#analyticalresponse2

[williamsbrandan]

Little Monsters: Lady Gaga's Fandom & Use of Gender (Analytical Response 2)

Today, social media has become a simple way of keeping up with what anyone and everyone is doing in their lives.  With the incredible amount of information available at ones fingertips, it is as if no one has any secrets.  Social media users make their presence known to keep their audiences coming back for more.  When we like what we see, we will in fact keep going back for more.  If we do not like what we see or if there is nothing to see, we have the power to ignore the user.  When a social media user garners a substantial number of faithful followers who emulate the traits and/or values of said user, this user has generated a fandom.  These fandoms can bring together people of all different backgrounds and demographics, but they all share one common interest; the social media user or phenomena of the fandom.  One of the fandoms I am most familiar with is Lady Gaga’s Little Monster fandom.  Gaga’s messages of acceptance and equality are the greatest traits she uses to keep her fandom alive.  Also notable about her fandom is the way she uses gender as a means of performance.  For this analysis, I will be looking at her fandom and her use of gender as a performance to support her fandom.

            Lady Gaga was at one time the biggest name in the music industry.  While her mainstream popularity has slightly decreased at this time due to her transition from pop to jazz, the effects she has had on society will never be forgotten.  She was very outlandish and unique, and that attracted the attention of almost the entire world.  Whether you agreed with her bizarre antics or not, you knew about her and everything she was doing.  Nearly every social media outlet in the world made sure of that.  I liked the show she put on and then started to follow her more.  I was sucked in by the catchy beats and all of the glitz and glamour, but what kept myself and other fans coming back was her message.  The message was simple: don’t let anyone stop you from being yourself because you are perfect.  The message was simple enough, but Lady Gaga also lived out that message, which was very appealing to me.

However, merely liking Lady Gaga did not make someone a Little Monster.  Click, Lee, & Holladay (2013) explain that “Lady Gaga fans are primarily interested in Gaga’s music, while Little Monsters explore all aspects of Gaga’s persona” (p. 368).  Little Monsters took Gaga’s message and truly embraced themselves and lived out her messages rather than just taking in her message, referring to Gaga as Mother Monster.  While Gaga’s message was relevant to basically anyone and everyone, Gaga’s biggest impact was on the LGBT community.  This was primarily because this community was (and still is) the target of bullying and oppression.  Her music told the community that we were not alone and that we had the power to rise up and fight the oppressors.  While there is still a long way to go, Gaga helped pave the way for many of the opportunities and privileges we now have.  Personally, I am a fan of her music, but I am not sure I can consider myself a Little Monster.  I believe I her message and I do live my life the way I want to, but I never praised Mother Monster the way other fans did.  I praised Gaga herself.

            Lady Gaga also uses gender in a way to keep her fans coming back.  She was, at one time, one of the biggest social media users in the world, sharing on Facebook as well as tweeting on Twitter about social justice issues and taking a stand.  In this way, Gaga could be considered a hashtag feminist.  This meant a great deal to me because I had found someone who had the same beliefs that I did, but did not hesitate to speak up like I did at one point.  Dixon (2014) says that “The loyalty structure of Twitter… is generated by retweeting a statement of justice and political demand regarding race, class, and gender…” (p. 37).  Gaga was known for this and it made her one of the most followed celebrities on the internet.  I started following her more often after learning about her activism in this way as well and also started liking her as much as her music.

            Lady Gaga was, and in some ways, despite her dormancy at the moment, the most fascinating performer in the music industry.  Her messages and actions have influenced not only her loyal fans, but other musicians.  More and more musicians are taking political stands in their songs that emulate Gaga’s style.  They are also utilizing social media to the fullest extent in the way that Gaga does.  As for myself, I am taking in their social media as well as their music and loving every minute of it.

Works Cited

Click, M., Lee, H., & Holladay, H. (2013). Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media. Popular Music and Society, 360-379.

Dixon, K. (2014). Feminist Online Identity: Analyzing the Presence of Hashtag Feminism. 34-40.

