On the Hunt For Cool

Social Media & Participatory Culture Fall 2014

[brittanybayne]

Week #13: Anonymity and Transparency

One of the first things that we learned in this class was that what draws people into the internet, is the ability and promise of anonymity. It is seductive in a way that people can be a whole other person, another side of themselves that they cannot be int he real world because not socially acceptable. I understand the lure of anonymity when it comes to social movements these days. The government attacks people who don't abide by their very strict, cookie-cutter rules, and that leads to consequences. It is a war that the government does not quite understand, one that threatens the security that they have built.

When you cross traditional protesting and the internet, something beautiful is born. For example, some of Rutgers' very own marched from the Douglass campus all the way up Rt. 18, creating quite a peaceful disturbance, and made their way to College Ave today. I followed the whole protest online through Twitter, Facebook, and Yik Yak. I didn't even have to leave my bed and I knew what was happening. I began reposting and retweeting and sharing until everyone I knew was flooded with information about the protests. Just the awareness itself is something strong.

I am in no way condoning any of the actions that Anonymous has done. Their intentions, though, good, do not come across that way. But that is the price to pay for anonymity.

https://celebrity.yahoo.com/news/anonymous-threatens-shut-down-iggy-azaleas-usc-concert-010100249.html

[brittanybayne]

Take Me To a Safe Place With Pink Skies and Puppy Dogs

         The last couple of weeks, we have been learning about a couple different topics, but the ones that stood out in my minds were Fans and Amateurs, and Embodiment and Exhaustion. We learned about the Brony phenomenon and Lady GaGa as well as Jenna Marbles and Ryan Higa and their contribution to YouTube and genderization. The Bronies were being taunted and bullied just because of the socialized norms of gender norms in today’s society. Gender norms are socially constructed. Who is to say that something is a “girl’s” thing, or that something is “manly”? It is all based on what society says is acceptable. In Watercutter’s article, “Bronies are Redefining Fandom- And American Manhood,” Watercutter writes that,“the reasons why people enjoy brony fandom are complex, in part because of the gender assumptions surrounding the show and its “intended” audience” (Watercutter). When people go around spitting out ideas about gender that are not “normalized,” people start to get offended and tend to attack what is not normal by society’s standard. For the Bronies, it has been a difficult world to exist in. People are made uncomfortable by things that are not what they are used to. So when a bunch of grown men start enjoying a show about little ponies, which was intended for an audience made up primarily of young girls, there is some backlash to be expected.

The internet is supposed to be a safe place, yet the second that something that is not accepted is brought up, there is immediate rebuttal. Being on the internet should allow the internet user to be anonymous and not judged, the whole reason most people go on the internet. It is important to understand that, “having a safe place in fandom ‘is a fight from that, it’s a retreat to something which is happier, which stresses getting along with others’” (Watercutter). If everyone could stop fighting with each other and arguing about what is “supposed to be,” we could get around these social norms of gender, etc.

    A few weeks ago I attended a Drag Show up at Purchase College in upstate New York. The drag show included males dressing as females and vice versa. There was no stigma of who should be doing what and how one should be acting. It was a melting pot of people who were all there for one reason: to perform and to witness. In this place, it was a safe space of the performers and the audience alike. There were no norms to abide by, even though, interestingly enough, it was sort of a parody, or satire, on the whole gender norms situation. Watercutter explains it best when he mentions that, “identity is a tricky thing, and being a grown man wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt can get you harassed—it’s much easier to find like-minded friends on the internet” (Watercutter). Or in the case of the Drag Show, at a college in Upstate New York. The girls dressed as guys performed stereotypes of how a man should be and the same went to the men dressed as women. Finding a community like the before mentioned is extremely important in today’s society, especially if one expects bullying and isolation to be eliminated.

    This connects with the idea of fandoms. Fandoms come about when fans feel some sort of connection with an artist or a celebrity. In Click, Lee, and Holladay’s article titled, “Making Monsters: Lady GaGa, Fan Identification, and Social Media,” Click, Lee and Holladay discuss the idea of how fandoms come about and how “imaginary relationships with media figures, including celebrities, are encouraged by the media industries, which “lavish considerable effort on techniques that not only invite but virtually force this kind of identification’” (Click, Lee, Holladay). Not unlike the Bronies fandom, the Little Monsters feel an attachment towards Lady GaGa because of the message that she exudes. Lady GaGa is all about loving each other and being free and feeling comfortable in your own skin. So why is it that these fans who cling to the mere idea of Lady GaGa cannot be comfortable in the real world and most reside in this imaginary society? It all goes back to gender norms.

