# Reading Responses (Set Two)
## Reading responses 5 out of 5
### Oct 26 Fri - Ads & Social Graph Background
Aristotle mentions that deliberative speeches, or rather persuasive speeches, are the riskiest kind of speaking as it is based on a thin layer of trust between the listener and the speaker. Why do I mention Aristotle in the first place? Because what better examples of persuasive speeches than advertisements. I have taken classes with segments devoted to advertisements and their use of ethos, pathos, and logos; we heavily discussed whether these advertisements were ethical in the grand scheme of things. However, in those classes, most of the advertisements were of the traditional type, such as TV, magazine, and poster advertisements amongst others. As I read the chapter by Stokes (2013), the question of ethics in advertisements came up again, and how it expanded with the digital platforms.

These digital methods of advertising, which target their possible future consumers through such thorough information that these possible consumers might not even know about, is unnerving for some. A prime example is Facebook which allows for these adverts to be served based on such specified demographics like age, gender, relationship status, sexual orientation, etc. Online adverts can be ethical, but the fact of the matter is not every one of them are. In a way, one can think of seemingly unethical targeting as being plucked and put into an elaborate reputation silo. People are getting tired of it which is why more people are getting Adblock to stop constantly being fed things as part of the said silo.

One question I had was what would these new sponsored influencer posts that are advertising a product or a service be labeled as? Could be under ‘social media’ advertising? Or could it be under the ‘promoted account’ header specifically?


Additionally, while more influencers are now using the features on some platforms to disclose that they are being sponsored, some influencers don’t disclose that information. In those cases of indirect advertising, how could a company track if the traffic on their websites was actually from this influencer?


### Nov 06 Tue - Dating
OkCupid, Tinder, Bumble, etc. are what my sister calls “a desperate person’s cry for attention.” After she called it that the first time I got myself a Tinder account to spite her.
My sister’s words in my opinion is quite harsh. Online dating is no different than what some cultures’ used to do or still do to this day. The difference is rather than a matchmaker of the town, the matchmaker is now the application or site and you decide what you put out or accept.

The stigma behind online dating in the west has decreased and more people are open to it. Many of my friends have met their significant others through some online source. However, this isn’t the case back home. There’s more that goes into it than just comfort level with putting your information out though, it’s a big net of culture, religion, society, tradition and others in between. In fact, because of these things you’ll find that most of these platforms are actually blocked by the government and the only way to access it is with a VPN. Dating just isn’t a publicized thing; many date secretly and may suffer consequences within the family if outed.

However, there are still people who do use online services. The users, especially the females, tend to lie about most things. *Name?* Fake. *Age?* **Fake.** *Pictures?* ***Fake.*** The examples Christian Rudder (2010) gives for popular lies on OkCupid seem so benign in comparison.

:::info
Above are some examples of accounts on Facebook made for the purpose of online dating.
:::

With all these lies though, these accounts still receive a lot of messages. I don't see someone back home doing what Chris McKinlay did because it would be faster and easier to just DM someone on instagram (Poulsen, 2014). Although with this discussion of online dating comes the discussion of racism. From my understanding of Rudder (2009), it seems as people have underlying biases on who they want in a significant other. In a way, being with a white male may make your life a whole lot simpler as WOC than if you were with a black man. Society gives leeway and privileges to white men that they did not ask for but they receive.

It would be interesting to see but hard to calculate the data for colorism in online dating. How are light-skin black women compared to dark-skin black women? What do mixed race people have listed on their bio and how does it correlate to their replies?

### Nov 09 Fri - Breakup
I always get a little upset whenever I see someone change their relationship status to single. I feel like I’ve been left on a cliffhanger; I’ve been here since the start, I want to know the end.

With anything online, there are messages and there are meanings. This is a problem many people deal with. For instance, I like a poet named Lang Leav. I often posted her poems on my twitter. I lost count of the number of messages from friends who’d ask me ‘who’s your new boy?’, or ‘why are you sad?’. With online messages, you lose interfaces that interject the messages to sculpt it into the meanings you intend. You lose a smirk of sarcasm. You lose a snicker of a joke. You lose tone changes of excitement. Thus, you rely heavily on accenting your wording with extra letters, writing in all caps, or using emojis, memes, gifs.



