Language and New Media

[caramesm-blog]

Internet Persona

Every year we seem to spend more amd more time on the internet and so on social media. And every year we expend our social media circle, we add newly-met people on Facebook, follow more people om Twitter or discover new Youtubers and Instagram accounts. Yet in the middle of this social media bubble we are both creators and receivers of “illusory identity”.

We, social media users, “edit” ourselves in a specific way in order to appear as something that we aren’t or to exaggerate something we are, it goes both ways. It doesn’t need to be truthful, it only needs to look like it. In 2015 the Telegraph published this article showing the long and tedious  process of forging your own online identity is. It is very damaging, both for the creator and the viewer. The pressure they place on themselves to look and have the perfect shot is both physically and mentally tirying. On the flip side, the internet give its users the illusion of being close to one another, that anyone can be Instagram famous, that they know the people they admire. But, it’s not the case, and this illusory proximity is important because it has the power to influence people. In both good and bad ways. 

If we need to remember one thing is: never to judge a book by it’s cover, in this case someone’s social media. 

[samtyrrell-blog1]

I think one of the most ironic parts of social media is how it makes us feel like we’re close to others, when in reality, we couldn’t be further away. You could talk to somebody for years online, without ever meeting them in public, and think you know everything about Julia from England, when in actual fact, you’ve been talking to Dave from America this whole time, forming a bond with a fake identity. I really like the point you’ve made about editing ourselves online, as it makes you think about how easy it can be to formulate a completely different personality. Now obviously, we can think of hundreds of different negative outcomes around this fact; from people ‘Cat fishing’ others to gain a relationship or some other desires, to people committing fraudulent acts and ruining someone else’s life. But I feel like there can be some positives drawn from this. The idea of creating a new identity can allow a person who is having a tough time struggling with reality, to escape everything and be in a peaceful, happy place where they don’t need to worry for a while. Would you say this idea of formulating a different persona to reality, has a positive or negative effect on us as a society?

[hexall3-blog]

Is Instagram a distorted mirror?

What if I told you that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful? (4%!! ) And what would you answer if I were to ask you what was to blame for such a low percentage? Do you reckon you would say social media? Dove would say yes.

Dove has started a new campaign telling people ‘you are more beautiful than you think’. The aim of their self esteem project is to change beauty into a source of confidence rather than anxiety. Their mission is to ensure the next generation grows up enjoying a positive relationship with the way they look without social media interfering. They spoke to a group of teenagers and asked them what they love and hate about social networking. They said that they wouldn’t upload Selfies to Instagram without adding a filter or photo-shopping themselves to appear skinnier or more tanned. so what are they even uploading? by the time the photo reaches Instagram it probably doesn’t look anything like them.

 Social media offers an edited version of reality. A persons’ online profile is a distorted view of what they look like in reality. No one posts their fat pictures or their bad hair days. Why would you if you can get away with presenting a more flawless you? Self esteem is crashing and Instagram is to blame. 

[samtyrrell-blog1]

I totally agree with the idea that social media offers an edited version of reality. It’s so common to see supermodels and celebrities posting out of this world pictures, that have taken about a day to create. There’s no doubt some kind of Photoshop goes into making it perfect after the picture is taken, let alone the amount of ‘editing’ that goes into themselves when they apply £1000 worth of makeup beforehand. I think as the next generation of people are finding their feet in such a social world, it’s important to remember that no matter how good someone looks online, it’s never a completely true representation of how they look in real life. Do you think that if people started posting more of the bad hair days and the fat pictures, it would make that much of a difference to our self-esteem? Or are we, in this technological age, already too shallow to actually make a difference?

[cezblogs-blog]

The ‘Like’ Culture

I’m unashamed to admit took me a good year or two on Instagram to realise what the comments ‘L4L’ & ‘LB’ actually meant- and for those still baffled, they’re short for ‘like for like’ and ‘like back’. Any one familiar with the likes of the Kardashian/Jenner sisters will be at least acquainted with these terms, which literally flood the comments section beneath their posts.  

People seek validation from strangers and as much as many may deny it, it has become the norm. But if you wouldn’t care about what a random person on the street thinks of how you look that day, why is a virtual nod of approval so prized?

We all have that one follower that uploads a ‘repost’ because Instagram magically happened to ‘delete’ the original post that wasn’t doing quite as well ‘likes-wise’ as they’d hoped.  People are literally embarrassed to the point of entirely erasing all proof of their lack of ‘likes’. Or, at least giving it another shot- perhaps at a peak time for people to be scrolling through the app. (Trust me, it’s a thing).