[bianca-horan123]

Did Kim break the internet, or something else?

The recent release of Paper magazine’s latest cover starring Kim Kardashian, and its attempt to “break the internet,” received a lot of attention and backlash that I witnessed firsthand on Facebook and Twitter. The entire situation made me think about the idea of fan identification as discussed by Click, Lee & Holladay in their article, and also the problem with rape culture as discussed by Rentschler. While people who were already haters of Kim Kardashian used this photo as a prime opportunity to bash on her more than usual, what I found most interesting was the range of reactions from her devoted fans. Typically, fans will always stay behind and support whatever the celebrity does, but in controversial situations like this there can be a divide, even among fans. Click, Lee & Holladay believe it is because, “fans bring their own meanings to fan objects…to service their own self-reflection, that [the fan objects] gain the ability to profoundly shape the fan” (363). So in terms of the explicit Kim K photo, fans brought different meanings and interpretations to it depending on their own beliefs and values. On one end of the spectrum, I saw several Tweets from my friends that supported Kim’s bold move and applauded her for embracing her womanly figure and sexuality. On the other end, I saw comments that expressed feeling personally upset and offended by the photo, saying that they looked up to her as a role model and what she did was inappropriate, especially since she’s a mother now. On further investigation of the mix of reactions, I noticed that most of the support came from single, young women and men, while the disapproving comments came from older women, women in relationships, or mothers. This shows how fans bring their own values into their “relationships” with celebrities, and their interpretations of celebrity actions are taken very seriously because devoted fans, “incorporate the media figure’s values and plans into their own attitudes and behaviors” (363). Often times fans have an idea in their head about self-image, related to the celebrity, and if the celebrity does not live up to this or does something that counters it the fan gets upset. The Kim Kardashian explicitly nude photos also stirred up some conversations about gender roles, rape culture, and slut shaming. The Rentschler article touches on how the current rape culture has a tendency to blame the victim, especially related to acting provocatively and dressing in a way that exposes the body or appeals to male sexuality. Recently, there have been a couple different approaches to changing rape culture through online media. Rentschler discusses some sites that teach girls, “to take the tools of mobile media communication and social media dissemination into their own hands in order to expose the culture of street harassment,” (72). On the other hand, there are many women, including Jenna Mourey (Jenna Marbles), who practice extreme versions of female gender stereotypes and over-sexualization as a means of parody, or even to show that no matter what a female does/wears, she does not deserve nor is asking to be sexually assaulted. These same concepts can be applied to the Kim Kardashian photos, even though these probably were not her intentions. I’m not a huge Kim Kardashian fan because I don’t see her as having any real talents, but I think her photos were shocking in a good way. I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach young women that parading their naked bodies around is a way to earn respect from others, but I do think it can teach young women that it’s okay to embrace and be proud of their bodies, and that women, not just men, can openly exert their sexuality. Recently Nick Jonas did a very scandalous photo shoot where his “bulge” was extremely apparent, and I did not hear a word of bad feedback or “slut shaming”, so why should it be different for Kim? Also in terms of rape culture, the photos should further speak to the fact that no matter what a woman does, even if she is naked on a magazine for the world to see, does not mean her sexuality is anyone’s to take, or that she is actually consenting to any sexual interactions. I understand that Kim is a mother and many people are upset by that, but mothers are still women and are still sexual beings; how do you think Kim and Kanye made baby North West? Citations: Click, M. A., Holladay, H. W., & Lee, H. (2013). Making monsters: Lady Gaga, fan identification, and social media. Popular Music and Society. Rentschler, C. A. (2014). Rape culture and the feminist politics of social media. Girlhood Studies 7.