    So whether you are a Brony or a Little Monster, or something similar to that nature, it should not, in the end, matter who you are. The fine line of gender roles needs to be blurred around the edges. Fandoms are created in order to establish a safe place for the fans and to create a world and a community that can share ideas concerning the beliefs and ideals that the fandoms create. It should not matter whether or not the fan is gay, straight, bi-sexual, white, black, yellow, green, blue, or a male or a female. It is what that fan has to bring to the table and what they have to offer as a fan that makes all the difference.

Works Cited:

Lindsey Wotanis & Laurie McMillan (2014): Performing Gender on YouTube, Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2014.882373

Melissa A. Click , Hyunji Lee & Holly Willson Holladay (2013) Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media, Popular Music and Society, 36:3, 360-379, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2013.798546

Watercutter, A. (2014, March 11). Bronies are Redifining Fandom- And American Manhood. Retrieved November 25, 2014, from http://www.wired.com/

[brittanybayne]

Week #12

This week in class we learned about Social Movements through social media. Social media has elevated social movements to a whole new level. Back in the day, to stage a protest or a revolt of some sort, one had to hear about it by word of mouth, thus limiting the number of people the message and details reached. Today, via the help of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, messages, information and details can be employed all around the world in less than a second. The more people that use these sort of networks, the more helpful and successful they become.

When the people in charge try to shut down these protests and riots, they fail because they cannot fully understand the power of social media. If they shut down the source that the people are communicating through, such as Twitter or Facebook, they are only forcing the people to go out and explore and find out what is happening for themselves. There is no way to win, and that is where the people have the upper hand. With numbers on their side and the curiosity and the rapid spread of information via social movement, allows the people to take the power away from the original holders and allows them to take over.

The revolution in Egypt is a prime example of the power of social media in social movements but was it all worth it?

http://www.theonion.com/video/year-in-review-revolution-in-egypt-either-courageo,26840/

[brittanybayne]

Week #11

In today's society, the internet opens up a whole new world for tolerance and acceptance; which is exactly what the My Little Pony goal is to come across as. Regular people and fans are taking things such as TV shows or celebrities and using them as outlets of expression and security. Celebrities such as Beyonce, Demi Lovato, and Taylor Swift. These celebrities have followings and each represent something a little different. Beyonce's followers are all about women empowerment and strength and independence and striving to be strong and successful (and to look good doing it, to boot). Demi's followers are all about loving their inner and outer selves and about promoting confidence and self-worth. These fandoms help the followers open up in a safe place and sort of escape from the real world that is not so accepting.

Although, there are some fandoms, like the Bronies phenomenon, that are not as widely accepted. Bronies challenge social stereotypes and go against everyday gender norms. So the safe space that they created is somewhat marred or tarnished with this backlash. Fans create communities that help them gush and grow over their center, which can be My Little Pony or someone like Beyonce. It is the feeling of acceptance and the magic of friendship that keep sthe fandom alive when they can't find that feeling in the outside world.

Here is a reaction to Bronies (enjoy!)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tannerc/teens-react-to-my-little-ponybronies-a2b

[brittanybayne]

Week 10

This week we talked about gaming. There are many issues in today's world that deal with gaming such as the treatment of women in video games and how they're portrayed online. The recent scandal of #GamerGate has brought in a flood of rantings about how women are not treated equal in video games & that the ethics in gaming journalism are quite questionable. Are there really such things as ethics when it comes to video games, period? In GTA (Grand Theft Auto) a gamer can go to a strip club and rob a prostitute, then kill her. People go around killing whoever they want whenever they want, and can blow things up without consequences. Is the gamer world a man's world? I believe that women should be able to get on their console and play whatever game they want and not have to be subjected to watching prostitutes being beaten up or seeing women objectified and slapped into thigh highs and bras with some nice booty shorts to top it off. Women should be portrayed as strong individuals who can kick ass as much as the next male gamer. Gender should not play a role in gaming. I shouldn't feel like I'm good at a game, "for a girl." I should feel like I'm good at a game because my kills are through the roof. Darn right the ethics in gaming are questionable, but why throw the blame on women? http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/08/22/the-truth-about-video-game-journalism/

