# Reading Responses (Set 2)

### March 23 -- Online Dating and Living Alone

Market research from Eurominotor International found that from 1996 to 2011, the number of people living alone globally has grown about 80% in 15 years (as cited in Klinenberg, 2012). What is driving this evolution from forming our lives around our social connections into settling down as singletons? As a culture of individualism prevails, more people can afford to live alone, and are able to reap the benefits of social life even whilst living alone. This transformative social experience that is seen to be an investment in the self has progressed to become a mark of distinction and success. Solitude however, is not to be confused with loneliness. The quality of friendships rather than quantity of friendships is thought to be the better predictor of loneliness. Living alone can result in varied outcomes and even benefits, notwithstanding the loneliness and anxiety that can come out of it.

As the culture of living alone progresses to be championed as *the* goal, the way in which we interact with others socially and romantically is also changing as a result. Many can probably relate to Peter Hobbs’ experience of having to protect his own solitude as Klinenberg (2012) mentioned -- sometimes physically setting boundaries is a way for emotional and social boundaries to catch up. This comes to be increasingly so as the worry about having a social life or finding a significant other is largely absolved with social media and online dating. Contrary to the misconceptions and stigma surrounding it, online dating can work well according to your needs. There are pros and cons to meeting someone online, but it most definitely is a norm that we must adapt to as 21st century goals evolve.

### March 30 -- Shaped

Has the digital age evolved us to become a generation of narcissists? Social media and comment has become the new mirror we hold up to reflect our self-esteem and self concept. Building a healthy self-esteem is not the culmination of praise, but rather our response to negative feedback. With the ubiquity of comment, we have to rethink how to cultivate healthy self-esteem in the online realm. If the popularity of double-eyelid surgery in South Korea can be the product of a song from 2NE1, then we are certainly not to be spared from the wraths of social comparison. Our social medias are a highlight reel, and we compete with one another through the quantification of our social influence. Thriving amidst comment, digital temptation, and the colonizing logic of quantification necessitates the development of a robust self-esteem that can withstand its ubiquity. Disconnecting from the use of technology to be mindful of how our attention shifts, is to ultimately, reconnect with ourselves.

I'll be the first to admit that this digital age has made me a participant of the quantification rat race. Even something as simple as posting a picture on *Instagram* now requires so much thought -- what time to post, what filter to use, and what caption to write. I'm by no means a stickler for the aesthetics of having a coherent feed, but I do all of the above just to get the most amount of likes and comments to validate my ego and self-esteem. 'Measuring' social influence or engagement is just another lie that feeds our narcissism. After the photo is posted, I find myself constantly checking my phone to see how many likes I've gotten. For some users, *Instagram* has taken away the ability to view the amount of likes on a post. I would happily relinquish this online distraction, but I unfortunately do not belong to this test group of people. Until my turn comes around where I can also relinquish my rights to view engagements, I still have to find ways to develop a self-esteem that is irrespective of online comment.

### April 9 -- Collapsed Context
Do we ever really *know* who our audience is online? Interacting on and offline carries the same implications for identity presentation -- except that we cannot really account for our audience online. This leads to the concept of an **imagined audience**, which is a sense of audience in every mediated conversation that helps us to present ourselves appropriately online (p. 115). Whether we send a tweet or post a photo, we imagine an audience that we communicate to based on nuanced social contexts. The multiplicity of our imagined audience and the diverse ways Twitter is used leads to a **collapsed context**, which refers to the flattening of multiple audiences into one (p. 122). Marwick and Boyd asked users on Twitter, a microblogging site, how they imagined and navigated their audiences. Different followings warranted different techniques, including targeting different audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity. To maintain audience interest and establish online presence, techniques used by micro-celebrities are also widely embraced. The multiplicity of sites like Twitter and difficulty to ascertain our audience online makes for an abstract **networked audience**. The networked audience is formed by both the identity and content presented by the speaker, and the imagined audience through their influences on the user with what they choose to tweet (p. 130).

I don't doubt that finding a balance between personal authenticity and audience expectation is a way to build audience. However, the practice of collecting data on their followers to build an audience doesn't sit well with me personally. I was rather shocked to read about Soraya's used of *Twittersheep* to track the interests of her audience so that she can better tailer her content to suit them. Additionally, not being able to really ascertain who their audience is leads to this feed-forward mechanism where they constantly have to be aware of finding out what their interests are and trying to interject some of that into her authentic self. I personally am not a fan of using tools like *Twittersheep*, but I have seen a lot of the content creators I support directly ask their audience what kind of content they would like to see. In my opinion, the latter makes for a more genuine and authentic approach, rather than the former which treats their audience as mere data. Even if those content creators do also collect data, asking their audience directly humanizes them.

### April 12 -- Gendered Work

Has this new age of digital entrepreneurship built on meritocracy abolished progressive gender politics? Unfortunately not. Duffy and Pruchniewska (2017) interviewed 22 female internet entrepreneurs on the role of social networking sites in their professional ventures. What emerged was a **digital double bind** — a career impasse that has transcended offline work environments and permeated into the digital work environment, which requires females to put in a disproportionate amount of work to ensure their online success. The three social media imperatives that make up this digital double bind are soft self-promotion, interactive intimacy, and compulsory visibility. Women must tread the lines between aggressive self-promotion championed in men versus a more modest approach. Traditionally feminine roles of nurturing communities and fostering relationships are also prerequisites to their success online. Finally, visibility and blurring the lines between their public and private lives are mistaken for female empowerment. Together, they maintain the structural inequalities that independent female creatives face in this new era of entrepreneurship.

Duffy and Pruchniewska’s (2017) take on interactive intimacy paints relational labor as an over-romanticized social construct. There is without a doubt that this expectation of intimacy and community in female audiences is a result of gendered roles, is this prerequisite for success something that women always end up resenting? From my personal experience, plenty of women have used this very notion of community to build their brands from the ground up. This 'obligation' that exists to build other women up, in moderation, is not always a bad thing if it empowers them. Rather than viewing it as a dichotomy of gender expectations, I wonder if another perspective could be to view it as different methods to the same success. This is not to discount the lingering gender norms and internalized expectations, but we must also be careful to not discredit women who have built their ethos on female community and empowerment, viewing it as just a prerequisite for their success.

### April 16 -- Bemused

Top review reads, "Works great!" 4/5 stars. If you are anything like me, so many questions have come up for you. Why is this the top review? How can it work great but only have 4/5 stars? What does 5 stars represent? This supposed top review may be amusing as much as it is confusing, and often, comments bemuse us. We make sense of the comments online by assuming that people have similar expectations and competencies, but often times expectations are mismatched. Granted, the stars can also mean very different things for different individuals. Product reviews are also another form of entertainment in itself, so much so that researchers use them as data to train their computers to detect irony. In this digital age, comment reactivity can easily go south with the slip of a finger, be taken out of context, implicitly reveal our biases and perhaps, stupidity.

Sometimes, the comment that lies on the bottom half of the web can be a dreadful place to be. Other times, it serves as a casual form of entertainment when I'm looking to buy a certain product and looking through the reviews. The "works great!" but 4/5 star reviews always get me, but the more I use these platforms, the more I realize that these bemusing reviews are often posted half-heartedly and reactively. We rate a product 2 stars because it doesn't work the way **we** expect it to. Additionally, I've also posted reviews on multiple occasions just to get a free coffee, or to get a discount code for the next purchase. I only really invest in writing (what I would deem) "helpful" reviews if I either a) really liked the product or b) felt like there were some things that potential buyers needed to be aware of. Admittedly, the comment sections is probably not a better place because of my contributions (or lack thereof).