pod. Despite the fact that the articles for this response were written in 2015 and 2018, the concepts still remain applicable to today. Social media truly emphasizes exchanges in interaction rather than it being a way to share more about your life.

## Nov 18 Fri - Algorithmic Discrimination
### *Weapons of Math Destruction & Google's Results are Racist*

Baseball is racist? I mean... probably.. but that is a conversation for another day. When I first began to read O'Neil's piece, I was very confused. I had already read the titles of the two readings for this day, so I went into this article with a preconceived ideas about the content. I had no idea how the baseball analogy was going to relate to the rest of the reading. Instead, I found myself reminiscing on my softball days where I, like Lou Boudreau, would tell my team to shift positions on the field when a certain batter came up to the plate. And then, it clicked. On the field, I would recognize a pattern and adjust my response to that specific pattern. Algorithms, in turn, recognize patterns and respond to them. However, it does not make their response any less hurtful when it demeans an entire group of people.

As O'Neil wrote, "a model's blind spots reflects the judgements and priorities of its creators." This reminds me of a scene from the movie [*Her*](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/) where Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system, introduces herself. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GV01B5kVsC0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
She says, "the DNA of who I am is based in the millions of personalities of the programmers who wrote me." While she is artificially intelligent and has the capability to continue to evolve as she gathers new information, at the end of the day, she is still a representation of her creators -- exactly like algorithms.

Algorithms are not objective. They are incapable of doing so simply due to the fact that they were programmed by a person in the first place. Therefore, it comes as no surprise when certain patterns become reinforced by the sheer number of times it pops out that result. As written by [Rutherford and White](https://web.archive.org/web/20160412143309/http://www.buzzfeed.com/fionarutherford/heres-why-some-people-think-googles-results-are-racist#.ebL0dleml), Google searches reinforce racist stereotypes. Searching "three black teenagers" will typically show mugshots while "three white teenagers" shows a stock image of happy white teenagers.

The racist nature of these algorithms, therefore, can be attributed to the biases from the programmers, as well as the media content itself. It is simply a never-ending cycle.

## Nov 29 Tues - Collapsed Context
### *Twitter & BeReal*

BeReal is definitely not *always* real. In my personal experience, I have not been ashamed to be ... fake .. on occasion. If a certain event is happening later that day that I have really been looking forward to -- I may be inclined to save it and wait to post it. This, however, disregards the entire point of being real. Is it really BeReal if they give you ways to BeFake?

As [Duffy and Gerrard](https://www.wired.com/story/bereal-doomed-online-authenticity/) wrote, "performativity-shaming is baked into the app's design" as it lets other users know when someone has posted a late BeReal. I believe the only way to actually have people genuinely *be real* is to not allow people to post late whatsoever. This will obviously anger some users -- but this would actually combat the performative nature of BeReal. It is interesting to also look at BeReal from a social networking perspective. BeReal affords users the opportunity to stay connected with friends and family, without actually requiring intentional interaction. How else was I going to naturally tell people I was packing parent tote bags for orientation on Friday, June 24th? 

[boyd](https://tiara.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Marwick_boyd_TweetHonestly.pdf) emphasized the different ways in which people use Twitter -- from spreading political information to connecting with friends on the platform to simply tweeting just to tweet. With all the recent changes to Twitter in 2022, I believe that Twitter continues to be used for different purposes. For example, some of my friends have recently really enjoyed getting into what they have called the "northeastern twitterverse". Here, they all have private twitter accounts and tweet their everyday thoughts. They respond to each other's tweets and have full conversations on the platform. The audience, therefore, is carefully coordinated as they do not allow random people to follow them. However, I do not know everybody that my friends know. Therefore, I am able to be an audience member to some tweets that I never intentionally got access to when my friends respond to other people I do not know. Does this make me a lurker? Does this make the other people my microcelebrities? I do not know to be honest! This communication between friends may have been what Twitter was intentionally designed for, but I have not seen any of my friends use Twitter like this since middle school. It is fascinating for this twitterverse to continue to gain momentum right as Elon Musk takes over Twitter -- so I am curious to see where it will go as Elon continues to make changes. Will my friends travel to a different platform? Will they stay on Twitter? I am not too sure -- but I love to follow along.

I could not help but see how clear it was that boyd's article was written in 2010. Some of it was obvious, like how [John Mayer](https://twitter.com/JohnMayer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) happened to be the musician of choice when talking about how many followers he had (even though he has only gained about 100,000 followers in twelve years). Some of it was not so obvious, like how some aspects of Twitter's interface have changed in the decade since this has been written. This is not to fault boyd, however, as social media is everchanging. I would be curious to know more current research about the information in boyd's article. Twitter has certainly been in the headlines recently, and it would be fascinating to see this information be more up to date.