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## Reading Responses
- [Reading Response 1](https://hackmd.io/plyLh8P9QI-IAXYgbLzuTA)
- [Reading Response 2](/xHfaN1rkRB25eFeNaIgKjg)
- [Reading Response 3](https://hackmd.io/rZgUupqqRb67N7XMl92EGA?both)
- [Reading Response 4](https://hackmd.io/J3E0UPbuTkCgDhQYC4OpzA)
- [Reading Response 5](https://hackmd.io/K2dqbT44QUGD0zQ-hulFxA)
#### Reading Response #1
##### March 25 - Finding Someone & Living Alone
Online dating has changed drastically over the last decades. The first online-dating service was found in 1965 by two Harvard students, which was a survey made up of 75 questions. Today, there are hundreds of services and applications to find a perfect match for anyone in the world, regardless of location. You can meet anyone, anywhere in the world with the ease of a click. But that’s exactly where the problem starts. This is where all the self-misconceptions and lies come to light. Trying to be the ‘perfect-match’ is so important, people will use pictures from 2-3 years ago, lie about their physical appearance, age, race, job, income, and even ethnicity. As a research from Stanford University states from 2017, 39% of heterosexual couples have met online. The few people who don’t lie and mislead others about themselves in the online community, ends up marrying each other.
According to (OkCupid 2010,) men are two inches shorter than they state online dating sites. This perfectly correlates with my experience in the online dating world. As I mentioned in class, the guy that I considered a potential partner were in fact 3 inches shorter than what he had stated on his profile section. And he totally lied about his age and occupation too. In fact, he was in high school. Even though online dating can cause misconceptions and mistrust, it can be super beneficial too. People who dislike going out and meeting new people, or people who have no/few friends to introduce them to a potential partner, have countless opportunities to find a match online. Lying on online dating sites is understandable, but it must have a limit. Because the sea is enourmous and there are countless other/better fishes in the sea, people want to compete. How can they do that? By lying. However, since the goal is to eventually 'meet-in-person' with the potential partner, lying can only get you to a point where you'll get caught, and the relationships will be terminated.
#### Reading Response #2
#### April 01 - Manipulated
If you were traveling this spring break, you most probably checked multiple hotel and flight websites to gather information. I was surfing between Expedia, AirBnB, Booking.com, Trip Advisor and a couple more prominent websites who are considered 'trustable' websites. As an online user, I rely on previous reviews, ratings, and comments about the service that I'm looking for. And this can be extended to all branches of online shopping like clothing brands, grocery delivery services and so on.
For specifically traveling, there are thousands of third party websites that are full of scam, and most probably you will end up paying for a flight that doesn't even exist. Most likely these websites will offer extremely low the prices compared to actual price to attract people, and get the money and leave you without a flight. In order to avoid situations like this when booking a flight, I need to make sure the information on the third party website matches with the airlines official website. After checking the airlines website, I still wasn't convinced enough to make a purchase from this website. I wanted to check reviews, ratings, and comments about this third party website. I checked websites like Reddit, Trustpilot, and Consumeraffairs and I wasn't expecting what I saw.
The ratings were 1/5, others users have only expressed negative comments and how terrible of an experience they had with this airfare search website. That is how I was able learn this website wasn't trustable and will probably cause a lot of problems.
People's opinion about a product or a service have never been valued as it now. Since online shopping is in our daily routine now, whether it is groceries, clothing, or home decor, we value previous buyers' experience and comments to make sure we not wasting our money. Unfortunately, these days fake reviews and ratings are more common than honest ones. 4 out 10 reviews are unreliable according to PCMag's research in 2019. As Joseph Reagle discusses in “Reading The Comment's,” this online behavior is well spread over variety of websites. Restaurants, clothing brands, governmental websites, e-book websites, and even high-tech companies like Samsung has found to either pay people or make their employees and loyal customers rate, review and comment in a positive way multiple times from different accounts.
Online shopping is only getting more popular and reliable every day. It is important to realize with this innovation, online shoppers need to be more cautious than ever about which websites, ratings, reviews, and comments are safe to trust.