[lauraruesch]

Gender and YouTube as a Career

YouTube as a video-sharing site is host to a number of vloggers who create specific online identities for themselves, and who interact with viewers in many different ways. One of these vloggers is Hannah Hart, curator of the YouTube channel MyHarto, who makes weekly videos on topics ranging from cooking and style, to travel and other random parodied topics. The specific series from MyHarto that I would like to focus on is called My Drunk Kitchen (MDK) and features and inebriated Hannah Hart hosting a parodied show on how to cook while you are drunk. I argue that Hannah’s performance of gender not only creates a particular identity that is challenged by the hegemonic norms of YouTube viewers, but also plays a crucial role in her success after monetizing her channel.

In her videos, Hart performs gender in a variety of ways. Her performances of gender are largely implicit, which Wotanis and McMillan define as, “patterns of speech, behavior and appearance that are not directly labeled as male or female conventions” (Wotanis & McMillan 2014). Hart’s most notable medium for performing gender is her personal style. She uses her appearance to perform either femininity, by styling her hair and wearing make-up, or to perform masculinity by leaving her face natural and dressing in menswear. She furthermore uses specific patterns of speech and tone to convey femininity when discussing various topics. In her episode MDK Ep. 6: Brunch? Hart uses a feminine tone when she says, “Ew, my nails are just disgusting” as she parodies the things women talk about as they make brunch.  This acts to highlight the ridiculousness of the statement, but also reinforces specific gendered stereotypes. More broadly, the overall concept of Hart’s YouTube series also hints at the specific gendered stereotype of the “housewife”. It seems typical that a woman would have a cooking show, yet she is able to counteract this norm with the mocktorial tone she utilizes when discussing cooking, and by becoming sloppily inebriated, a characteristic that is not distinctly feminine.

                Not surprisingly, Hart’s videos herald a plethora of comments ranging in type. But with just a few scrolls through the comments on several videos it becomes clear that the comments on Hart’s videos reinforce the presence of “cyber gender harassment” on YouTube which Wotanis and McMillan define loosely as targeting  a performer in terms of gender (Wotanis & McMillan 2014). Some of Hart’s comments target her for violating the hegemonic style categories for men and women; as one commentor wrote, “Why do women always want to be like men?” (EmilioSantrias).  These types of comments reveal the ways that individuals are evaluated in terms of normative standards, and illustrate the viewer’s role in “policing the behavior and representation of girls in terms of gendered norms” (Wotanis & McMillan 2014). Another style of video comment that is apparent on Hart’s videos forcefully pushes her into the role of the sex object. As another commentor writes, “Hey Hannah you should get drunk qnd let me lick your asshole” (Organgeoctober). The content of this comment may be considered sexually explicit because it “suggests that the value of the performer is in her status as a sexual object or potential sexual partner for the viewer” (Wotanis & McMillan 2014). Both categories attempt to place Hannah in a particular place in the hegemonic gender schema.

                YouTube presents an interesting environment when thinking about the convergence of work and play. Viewers visit the site in their leisure to watch entertaining videos on virtually any category of their choosing. However there are some who have made YouTube their career. With the option to now monetize a channel by allowing ads to play over videos, YouTubers are now able to make money from clicks they receive on their videos.  Hannah’s videos appear, at surface value, to be simply videos of her having fun and being silly, but the presence of ads on virtually all of her videos tells us otherwise. Hart has made a career out of her channel. In his article The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play, Nick Yee discusses how, “video games are changing the nature of both work and play…work and play are starting to become indistinguishable from each other” (Yee 2006). The same can be applied to YouTube. While viewers may use it as a site for leisure, that same viewer may be using the video sharing website to create a career and make a living. Because Hart uses her YouTube channel as a career, it makes sense that she would engage repeatedly and methodically in the types of gender performances previously discussed. When Wotanis and McMillan discuss the significance of the gender performances of Jenna Mourey they explain, “Her on-screen behaviors, mode of dress, style and cadence of speech, and video content have become patterned over time and therefore expected by viewers…these performance strategies allow Mourey to trademark herself” (Wotanis & McMillan 2014). This type of trademarking is seen in Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen series too. It is of paramount importance for Hart because it gives her viewers a reason to return, which in turn amplifies her career earnings through clicks.