Here’s my take on a ‘likencyclopedia’:

'Like my posts too, please’

'This is aesthetically pleasing’

‘You look quite nice, but I’m only really liking it out of social obligation’ 

‘I like the way you look, notice me’  

‘I’m liking this to annoy someone who I know will see it’

[samtyrrell-blog1]

I feel like the saddest thing about this idea of a like culture is how its teaching young people, especially young girls, that its essential in life to be liked and for people to appreciate your physical appearance. This is leading to people going to extreme lengths, and revealing all in an attempt to be appreciated by as many people as possible. Just because one person’s selfie receives 250 likes and another person’s only receives 13, does it actually make the first better than the second? I don’t know whether this is our fault as a society or whether or not celebrities are the biggest culprits in creating this culture. Who would you blame?

[sophh-lou-blog]

Ambiguous silence

This came up on my Instagram feed, and I hope it’s not just me. There are loads of new unwritten rules of politeness for social media, and some people just don’t get it. You wouldn’t let someone to say something in a conversation, go off and do something, then come back and reply to them half an hour later, would you? Thing is, being the young generation that saw the transition of communications to online media, we’ve been making up the rules as we go along. The reason we need rules though, is because of the ambiguity of silence.

So, what can silence mean?

1. They’re annoyed 2. They’re busy 3. They don’t know what to say 4. They left the conversation open by accident or didn’t press send.

All of which leaves us feeling ignored. Rude. We just don’t know if we’re allowed to be annoyed by it or not.

I hope that in the future, we will be instilling our children with rules on using social media, to save each others’ feelings in the way we don’t seem to be able to.

[samtyrrell-blog1]

I feel like this is quite a big issue in the use of social media and instant messaging. A great deal of the time there are rules in talking on line, almost too many rules to be able to follow them all without upsetting someone. For example; there’s the rules of sending ‘x’s’ at the end of the message, there’s the rule of sending emoji’s and what it means if you haven’t sent any. the list goes on. The issue with this is that a lot of the issues that bring about the rules is misunderstanding social cues online.

I like that you mention the possible reasons for someone not replying to a message, it’s like a lottery and you have to try and work out what someone is saying and what they mean online. I hold my hands up, I’m often that person who accidentally ignores a message or opens it and completely forgets it’s been open, but I feel a bit hard done by in that situation. It’s almost socially unacceptable to be busy if someone messages you, and you must drop everything to reply to a message to avoid seeming rude.  It’s crazy what instant messaging will demand of a person.

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[evareyoureading-deactivated2018]

I’m ok vs. I’m ok :)

Anybody ever wondered what exactly your friend means when she texts you in whatsapp: thanks 4 inviting me, was so much fun

Especially after I texted:

What unsettles me is obviously the lack of emojis. If she really enjoyed herself, shouldn’t she add a dancing emoji, a thumbs up or at least a :)? With friends not (over)using emoticons I often have to guess the intended tone as I’m missing contextualisation cues. In face-to-face conversations they’re usually given through the voice, facial expressions and hand/body gestures. So a ‘’was so much fun’’ with a smirk will tell me that my friend did indeed have a good time whereas the same message in whatsapp needs some more interpretive work: it might suggest she either didn’t have fun at all, so the message was meant sarcastically (how rude!) OR at least she wasn’t bored to death and felt obliged to tell me in a polite way (success, I guess…) OR she actually had the best time of her life but just doesn’t use emojis to express emotions (kind of a paradox, isn’t it?). As the recipient of the message I start to worry and rack my brains because there’s no happy emoticon indicating that everything’s fine. Even though emojis don’t really represent our facial expressions (or how many times have you actually cried of laughter when sending that emoji?), they do create similar meaning that convey a certain kind of tone or intonation. So why do some people (over)use emojis (guilty!) while others rarely use them?

[samtyrrell-blog1]

I reckon the over use of emoji’s is purely an attempt to avoid seeming rude, and to avoid any misunderstanding of what you’ve said. Some people don’t use emoji’s just because they can’t be bothered to pick out which face best represents what they’re trying to say! Personally, I’m not one to use emoji’s that often! Just because I don’t really see the point in them, I feel they don’t add too much to what I’ve already said.

