(I wanted to create this photo using window writers on a mirror for this mirror selfie originally, but I haven’t been able to get out and buy the markers now :P I thought it might be interesting to bring something more concrete to the digital medium of the selfie with the physical writing. On the bright side, doing it using technology certainly fits into the Digital Lives theme!)
I got pretty attached to this blog over the course of the semester, so here’s a bit more of my presence through a selfie and some final reflections on the class, the final paper, and just life in general right now.
Another day another meme, this time inspired by Courtney Rivard’s “Archiving Disaster and National Identity in the Digital Realm.” I thought the galaxy brain meme would be the best way of summing up my main takeaways from the text and my frustrations with the reactions to the archives that Rivard explains--especially because it’s often used to mock corporations or powerful institutions and the ridiculous ways they manipulate language to cover up or excuse their actions.
I was focused on Rivard’s excellent analysis of the HDMB’s “failure” because of it’s low quantity of materials, and how this labelling reveals America’s institutional racism and classism. This revelation by Rivard is the smallest brain, disregarded by America’s nationalist cultural memory, which instead uses the failure label and “increases” its brain. I then focused my last two points on the September 11 Digital Archive, which was considered a success only because of the quantity of responses, not the quality--which includes the violent and racist imagery Rivard discusses, referred to as “digital folk art.” This had to be my ultimate galaxy brain, because I almost laughed out loud (bitterly) while reading the text when the horrific imagery was described in this incredibly soft, poetic way.
Rivard, Courtney. “Archiving Disaster and National Identity in the Digital Realm.” Identity Technologies, ed. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak, University of Wisconsin Press, 2014, pp. 132-143.
I’m not sure if my avatar is easily recognizable, so a bit of an explanation: I based it off of the character Cookie’s glasses from the show Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide. If you haven’t ever seen the show I highly recommend it (although I haven’t watched it in years--hopefully it still holds up). It was a funny show, but what still stands out in my mind are these glasses. This is what I think of when I think of Digital Living; there have been many times when I wished I had these glasses- to take photos of exactly what I’m seeing, or to look something up online like Cookie does in the show (I definitely couldn’t do all the tech-y, hacking stuff he manages, but I still think the glasses are pretty cool). It’s interesting to think about the (less than successful) Snapchat “Spectacles” or Google “Glass” that try to integrate modern technology completely into our everyday lives through our vision, just like Cookie uses his glasses. Although this technology didn’t exactly catch up to the fantasy created by the show, our world is constantly evolving to bring the digital to the “IRL;” we can debate whether this is good or bad, but it’s certainly not black and white and it seems like there’s no going back as our lives become increasingly more digital.
Some feel that such censorship is merely the result of an unreliable algorithm — but others allege that the platform specifically targets marginalized bodies
For my final project I’m looking at Instagram through a positive lens, appreciating the ways it has helped me as an individual. However, Instagram as we know is far from perfect. I wanted to keep in mind the issues that haunt LGBTQ+ users, particularly censorship. This article explains a few case studies very well, and can be connected to a history of LGBTQ+ erasure from public life—as referenced in Cho’s text, for example. Cho however discusses the Internet (and Tumblr specifically) as a private space where queer identities can be explored and expressed, rather than the public and censored space platforms like Instagram and Tumblr are transforming into. This is definitely something to take into consideration for my paper, especially considering my own privacy surrounding my gender non-conforming identity; it’s easier for me to forget about censorship because of many privileges I hold, including the privilege to pass within the gender binary.
(Cho, Alexander. “Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time.” Networked Affect, ed. Susanna Paasonen et al., MIT Press, 2015, pp. 43-57.)
On a happier note I also found a neat looking website thanks to this article. Salty is “a newsletter and digital publication aimed at women, transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people.” Check it out if you’re interested!
https://saltyworld.net
And one last thing— the article respects the founder of Salty’s wishes to be referred to only as “Claire F.” because of a history of online harassment. I was happy to see Rolling Stone include the identification of this issue in their article, and abide by the solution proposed by the affected party.
I screenshotted this post on Instagram on March 8th- another Instagram post that’s a screenshot of a Tumblr post. But it’s a post that, first of all made me laugh so I hope it makes someone else laugh too (I appreciate poking fun at rigid gender roles and expectations since I don’t particularly fit into any of those, or want to, and I love a bit of wordplay). Second though it’s a post that was recommended to me “based on posts [I] saved,” saved meaning saved to a private collection so I can find/view the post again. Instagram is processing what I save, even if I don’t do the action of “liking,” and recognizing it as something I’m interested in to show me more content of. You can definitely view this in different ways, but I personally see it as a positive in this scenario, where I haven’t delved deeply into LGBTQ+ communities yet but I still have a small, personal space where my identity and interests are being recognized and reflected back to me.