  References

Wotanis, Lindsey, and Laurie McMillan. (2014). “Performing Gender on YouTube.” Feminist Media Studies,  1-3.

Yee, Nick. (2006). “The Labor of Fun: How Video Games Blur the Boundaries of Work and Play.” Games and Culture 1.1, 68-71.

[matthewsalvatore89-blog]

Analytical Response 2

Matthew Salvatore

Analytical Response 2

The impact that social media has had on protesting is vast and spreads from those which are less serious to those that affect the very fibers of society. From the issue of #gamergate to the Arab Spring, and numerous incidents in between the two, social media played a pivotal role in making a change for what the people stood by. Also a more recent protest that has taken on all new levels because of social media is the Ferguson Protest, which is related to the death of one Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. People had already been protesting, but when pictures of the violence broke out through social media such as twitter and Instagram, the protest rose to all new heights. The protests were a main driving force behind getting the issue enough credibility to become a national issue. At the very least hundreds of similar incidents go unnoticed every day, but because of social media’s ability to spread the news of Michael Brown, and the violence of the protest which turned to riots, the whole nation if not the world took notice. President Obama has even made statements regarding the situation and the case was brought up to a grand jury. My personal experience related to the Ferguson Trial on social media stems from twitter. I was on twitter the day after the riots initially broke, after waking up for an early morning class I hadn’t watched the news but when I scrolled through my twitter feed I found myself viewing dozens of pictures of the Ferguson incident. Through social media I was notified of both the shooting itself, and the protests that were generated by it, and while I may not have joined the movement I know many people that I follow did join after seeing pictures on social media. Nancy Scola’s Washington Post article gives the viewpoint of Prosecutor Robert McCulloch who claims social media gave off the wrong idea and complicated the case. The more I explore into the protesting through social media the more I realize that a lot of these changes don’t come without some kind of outside action, for example sit-ins or whatever type of live protest the group uses, but the greatness of using social media is that those who are heading the group can amass a large group of protestors before they air their concerns, this gives the protest the power of numbers and makes it hard for people to ignore the point that is trying to be made. All this combined made for a serious complication in Ferguson which even still carries on despite the case being closed by the grand jury. Similarly, the Arab Spring all started from a facebook page entitled “We are all Khaled Said,” which allowed the people of Egypt to realize the amount of people who shared the same distrust and disgust of the regime that ruled over them. When the “stupid regime” pulled the citizens’ internet access for facebook the protest was pushed onto the streets with much larger numbers than had it never been put together on social media. Bratich’s paper fully dives into the power facebook gave the protestors. When the great numbers of Egyptian people were forced to finally hit the streets the regime could not handle what the protestors could throw at them, and it would not have been possible without the help provided by social media. While I do not have any personal story about someone I know joining the movement in Egypt or anything like that, I do remember people sharing photos that the protestors’ page posted and stating that they supported the revolution. The public opinion was pushed in a certain direction because of the content spread on social media by the protestors. On a lesser note, the #gamergate protests which are solely online have not yet been entirely successful. #gamergate is a movement that was initially about ethics in the business of video games but than snowballed into being about how women are represented in video games and that they deserved to have the same opportunity as men do in the gaming world. Eklund explains that in games such as World of Warcraft women may have all different options, but they are sexualized and they tend to still fall into the gender stereotypes.  While the idea has gained a great deal of notoriety and many have heard of the protest, and know the meaning behind it, without any outside actions such as picketing outside the executive offices of Rockstar Video Games for example, the idea is simply an idea and no type of physical action has taken place to make a change. I know plenty of both female and male gamers who support the #gamergate movement but the problem is they love their games so much they would never do anything like boycotting. What it all wraps up to is that social media does play a huge role in protests in today’s society but there still needs to be physical action to get any real change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25/ferguson-prosecutor-blames-social-media-for-complicating-investigation/

file:///C:/Users/Matthew/Downloads/Eklund+-+2011+-+Doing+gender+in+cyberspace+The+performance+of+gender+by+female+World+of+Warcraft+players.pdf

file:///C:/Users/Matthew/Downloads/Bratich+-+2011+-+Kyber-Revolts+Egypt%252C+State-friended+Media%252C+and+Secret+Sovereign+Networks.pdf