The thing with emoji’s is that they’re always up for debate as to what you mean when sending them. In your case, your friend could have replied with 3 smiley faces. Although she’s sent some sort of emoji, there could be some sarcastic undertone or, she could be in a state of not being able to stop smiling. Either way, unless they give a detailed description of every feeling and emotion behind what they say and what emoji’s they use its almost impossible to understand what people mean over text. Emoji’s or no emoji’s, it’s so difficult to gather what someone actually means when texting or using language online, I say we just scrap it altogether and have a nice friendly chat in person.

[samtyrrell-blog1]

The Best Memes of 2017 (So Far)

These are pure gold.

The internet can be such a wonderful place. You could easily come across a piece of pure magic without even meaning to! Whether that be a 13-year-old girl calling a room of adults a “bunch of hoes” and shouting “Cash me ousside how bou dah” or a man falling over and going on a journey through time and space, becoming an extra in the ‘Shooting Stars’ music video, the entertainment is endless! And the best part is that nobody can predict what will be the next hit internet craze.

Memes are all over the place, and have such a great influence on internet users that there are even lists of the year’s best memes(like the link above) But there are quite a few negative impacts that these harmless memes can have…

I’m sure many of the internet veterans among us will easily be able to recognise this guy. This is Gary Broslma, or the Numa Numa guy to you and I. Gary is one of the oldest living memes on the internet thanks to his wonderful rendition of the Numa Numa song. This video has been viewed over 25 million times on YouTube and millions more across other platforms. where we see the internet stardom Gary has been blessed with, being a living walking meme isn’t as easy as you’d think. There was a very negative backlash of this meme for Gary and his family, and where it’s amusing for us to see, it opened his life up to a great deal of abuse at the hands of internet trolls, so much so that he didn’t want to leave his own home.

Although memes are often hilarious and somewhat relatable, it’s important to remember that there is a person inside the meme, and the internet isn’t always the nicest place. Share and enjoy, just remember to know your meme.

[samtyrrell-blog1]

Picture Perfect

Whether or not Instagram, and other similar apps, are a good thing for us as individuals and as a society is a hotly debated topic recently. Most of you will argue that Instagram is making us a shallow race that spends our time; judging others on their appearance, searching for approval online and even swiping left or right depending on how attracted to somebody we are. Shocking statistics show that only 4% of women find themselves beautiful, and many people blame social media for this.

Personally, although I can see the glooming negative impacts that social media can have on a person and their idea of themselves, I think there are a lot of positive things that can be taken from the use of these apps.  I’ll break something down for you; so, Instagram alone has 600 million active monthly users, 300 million of which use the app daily! and between these users over 40 billion pictures have been shared, increasing by around about 95 million per day. And I reckon a huge deal of these pictures are selfies or at least photos of the person posting them. Now I get that we are becoming a great deal more self-conscious about what we post and whether or not our image will be ‘attractive’ enough to gain that like target we all strive for. But these statistics show that our self-image may be questioned but our self-confidence isn’t. Social media has provided such a great platform for people to become more confident in themselves and post pictures showing; body positivity, self-worth, and self-confidence. Regardless of how shallow we may be becoming as a collective society, we are still expressing more and more confidence online.

Your pictures may not be perfect, or live up to that of the Kardashians, but at least you have the bottle to put yourself out there.

[samtyrrell-blog1]

Is Netspeak making us stupid?

The internet is such a wonderful thing. Its, Quick, easy to use and gives us access to everything and anything whenever we need it. When it comes to social media and instant messaging, there’s been an evident progression in how we use language.

In the original days of social media, netspeak was unquestionably the most dominant language online. words like ‘You’, ‘see’ , ‘too’ and ‘are’ didn’t even exist. We’re experts at using and understanding this alien language whenever we were online. This had an extremely negative impact on how we used language in writing, but was a fundamental aspect of communication. 

Years on, and the embarrassment of how we used to speak being a distant memory, we are blessed with inventions such as auto correct and predictive spelling. Although our online language has improved and it’s more acceptable to write a sentence that consists of more than 5 characters, there’s still no change in the negativity of netspeak. People are learning to write in more standard ways yes, but we are becoming lazy when it comes to using and learning language. Recent tests have shown that 1 in 4 people struggle to spell, and use grammar and punctuation correctly. How much do you think is this a result of netspeak? I mean, why would i need to learn how to spell anything when my trusty iPhone will do the job for me?

[samtyrrell-blog1]

Food for thought

In any given situation, if you didn’t get a picture or video of what just happened, did it even happen? Social media has this crazy effect on us and the introduction of apps, like Instagram and Snapchat, have created a new purpose for cameras and phones within society. 

