# Reading Response Set 2

## March 21st - Appropriation
Social Media enables the general public to see and interact with people and cultures they never would have without it. At surface level this is a good thing, people communicating interculturally and experiencing different cultures. Though, as with everything on the internet, there is a dark side to cultures bleeding into social media. As Leo Kim illustrates in her essay “On Techno Orientalism” some people have begun to change their race on social media, trying to convince people they are something they’re not. Kim talks about Asian Fishing, the act of trying to appear more east asian when that is not your race, more specifically, but not exclusively, white women. The act has become more popular over the years and “eastern beauty” has become more ingrained in American society, which causes people to recreate this type of beauty. Of course this is not something new or something only the asian community experiences. All cultures in America have been appropriated, specifically the minorities in america. White people get to take the best parts of those cultures without experiencing any of the prejudice or hate those same groups have endured for centuries.

What I never had thought about before was the robotization of asia and asian people. The cyberpunk aesthetic and hyper futuristic settings are often set in asian cities. I never would have connected the dots that this comes from the idea that asian people are like robots either because of their historical labor in America, or the emotionless depiction of asian women portrayed by poppy. The asian body being described as “uncanny automata” (Kim 2021) is a weird idea to explore, but when looking at popular culture and how people few asian beauty today.

## March 28th - Online Advertising
I have never once clicked on an online ad. Well that’s an exaggeration, I’m sure somewhere along my 14 year journey of the internet I have clicked on a few ads. My point still stands though, no one likes ads, so we ignore them. In the chapter, Stokes says, “Consumers are suffering from advertising fatigue” (Stokes 2013).

This chapter is a great introduction to online marketing and advertising. Stokes explains all of the different types of payment, CPM, CPA, CPC, very well. He also explains how and when each should be used. All of the strategies he lays out are effective, and the dominant way advertisers have done business, at the time of the article. I point this out because there is one major form of online advertising he didn’t touch on enough, influencers. The amount of online ads most people see everyday is too many to count. This means advertisers have to find a better way to reach their audience. The best way in the last 5 years has to be sponsoring influencers. They are able to connect and sell products to their massive audiences way better than any banner or pre roll ad ever could. I think the future of online ads is through content creators because their audience will follow them on everything, especially products.

## April 12th - Algorithmic Bias

When I first saw that google was “racist” back in 2020 I immediately denied that fact because I thought to myself, “How could a search engine be racist?”. I never did any research on the fact and left it alone with my assumption that people were over blowing search results. Of course, assuming something and moving on is the definition of lack of critical thinking. As we progressed further into this course and this topic has been mentioned here and there I began to understand the statement “google is racist’’.

The buzz feed article outlines differences in searchers, offering a few ideas for why this occurs. Included in these were the search results for “professional hairstyles” and mostly straight hair from white people came up. This is the result I find the most appalling because many black women’s natural hair is curly.

The chapter by Oneil on the other hand details how algorithms can be made with bias and prejudice, which cause them to make racist decisions. I like the phrase, “... models are, by their very nature, simplifications,” (2016 pg.7) because it simplifies how algorithms (models) are made. Because you have to boil down everything to a value in a model, you have to make assumptions and simplifications for everything. I think it is a very hard task to make an algorithm free of bias, almost impossible. Developers should attempt to mitigate these biases as much as they can, and recognise they exist.

## April 22nd - Authenticity, work, & influence

We really have gone full circle. I remember watching nigahiga when I was 8 and seeing him purposefully change brand names to not promote them. He would change something like sprite to spryte sometimes making full videos with the can in it. Back then any content creator doing a sponsored segment or brand deal was very frowned upon, they would have to preface it by justifying needing money, or really believing in the brand. Today, brand promotions are synonymous with success, so people will fake brand deals just to seem more official.

After reading the article, I thought back to my highschool micro influencers and wondered if there brand deals were real or not. I’m curious to know the legal actions of promoting a brand without there knowledge. I’m sure a brand could sue the creator if they thought it made their brand look bad.

The digital double bind is one of the topics that struck me in Duffy’s article. Duffy says, “The tensions they experienced seem to emerge from a space between (masculine-coded) indexes of entrepreneurial success and cultural prescriptions for female self-presentation.” (2017 pg. 7). The digital double bind is where, especially in a leadership role, a female entrepreneur must find a balance between presenting as too fenime and too masculine. They cannot be too femineme because then they seem weak because of the societal stereotypes placed on women, though she can’t be a super strict mascuilne figure because then she won’t be liked. This idea can be seen all over popular culture, where anytime a businesswoman is in film and TV shows, she is portrayed as extremely tough and dislikeable.

## April 26th - Pushback

Pushing back against technology isn’t this new idea for us tech natives, we have always been told to push back. Parents and adults have been telling us technology is rotting our brains since I can remember, “go outside”,” get off the games” are the classic lines I’m sure plenty of zoomers can relate to. I’m not saying any of these statements are wrong. In my opinion you should get outside and play and not spend every day on video games, but we have never really had the option to do it ourselves until now. Gomez says,”“digital natives,” were not suffering from technology fatigue or information overload,””(2014 pg.7) They also mention the idea that our generation suffers from different types of anxiety due to our complete integration into technology and the internet. This essay focuses on pushback happening because of addiction, as well as information overload, which Gen-Z supposedly doesn’t have. Personally, I don’t really get information overload, new tech comes out every month, a lot of it is initiative and learning it isn’t hard. What I do get anxiety about is the addiction and social aspect of the internet. Gomez references the book Alone Together which perfectly describes how many feel today, unlimited connections to others at the tip of our fingers, but ever persistent feelings of loneliness.

To touch on the final chapter of reading the comments, the line “moderation is now a central tenant of successful blogs,” is extremely relevant to today’s social media. Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk today, and he vows to make is a “safe haven” for free speech by not moderating tweets as much. As said early in the chapter, a blog cannot be successful without moderation of comments. This idea translates to social media sites as well, if anyone can post anything, the site will devolve into insanity. I am very curios to see how Twitter moderation is changed by the change in leadership at twitter.