[smcdoherty]

Analytical Response 2 - Performing Gender and Social Movement Media

Analytical Response 2

Alanna Doherty

November 26th, 2014

Performing Gender and Social Movement Media

              The online world has given individuals, who feel as though their presence in the real world fails to be influential, the opportunity to enhance their voices and opinions on a platform that can be taken advantage of without restraints. Although this is not entirely the case, since some media sites have started to enforce regulations to limit the amount of excessive unpleasant behavior, they are still more accommodating to those who feel more confident expressing their views in an online environment. However, although social media gives people this opportunity, there are some drawbacks in the form of ongoing hate messages towards users. In addition to this, social media also grants the chance for gatherings in the real world in an increased amount of numbers. Because of the wide reach that social media has, if a small group of people are interested in gathering for a cause, they have the ability to share it on the Internet and improve their chances of an influential turn out.

            Social media sites, such as YouTube, give people a platform where they can engage in debates about social, economic or political issues without the facing any sort of ridicule or threats in person. Although hatred unfortunately still occurs online, users generally feel a sense of safety because they are expressing themselves behind a screen. This assumedly becomes their reasoning for ongoing contribution on these sites. In the article “Performing Gender on YouTube”, the authors Lindsey Wotanis and Laurie McMillan illustrate the presence of gender inequality on YouTube by giving examples of how YouTube stars perform gender and in turn raise awareness and controversy towards social issues related to gender roles. For this response however, I choose not to focus on the issue of gender inequality but rather what YouTube as a social media platform affords to its users as well as the subscribers to these channels. Furthermore, I will solely respond to the critique on the female example used. In the article, the authors focused on the YouTube sensation Jenna Mourey, famously known for her channel named Jenna Marbles. Through this critique of Marbles, the reader sees how this type of social media platform allows her to express her views on social matters through video but also demonstrates how she deals with harsh feedback from viewers. Although Marbles receives a copious amount of positive feedback on her videos, because of her exaggerated performance of gender roles in comedic styles she also gets a great deal of hatred towards the videos. The authors write, “evidence of misogyny directed toward Mourey, the most successful female YouTube performer, suggests the seriousness of hostility toward women on video-sharing sites” (Wotanis & McMillan, 2014). Even though this quote focuses on the gender differences, it explicitly exemplifies how people who express hatred towards women in response to the content. During the authors’ critique of Marble’s performance on YouTube, they cite Danielle Keats Citron’s commentary on the effect of cyber bullying. Her point is especially important in my view. They state, ‘“victims can ignore or defeat with counterspeech,” advancing the argument that those who are unable to deal with the problem should just abandon online interactions. [This however, ends up] “discouraging women from reporting cyber gender harassment and preventing law enforcement from pursuing cyber-harassment complaints”’ (Wotanis, McMillan & Citron, 2014). This becomes problematic because if users remove themselves from social media sites, yes, there will no longer be the presence of negative comments on that particular channel, however negative people will just go elsewhere and the issue would go unsolved.

            The impact of social movement media has been especially crucial in the past two days following the Ferguson decision. After Darren Wilson was not indicted for the death of Michael Brown, people bombarded social media platforms with textual and pictorial posts expressing their various views on the decision. Here at Rutgers, students used social media in order to share information about protests that were occurring on campus. Similarly to the riots in London mentioned “#Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You”by Bill Wasik, which were fueled by “BlackBerry Messenger, a private system in which “broadcasting” messages…can be done for free, with a single command” (Wasik, 2011). This idea is reinforced by a photo that I saw on my Facebook page on the night of the decision that was of a protest being held on Douglass Campus.

            Cory Doctorow in “The Internet is the Best Place for Dissent to Start”,gives examples pertaining to the actions on these media platforms. He states, “people will use the tools they are familiar with to get the word out” (Doctorow,2012). This idea was especially apparent following the Ferguson decision as I watched hundreds of commentary appear on my Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr timelines on the event.