Last week i went for a nice meal with my girlfriend. We sat and chatted whilst we waited for our food, and i couldn’t help but notice another couple in the restaurant who’d just received theirs. Now you’d think they’d be excited to begin and rush straight into chowing down on their long awaited food. This is where you and i are both wrong. The couple almost immediately got out their phones and went through the process of what i can only describe as the longest most detailed photo shoot in the history of the world. Picture after picture was taken from every possible angle, with frustration from both parties at the difficulty of taking the perfect picture of a pizza. I sat there in complete disbelief at what i’d just witnessed and promised myself i’d never let myself become one of these people.

This is a common thing to see in restaurants now a days. The idea that the camera eats first is shared through the majority of cultures and societies, with a picture of your food being an essential part of the whole process of dining out. Regardless of how simple and idiotic the idea of the camera eating first seems, there is some logic behind its purpose, and i suppose if something looks so picture perfect, what’s the harm in taking a picture to brag to your friends about? I might have to start joining in. Maybe the food does taste better after a picture’s been taken! Then again, i reckon it’ll make no difference at all. 

[samtyrrell-blog1]

Alone Together

There is an unbelievable amount of irony in the phrase “social media”. Granted, you can connect with hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button, but communicating through a screen and connecting with someone (without even leaving your bed in the morning) isn’t necessarily a sociable way of life. 

There are two meanings that could be derived from the term social; 

1. relating to society or its organization

2.needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities.

but how much companionship does ‘a like’ bring to you in your time of need? how far does a Facebook group contribute to living in a community?

Social media is a wonderful thing. A thing that allows people to communicate with people that aren’t physically reachable, and allows people to share their lives with the people around them. The sad part however is that social media is becoming an increasingly important part of peoples lives, and is slowly making us more isolated and alone than we ever mean to be. The ease of connecting over a phone or through a screen is as appealing to me as the next person, but if we all just put the phones down and went out there to experience the world together and connected on a more physical level, we’d learn a lot about the world that Wikipedia can’t teach us... 

[samtyrrell-blog1]

Bubble Blowing

The internet is filled with filters, from filters that help personalize your internet experience to filters that stop you coming across something that you didn’t want to see. All of these filters serve a different purpose, and the filters experienced by you would be very different from to the ones used for your best friend or even your parents when they finally discovered what the internet was for. The use of all of these filters when you’re browsing online are not always positive though, and many of the lead to you being trapped in your own little filter bubble. 

Take one of the many deluded trump supporters we ‘happily’ share this earth with. Many of these delightful people have been known to believe the idea that Obama is and has always been a Muslim? crazy i know. Now Imagine this scenario: a trump supporter has gone onto Google to search “is Obama a Muslim?”. They’ve reached the 23rd page on Google and come across an article that claims it is a fact and that the previous president had ties with the Islamic state. Once they have clicked on and read this article, their computer will alter their filters, so that whenever they search for anything related to this topic, they will only see similar articles that spread a similar ideology about Obama. 

This is an example of a filter bubble. The ‘bubble’ will personalize the internet of the searcher, to reinforce their ideologies (regardless of how ridiculous) and distort their idea of reality. I suppose what i’m trying to say to you is that filters are often good, until they trap you into a never ending cycle of stupidity. To avoid it, simply be careful what you search for online, don’t believe everything you read online and most importantly, don’t support Trump. 

[samtyrrell-blog1]

It’s just not working anymore!

Breaking up with a girlfriend or boyfriend is never an easy task. There’s, Deciding what you want to say, where and how you are going to say it and how they will react to name a few aspects that need to be considered. However, with the help of the media, it is now becoming much easier to be the coward that you are and cut all ties with the simple click of a button. There are many ways in which this action can be done, each holding their own affordances and constraints. However, the invention of the mobile phone means we can avoid such messy situations and be free, without the potential embarrassment of doing it in public, or the harsh attack that could come your way.

 Now, being the complete savage that I am. Breaking up with my ex-girlfriend didn’t serve as too much of a difficult situation for me. With the trusty help of my mobile phone and a very long phone call, the deed was done and no more could be said or done about it. Was this the best way I could have done it? Probably not. Were there more moral ways of doing such an act that could have protected her feelings? Probably. 

The quite harsh point I’m trying to make, is that the creation of all this new media provides us with the ability to do things in an easier and more convenient way than if we weren’t to have it. There can’t be many negative points about something that allows us to do so many things at the click of a button, regardless of how shallow and cruel its making us...