[brittanybayne]

Week 8

Labor has changed from outside work to in the office. Labor is no longer a physical thing, but something digital, of the internet. Some types of digital labor include, P2P Marketing, user-generated content made by fans, producing information-data, and self-branding. The internet is now our playground where people can transmit information and give off the persona that they want people to think of them. Labor could be free and unpaid where social rewards meet work. My roommate has a job where she is a rep for a website and she has to recruit her peers to sign up for the website. Boom p2p marketing. It is all over college and she gets paid based on how many people she gets.

Here is her link!

www.thecampusjob.com/refer/laurenm

[brittanybayne]

Micro-Celebrity or Obsessed?

             During the third week of class we discussed the topic of celebrity in social media. Since then, I have been applying the idea of impression management and Marwick & Boyd’s idea of micro-celebrity while using social media, especially Twitter.  Impression Management is defined by Goffman as, “adjusting to perceptions of audience judgement.” When people are online, they can be whoever they want to be with the choice of anonymity. Some people who cannot truly be who they want to be in person, can be that person online because that person is safe behind a computer screen in the comfort of their own home. I met a friend at my first day at Rutgers and like what is common these days, we exchanged our numbers, instagrams, facebooks, twitters, and tumblrs. When I looked at this new friend’s instagram account later on, I saw that he was getting hundreds of likes on all his photos and that he had thousands of followers. I wondered how someone just as ordinary as me could get so many likes and followers and be such a “micro-celebrity” on social media. It turns out that he was using special tags that attracted random followers and generated likes. It seems today that everything is all about the likes and becoming widely recognized and well-known; for only tweeting average-Joe tweet and normal everyday pictures.

          People want to be seen in a certain light, and social media is the perfect setting for such. I would like to briefly mention Sarachan’s ideas of studium and punctum. Studium refers to the “description of the picture” (Sarachan p. 52), and punctum refers to “what strikes you about the photo at first glance” (Sarachan p. 52). Social media users can use these two ideas to create and develop the perfect profile picture. The user can be seen how they want to be seen and the viewer of the photo, in addition, gets to see the best side of the person, like an art showcase.

          In regards to micro-celebrity, Marwick & Boyd define it as, “a mindset and set of practices in which audience is viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others” (M&B p. 140). If you put the two together, you have today’s social media society.

         Personally, I have never tweeted at celebrities or participated in scams to get a celebrity or a famous person to favorite a tweet. I am not interested in celebrities’ lives that much. But I have met die-hard fans in college who obsessively tweet at and try to get celebrities to reply to their tweets.  A friend of mine has tweeted celebrities such as Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, and Selena Gomez hundreds of times just so that he could get a simple response acknowledging the tweet and, in turn, his presence. Marwick & Boyd mention the idea that, “the performance of celebrities interacting with no thought of fans, press, or managers on Twitter is actually managed interaction that creates the perception of intimacy” (M&B p. 152). Decades ago before the whole internet became what it is today, people valued and watched celebrities from afar. They were, for the most part, untouchable. Now, celebrities can use social media to connect with their fans. Marwick & Boyd write that, “part of the appeal of Twitter, as we will discuss, is the perception of direct access to a famous person, particularly ‘insider’ information, first-person pictures, and opinionated statements” (M&B 142). Even if it’s not the celebrities, persay, it is their social  media gurus and PR agents who are replying and favoriting tweets and tweeting personal things, fans can feel an intimate connection with the celebrity.

          I am aware that here are many arguments surrounding whether or not the internet and social media trying to ruin our connections and makes us feel alone even when we’re all together in the same room. I believe that although some people go to extremes and end up becoming obsessed with celebrities and social media and getting that one person to notice them or their tweet or their instagram post, and that more often than not, people soon morph into who they are on social media, we are more connected to each other than ever before. Are there things that we may have to sacrifice? Will certain things that were not even thought about and imagined become norms? Quite possibly. It is hard to decipher whether or not social media can open up today’s members of society to a new word of self-expression to eventually create a society that accepts all, or whether we will become more obsessed and isolated from each other in person. But at the moment, tweeting Justin Bieber about how much you love his pelvic thrusts and smolders in his new video cannot do much damage on the world, can it?