  Works Cited

  Doctorow, C. (2012, January 3). The internet is the best place for dissent to start. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2012/jan/03/the-internet-best-dissent-start

  Wasik, B. (2011, December 16). #Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked. Retrieved from Wired: file:///C:/Users/Scott/Downloads/Wasik+-+2011+-+_Riot+Self-Organized%252C+Hyper-Networked+Revolts+—+Coming+to+a+City+Near+You.pdf

  Wotanis, L., & McMillan, L. (2014). Performing Gender on YouTube. Feminist Media Studies.

[natashakothare]

Analytical Response 2

          Analytical Response 2

  As a new member in the gaming world, an essay stood out to me in particular this semester. The essay based on female gamers touches upon the subject that although society has advanced in many ways, the perception still exists that individuals who play video games are mainly males. The stereotype of males being the only gamers is slowly diminishing. Women today “are more visible in the gaming culture and the number of female gamers is increasing (Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 324) thus challenging the older perception that males are the only ones that play video games. Today more than 50 per cent of the population in the western world plays digital games (Juul, 2010). Women can however still be considered the odd one out (Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 324). Many males feel as though the video game world is their world and women are “viewed as casual Facebook- game players (Juul, 2010). However, in reality, Juul shows that most real gamers do not match these stereotypes, players change preferences and habits over time and casual players often play as many hours each day as hardcore gamers. (Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 324). Many females will choose to turn their avatars into males when playing video games because all men do not feel comfortable playing a video game with a girl. Men also do not see women as equals in the video game world so several women choose to play as an anonymous player or a male player so that their gender does not come into play; only their video game skills do. As seen in popular shows like “The Big Bang Theory” that capture female gamers as well as male gamers, the over-sexualization of the female avatars is made as well. Females are seen primarily as a symbol of sex, not as a video game player. Video games are predominantly seen as a male dominated area but as more and more females are challenging the stereotypes, males are slowly opening up to the idea. Although many men are not open to the idea of women playing videogames, as more and more women play and take a stand on their gender, and equality of female gamers, the male’s perception of the gaming world is readily being challenged. Males are slowly starting to accept that the gaming world is not going to remain a male dominated realm. Women are making a stand and are changing the perception of gaming stereotypes.

When I was younger I was very close with a girl who idolized many celebrities. When Justin Beiber became a superstar she owned every shirt, every poster, and every cardboard cutout she could find. As she grew older, she started shifting her obsessions to other celebrities. Recently she has fixated on Demi Lovato. Demi Lovato regularly advocates for loving oneself and self-acceptance. This “identification with a media figure may form initially through actual social relationships (e.g. one listens to a star’s music because a friend does), but then develops emotional and patterned behaviors, including intense and repeated media consumption, collecting, and fantasizing (Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media 362) which is what happened to my friend. I believe that she felt so infatuated with the celebrity and the trend of celebrities that she became consumed with her obsession. I believe that this act of idolizing celebrities is unhealthy because this media figure is only a well-constructed image created by publicists and other members of the celebrity’s team. This overdependence can be unhealthy but can also aid an individual to connect with the celebrity and the values that they are showing. Over time “fans identify more deeply and incorporate “the media figure’s values and plans” (59) into their own attitudes and behaviors. Although the intense identification developed in imaginary relationships is frequently pathologized, Caughey stresses that such relationships can, and do, have important individual and social benefits, ranging from self-reflection to the adoption of pro-social values and behaviors (Making Monsters: Lady Gaga, Fan Identification, and Social Media 362). For my friend, she struggled greatly with her weight. By finding a celebrity who preached values that promoted her self-esteem she is slowly able to accept her body and love herself more. All in all, celebrities and the impact they have on individuals can be healthy and unhealthy. They can help lead to an obsession that controls many aspects of a persons life, but can also act as a beacon of light for individuals who are struggling with an issue. Certain issues that celebrities stand for can help individuals find support with areas that they need support in.