I realized recently that the platform I’m using to communicate with someone changes the way I talk to them. I was texting someone I had just met, and text messages to me have a very permanent quality- you send the message, and it’s there for good, you (or the other person- or anyone the other person might show) can go back to that message forever and read it again. Even with people I trust completely and I feel comfortable saying anything to, I’m aware when I’m texting them that someone could be reading over their shoulder or their phone could end up in the hands of someone else, and that text could be seen by anyone. To a certain extent, at least; I know that’s a bit extreme.
BUT I’ve been thinking more about that because I started to use snapchat instead of texting this new friend, and it transformed the way I was communicating almost instantly. Snapchat is by design ephemeral; it was built on the idea that the photos, and later messages, would disappear. True, people can still screenshot on the app, but they’ve built in a constraint by notifying a user when someone screenshots their photo or message. Although there are times I wish conversations could be saved- and Snapchat has an affordance for that, with options to keep conversations on the app for 24 hours or permanently- the basic premise of impermanence is something I found very freeing. I found myself writing and texting the way that I speak, which then helps develop relationships built through communication online in ways similar to relationships built in person, or through a combination of the two.
That took me down a bit of a linguistics rabbit hole thinking about the ways I talk and how I communicate that through written text, but that’s something for another post. I’m sure everyone has different experiences with communication on different platforms, but that’s been mine :)
I came across this article after reading Jessie Daniels’ “The Trouble with White Feminism.” Although the article isn’t explicitly looking at white feminism in activism, it is interesting to think about Ariana Grande as someone who “cares about world issues” as the article claims, in conjunction with her identity that has been built on appropriation and blackfishing. In the same way White feminists like Eve Ensler erase the work of especially Black and Indigenous activists, Ariana Grande is problematically claiming the work and culture of Black and Latinx artists as though it is hers to take and perform.
Daniels, Jessie. “The Trouble with White Feminism.” The Intersectional Internet, ed. Safiya Umoja Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes, Peter Lang, 2016, pp. 41-60.
I found this Tumblr post while scrolling on Instagram (there’s something to be said there about platforms and interconnectivity I’m sure), and it reminded me of our discussion of adulthood in class. I thought about how I viewed myself in the February 4 freewrite we did, reflecting on how now at age 21, after working in a professional workplace (with booth “adults” and “kids”) for 4 years, going through university and living on my own or taking care of myself, I’m starting to feel more like an adult. I landed on maybe certain life experiences are the answer to who is an adult? If we’re going off of this list for the supreme adult, I’m not quite there yet- but I’d say I’m somewhere around 4/7. I’ll have to keep working on it :P
I’m studying the graphic novel Shoplifter, by Michael Cho, for another seminar and the topic of public/private circles came up in discussion around this page. I think it connects strongly to Chun’s ideas about how boundaries between the public and private are becoming ever more confused and blurred through the Internet (among other things), and the corruption of the domestic is the starting point (Chun 11-12). Here we see the main character, Corinna, through a window as outsiders looking into her domestic space, before we enter her home and are able to look over her shoulder at her screen where she’s looking up the website of a potential love interest. We the readers invade her private space literally through the window, but at the same time her private space is invaded by the Internet and all of its ties to the outside, public world.
Cho, Michael. Shoplifter. Pantheon Books, 2014.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “Introduction.” Updating to Remain the Same, MIT Press, 2017, pp. 1-19.
This is only remotely funny if you’ve seen the Netflix show YOU, and honestly even then it might be a stretch...but I couldn’t get this out of my head while reading Chun’s description of the “singular yet plural YOU” that is created by that networks produce (pg. 3).
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. “Introduction.” Updating to Remain the Same, MIT Press, 2017, pp. 1-19.
Sorapure quotes someone describing an examination of online diaries as “‘an archaeological study, bearing witness to a world that has disappeared’” (267). This is exactly how it feels to be reading articles that highlight Facebook as a new or relevant social media site, which today goes largely unused by Millennials and Gen Z. It made me think of this meme, although there’s something like irony in using a Twitter formatted meme to highlight how outdated Facebook is, when the slow/outdated user is using Twitter 🤔
Sorapure, Madeleine. "Autobiography Scholarship 2.0?: Understanding New Forms of Online Life Writing." Biography, vol. 38 no. 2, 2015, p. 267-272. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/bio.2015.0011.
I don’t actually want to mock Seymour’s quote, but it made me think of this meme that has such a clear voice just from the combination of image and lettering 🍍[insert sponge emoji here?]
Seymour, Richard. “We Are All Connected.” The Twittering Machine, The Indigo Press, 2019, pp. 21-43.