Works Cited

Sarachan, J. (2010). 5. In Profile Picture, Right Here, Right Now.

Marwick, A., & Boyd, D. (2010). To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter. In Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (p. 21). Sage Publications.

[brittanybayne]

Week 7

"Black Tags" on Twitter have become somewhat of a phenomenon during the last year or so. Black tags have segregated the online world that, in the beginning, was a place where everyone could post what was on their mind without the threat of racial stereotyping. Now, everything is labeled and neatly filed into categories, now including race. What will happen to society if social media starts segregating races and forming stigmas and stereotypes that may or may not be true? Children growing up in this age rely on social media to learn social cues. They will be subject to that of what they learn on "Black Twitter," forever memorializing these stereotypes as social norms.

Here is an article explaining "The Secret Power of Black Twitter;" a more positive outlook

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shani/the-secret-power-of-black-twitter#3pt7op2

[brittanybayne]

Week #6

This week we discussed gender and sexting in today's media. I can imagine that the appeal of sexting on the internet, where no one knows how you are or, in fact, anything about you. The anonymity is what, I think, draws people in. Except, of course, when it comes to celebrities. Recently there has been an onslaught of nudes released of female celebrities. (Subtly named as the "Fappening") Why must the nudes leaked be of females, and not males? In today's culture, females have been seen as gaining power through their sexuality, using their bodies, and nudes, as a way to hold power. But when these photos are released without consent, is it disempowering? I'm sure if you asked Jennifer Lawrence or Vanessa Hudgens, they would not disagree with the notion that releasing nudes, that once made a woman feel powerful, without consent can be a major blow to a woman's stance of authority and superiority.

In case you haven't heard about the mass release of celebrity nudes, here's an article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/20/the-fappening-continues-nudes-of-kim-kardashian-mary-kate-olsen-and-more-celebs-leak-online.html

[brittanybayne]

Week #4

In today's society, it is not traditionally defined on how to make friends. Some people are more comfortable being themselves behind a computer screen. How is friendship defined? How is it created? It seems to me that friendships can be successful as long as the people involved have some kind of common ground. Although there is no physical contact, there is a mental and emotional connection. As long as you sustain that connection, that friendship can last for eternity. http://www.buzzfeed.com/ailbhemalone/stages-of-making-friends-on-twitter

[brittanybayne]

Week 3

A popular segment on Jimmy Kimmel is "Celebrities Read Mean Tweets." In case you have never seen the segment, or haven't heard about it, it is basically celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves written by random tweeters. This is a perfect example of celebrities' increasing popularity and presence in social media. Us non-celebrities are tweeting these negative things about celebrities, thinking that they will never see, or acknowledge the tweet. Wrong. This segment shows that there is someone out there reading our ridiculous tweets. Not only are the tweets reaching someone high up in the celebrity world, the celebrities are now reading the tweets out loud on national television! This makes our relationship with celebrities seem personal, since we are "hurting" and "affecting" them with our harsh tweets. And on top of that, when our tweet pops up on screen, we become sort of micro-celebrities. We are being acknowledged as "fans" and it is being broadcasted. What's next?Celebrity-Tweeter debates?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imW392e6XR0

[brittanybayne]

Week 2

Recently in the news, there has been talk about Ray rice’s wife’s recent post on Instagram defending her husband on the incident that occurred last january wherein Rice knocked her out in an elevator. This post has sparked outrage and has even developed its own hashtag on the topic of Domestic Abuse, #WhyIStayed. We have become spectators int he lives of others. From this very private, personal event, came backlash and protest on the topic of Domestic Abuse. We have watched this couples’ life fall apart as Ray Rice has been suspended indefinitely, and his wife choosing to stay in an abusive relationship. We are all watching this from the comfort of our own home, the personal lives of celebrities. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/ray-rice-abuse-video-sparks-powerful-twitter-hashtag