#### Reading Response #3
#### April 22 - Authenticity, Work, and Influence
Influencers has gained immerse amount of power over social media in the last decade, some of them had to fake it until they made it. I've always been a fan of that mindset because it made sense. Your audience, your followers, or whoever is being influenced has no idea what's behind the scenes. They only see the posts and stories... Taylor Lorenz mentioned how transitioning into the influencer life is not easy, and there are a couple of steps to be taken in order to become a successful influencer.
I have a lot of friends from high school who are pushing hard to become known on social media either by Instagram and/or Tiktok. I've seen the transition firsthand. First, cleaning out the old, uncool photos on your feed from previous years. Usually this is where people like me- the quiet profiles that post rarely but always watches stories- realizes the postless profiles. I've come across so many profiles in the beginning stages of rebuilding their personal brand progress, all of them with the same goal. To fit the aesthetic. Their old pictures don't fit the trendy aesthetic vibes anymore. The next step is to pick your aesthetic and start posting accordingly. After a while of posting multiple times a day and gaining a fairly 'big' number of followers, the desire te be known by brands, and collaboration kicks in. By necessity, online users maintain impressions by balancing personal/public information, avoiding certain topics, and maintaining authenticity.
Faking brand deals, sponsorships, and manipulating stories to make it look like it's being paid by a brand is a smart strategy in the early stages of being an influencer. However, whenever followers understand that the authenticity of the influencer gets questioned. Authenticity is being what it is claimed to be. Once the influencer is caught with faking their personal brand, lying, and manipulating their followers, the unfollows are inevitable.
#### Reading Response #4
#### April 26 - Pushback
In 2017, Statista collected an online survey, and 71% of the respondents have been offended by comments. Quitting social media for a short term has been solutions to many people who are fed up with what others think like Boing Boing's writer Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin, and Miley Cyrus. It is important to understand that, there will always be devaluing, undermining, and terrible comments, there's no way to resolve that as long as comments section are enabled. Big names like New York Times and Gawker media has adapted to Rob Beschizza's Discourse System, as a solution to get rid of negative comments.
In my opinion, the hybrid system is problem-solving in small picture. Yet, in the big picture, with online communication taking such a big part in our lives, learning to deal with reading bad comments and/or ignoring them would be best strategy. Focusing on using online communinication and comments for it's bright, improving, and informing side, is the only way we should be using it.
It is definitely possible to opt-out of digital commnication. However, it isn't going to be very easy. Center of Internet and Technology Addiction founder David Greenfield stated that elevated levels of dopamine caused by addictive social media use, can result in withdrawal in an attempt to quit. Anxiety can take part first time quitting social communications, and it could lead to loneliness. This doesn't mean it is going to be dreadful, quitting digital communication also has it's beneftts like getting work done better and quicker, better sleep, better mental health and higher productivity.
#### Reading Response #5
#### April 19 - Collapsed Context
The concept of role complexity refers to the idea that on a daily basis, individuals are expected to perform a multiplicity of roles while simultaneously functioning in their day to day lives. In addition to role complexity, performing identity refers to the idea that individuals formulate a process through which they show the world and those around them who they think they are. Engaging in different roles in real life, and navigating social media acccordingly like having multiple social media profiles might be considered being authentic. Nonetheless, having a professional-business Linked-In account, while also posting funny tiktoks, having 2 instagram accounts one for general use and one for close friends which is reffered to as finsta, is a way of performing the different roles we engage in on our day to day lives. Being transparent about personal roles on social media creates a sense of 'connection' with imagined audience, which makes the person authentic. Being what it is claimed to be, and most importantly being genuine about yourself on online media platforms makes you authentic.
Impression management is essential while navigating through different social media platforms and trying to maintain authenticity. Different imagined audiences require different posts. In sense of appropriateness, I wouldn't post a funny picture of me and my friends on Linked-In, rather finsta. Formulating posts in regards to the imagined audiences is a way of both impression management and maintaining authenticity. Context collapses when there's a disconnection between these different selves.
Marwick and Boyd explains how authenticity depends on the mind of who's doing the judging, I couldn't agree more. Since universial authenticity doesn't exist anymore, how authenticity is going to be perceived is dependent on the audience. Perception of authenticity varies between audiences: interests, trends, local events, shocking news are all factors of being considered authentic.