# Reading Responses (Set 2)

- Checklist for a [good reading response](https://reagle.org/joseph/zwiki/Teaching/Best_Practices/Learning/Writing_Responses.html) of 250-350 words
- [ ] Begin with a punchy start.
- [ ] Mention specific ideas, details, and examples from the text and earlier classes.
- [ ] Offer something novel that you can offer towards class participation.
- [ ] Check for writing for clarity, concision, cohesion, and coherence.
- [ ] Send to professor with “hackmd” in the subject, with URL of this page and markdown of today’s response.

## Reading responses 5 out of 5

### Oct 27 Fri - Collapsed context
I still remember the scene when I saw my secondary school teacher sharing her experience of being infertile on Instagram, posting a picture showing her packs of medicine and syringes. She was a young teacher who always seemed elegant and delightful on social media. It was the first time she shared her dark side with us, striking me with the cruel differences between reality and images online.

People are pursuing "online authenticity" nowadays. Media companies launched new social media platforms to provide users with a new channel to express their "real" side. In Duffy & Gerrard's article (2022), they used "BeReal", a rising French photo-sharing platform that challenges users to follow an order of posting a dual front-camera/back-camera image within two minutes, as an example to illustrate the cyclical phenomenon that new social media networking apps are released nowadays and "defines itself against its precursor’s seeming inauthenticity".

Seemingly, people nowadays are aware of the importance of "being real" online. There are trends like #NoMakeUpSelfie on social media. However, is it that important to be real? And more importantly, what is authenticity? How can we define it? Am I the most real person on earth when I post a raw picture on social media after I scroll through my photo album, just to find the "realest photo" which is IG-able? In my opinion, when you spend time thinking of the question "Am I real" and try to "be real", you have already lost your realistic self.

### Nov 03 Fri - Finding someone & living alone

Just a few melodious ringing sounds, and you check on your Tinder app immediately, cannot wait to see who your Mr. Right is. Online dating is no longer a novelty in this digital age and some people even spend 24/7 on a platform of dating apps, just hoping they can find someone who can start a long relationship with. However, reality is harsh. Lies are common, and authenticity is rare on dating apps (OkCupid, 2010). People even quit dating apps, thinking them to be rather time-consuming, or more seriously, a platform of harassment like how the users commented on them, "There are no consequences to unkind or abusive behavior" (Vinter, 2023).

I am lucky to have found my partner without using a dating app and I do not expect to find a long-term relationship on a dating app. Friends who have been using dating apps just shared with me that people on dating apps simply want to find someone to hook up with and have a sexual relationship. There are even memes popular among the Asian community that conversations on dating apps are as defaulted as below:

"Hi."
"Hi."
"1q??" (q=one time of sex)

People directly jumped into asking the price of having sex without the pre-conversation and understanding, and it is a commodification of sex which is disrespectful as you assume someone is a sexual worker.

I think it is also related to the previous topic we talked about in class, regarding anonymity online. While you can fake your identification on dating apps, "good people acting bad" and people just say whatever they want, even the harmful and offensive questions that you will normally be banned by yourself.

Without a doubt, I appreciate the emergence of dating apps as they help people, especially LGBTQ+ who can hardly find a partner in real life, to make more encounters. However, like what a dating app quitter said, "people are more magic in real life" (Vinton, 2023). Head up and talk to someone around you. Expand your interests and appreciate yourself before you find your loved ones.

### Nov 07 Tue - Ads & social graph background

When I click on a random online news article, the first thing that appears inside the frame is not the news content, but a floating box. Even when you try to dodge that box by scrolling up and down, it acts like a ghost, following you and occupying your whole screen brusquely. Welcome to the age of online advertisement, where adverts are ubiquitous and inevitable.

To build images and increase sales and response, brands are actively developing advertising online as online advertisement can track online users' behaviors and cooperate with them with algorithms, making every advertisement tailor-made to the targeted audience (Stokes, 2013). While brands are investing more resources to fancy their advertisements and banners, Strokes (2013) raised his observation that online advertising makes people weary and in contrast, leads to advertisement ignorance and avoidance. AdBlock Plus is a good example of it.

The phenomenon of online advertisement makes me think of the previous concepts that we have learned, the tragedy of common. While our Internet is a public shared resource, advertisers and brands try their best to seize and scramble the most eye-catching spot in frames. It is a loss for them and they become less competitive when they don't do that in their mindset, finally inducing the tragedy which is audience hate advertisement.

While we talked about constitution and privatization in our previous lesson as a way to combat the tragedy of common, how could we apply these methods and considerations in our online advertising world would be an important question for us in the future.

### Nov 17 Fri - Artificial intelligence

Last April, an image titled “The Electrician” won a category at the World Photography Organization’s Sony World Photography Awards. While winning is supposed to be worth celebrating, the photographer, Boris Eldagsen refused to accept the prize, followed by his revelation that this award-winning "photograph" is an image generated by the AI, DALL-E 2.

*"The Electrician" by Boris Eldagsen*

“I was just making a test to see if they were aware — like a hacker who hacks a system not to exploit it, but to see if there are weaknesses.” The photographer explained. It is still astonishing to see how advanced an AI could be nowadays, even winning in the field of creativity which I thought should be something distinct and unique for humans.

This week's reading centered the discussion of the rising AI technology and the controversies it brought, regarding academic credibility and labor force replacement. In Heilweil's (2023) article, she explains the prevalence of such technology and ends with a cautious note that humans may not fully understand how the technology works before it becomes mainstream society and causes unstoppable ripple effects. On top of that, Gold's (2023) commentary further fascinated me by showing how "humane" an AI robot could be. For instance, in Sydney's case, the AI could even gaslight the user and blame the user emotionally that "he is not a good user".

Where is the limit of AI and how far can it go? I do not oppose the development of AI as I think it is inevitable and it does reduce a lot of human workloads, especially those repetitive and boring assignments. However, it is hard for us to fully understand it and hence how could we even manipulate it? Do we need the 3 rules of robotics suggested by Isaac Asimov? I look forward yet remaining a little bit skeptical about the future.

### Dec 01 Fri - Authenticity, work, & influence

One year ago, a Hong Kong female nurse joined a local famous TV talent show. Because of her angelic singing voice, she went from a young nurse taking care of children to an influencer who attracted public attention in a night. Two months later, a picture of her, who was the wife of her Taiwanese husband at that time, shopping with a male idol was taken. Having zero evidence proving that she was having an affair, that once beloved singer was now bombarded by labels like "Slut" or "KOL of Infidelity".

Browsing the comment sections under her Instagram posts, it is not hard to identify the fact that most of the ruthless comments are made by females, echoing the phenomenon mentioned by Duffy et. al (2022), to specify, "horizontal violence".

While the female is seen as the oppressed group in society, females are more likely to engage in such kind of digital violence as they want to vent out their anger, which is unlikely to be expressed in real life. They judge the female influencers with high and changing standards, in the name of the watchdogs of authenticity. In this case, they kept suspecting the relationship between the singer and the idol, and commented on the post of the singer and her husband, claiming that their love is fake and solely presented on social media for fame and image.

Like what Duffy has concluded in the article, it is hard to solve such kind of digital violence as such kind of idea is deep-rooted (2022). However, I do feel inspired by the suggestion she gave, to "call in" instead of "calling out". It is important to engage people in more discussion related to the topic instead of simply judging it on the surface. Only rational conversation could drive constructive conservation and critiques.