Moreover, I’ve seen friends go through an intense Facebook Stalking stage to find out everything about someone they liked before talking to them. Facebook stalking is creepy, but it intrigues me because of how opposite it is from actual stalking. Gershon (2010) says that Facebook stalking’s intent is to be, “Invisible to the person stalked.” Stalking is terrifying. Facebook stalking is creepy but acceptable. Stalkers make their victims know that they’re being stalked and terrorize them. Facebook stalkers would be mortified to accidentally like a recent post.

I’ve seen a range of online breakups. There are cordial breakups, with a response to a status change of “different outlooks and we wish the other the best". And messy breakups where there have been acts of retaliation for being dumped; for example, [Rob Kardashian’s revenge porn of Blac Chyna. ](https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/rob-kardashian-revenge-porn-allegations-a-headache-for-instagram-twitter-1202487945/)

It would be interesting to investigate the emotional manipulation being done by posting lyrics after a breakup to the ex and their friends. I find it can be abusive behavior that keeps a potentially physically, mentally and emotionally abusive relationship alive. How much of post-breakup behavior is enough and when is it toxic and a sign of abuse?

### Nov 13 Tue - Algorithmic Discrimination
Let me just start by saying that any woman of color knows the struggle of adding ‘for brown/black/colored’ to their searches. Anything from stockings to examples of prominent figures will need to have an extra phrase to specify non-white. And even then, there's going to be white models in the search results.

I don't buy the whole ‘this is way society searches’ spiel because, personally, my society is not white, yet the results are still predominantly white. For example, I search incognito on the Google Oman browser for hands and block the location.

One commenter on Rutherford and White’s article says,

~ *“Google is made and run in the US The US is 78% white people[...]. The US is the largest English speaking country in the world and since you are typing in English you will obviously get images from the US. The US is not a black country, it's a white country and if you can't respect that and live with it then YOU are the racists.”*

Let's unpack this mess. While Google is US made and run, Google is not known as a US brand, but rather a global brand. People don't correlate Google with America just like people don't correlate McDonald's with America. And while America is the largest speaking English country, as a result of its globalization Google should take in countries in which English speakers are prominent like the second largest English speaking country, India. Thus, based on the conclusion the commenter made, while the majority of searches could be originated in the US, there should be an equal distribution of white people to black and brown people (combining both the black Americans and Indians).

Also, let’s say I don’t type in English, and say I were to use Google Oman. If I were to search for Women in Arabic, the majority of the results will give me light skin women. While there are Arabian women who are light skin, there are also dark skin Arabian women. Should I just respect that Oman is all light skin women (it is not) and I am just being racist then?

Now, we’ve seen the Google company stand up for diversity, but there is an issue here with their algorithms that need to be fixed. You can’t stand for diversity yet organize black people in the category gorillas.

### Nov 27 Tue - Shaped
My friend once said that everyone who posts their selfies on social media was a narcissist who is desperate for attention. Meanwhile, I had just posted a selfie on my Twitter. I love when my friends drag me.

I don’t think that by posting a selfie you are necessarily 100% narcissistic but then again why does that matter? In the current day and age, I feel as though everyone is a tad bit narcissistic. Everyone went through a phase of posting their food on Instagram or tweeting about going to get coffee. Through this, there's an subconscious pretense of self-importance when other tend to like and comment on these post as if it were some revolutionary thing. Today, people post selfies or just regular pictures of themselves on a vacation or what have you. I think everyone is subconsciously a bit narcissistic in that way.
I see the problem with social media and self-perception and self-confidence or self-esteem. I definitely see more and more women striving to look like celebrities like [Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner.](https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/meet-the-kim-kardashian-clones-taking-over-instagram/)

At first, we saw Kylie trying to hide the fact that she was using filler and surgery as a way to ‘beautify’ herself and stated that it was all makeup. I think at the time (and even currently albeit it has lessened a tad) the stigma around plastic surgery was quite harsh, and I believe that’s why she hid it then. Through this, though we saw the rise of stupid challenges, like the Kylie Lip Challenge, to try to achieve the look in a ‘cheaper’ cost.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a6fSAiysGxQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This video is by one of my favorite beauty Youtubers who shows the dangers of the Kylie Lip Challenge in a humourous and slightly gory way. *(Slightly graphic but it's all fake!)*

When almost every platform you enter constantly shoves down certain celebrities, with certain features and certain body types, it’s quite easy for your self-esteem to decrease and your self-perception to morph into a negative thing that needs to be changed.