[tara---reid]

Online Labor & Gender Roles On YouTube

              In today’s generation, labor takes on an entirely new meaning.  Working is no longer constricted to the office or the factory.  Labor can take place anywhere.  In fact, we are working constantly, whether we realize it or not.  Keeping up with social media accounts such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook is work.  Pybus illustrates that, “media, in newly convergent forms, have radically reconfigured the contours of work”(2011, p. 17).  We constantly post, comment on, like, and retweet, multiple times a day, whether it be for our own pleasures, or just to keep up with the trends around us, we are still participating in it.  When we write a review on a restaurant or movie, when we blog about a topic in the news, when we tweet about a celebrity’s new album, we are working.  However, we do not get paid for this labor.  We freely put our ideas out onto the Internet for any corporation to see, use, and sell as their own.

            Advent users of social media are continuously broadcasting their own ideas to their profile pages, fan pages, or blogs, and they are not getting much in return for the work that they put into these sites.  Pybus expands on this idea by stating, “In addition to the corporate mining and selling of user- generated content, this would include the tastes, preferences, and general cultural content constructed therein.” (2011, p. 4).  Some corporations may not know what is popular or trending, and therefore they take to the preferences of young teens. These young teens are then doing the work for them.

            Martens gives an example of unpaid for labor done by teens; teens who thought they were just participating in online culture.  Martens explains, “Teens review books on sites such as Amazon.com and weRead.com, and their affective labor as reviewers serves as peer-to-peer marketing, much as one friend recommending a book to another” (2011, p. 57).  What does this mean for the users who are not getting paid?  Should something be done about it?  How does one reach out to these companies and demand to be paid for their work?  How does one get paid for a job that they did not apply for, rather they just started doing for their own pleasure?  The fact of this culture is that it is participatory.  No one was hired to post these things on the Internet. No one had to send in an application in order to create a blog or a twitter account.  If a user is unsatisfied with the way the Internet labor works, that user can “quit” their “job”.

            When I am on summer or winter break from school, I work as a hostess in a restaurant near my hometown.  The restaurant is called Scala Del Nonna.  Although the food and atmosphere is almost always incredible, sometimes the restaurant gets bad reviews on Yelp.  I took it upon myself one day to create an account on Yelp and write a glowing review for the restaurant. I thought it could not hurt, and it might even attract more customers.  I made sure to include certain details about specific entrees to order and I even named some of the servers who I thought are dedicated and hard working.  A week after I posted the review, I noticed more people ordering the entrée that I noted in the review, a couple people even asked for the waiter that I said good things about. I took time out of my day to write this review, fully aware of the fact that this is a labor that I will not be paid for. I did not get a raise, or any special treatment at the restaurant.  I simply did it because I felt it was necessary.  People who put time and effort into online sites need to remember that no one is forcing them to do so, and that they can stop at any given time. Without a fan base, it is very hard to get paid for posting ideas on the Internet.

            One example of a person, who was paid for the labor they performed on the Internet, is YouTube star, Jenna Mourey.  Jenna Mourey, or better known as Jenna Marbles, became an Internet sensation from posting comedic videos of herself online.  What is controversial about Mourey’s fame is that, she is one of the very few female YouTubers who has become successful.  Gender plays a significant role on YouTube.  Males run the majority of popular channels. The few female channels that are popular feature a female who embodies all that it means to be stereotypically “feminine”. In the Wotanis and McMillian article, they explain, “Banet-Weiser (2011) found that the young performers “are judged and gain value according to how well the girls producing [the videos] fit normative standards of femininity” (288– 289).” (2014, p. 4).  This finding leads one to conclude that males attract their audience with their humor, whereas females must rely to their looks to gain a fan base.

            The article then proceeds to compare Mourey to another YouTube star, Ryan Higa.  Higa is a male YouTuber, and the size of his fan base is comparable to that of Mourey’s.  A study done in the article proved that, “Mourey receives more critical/hostile comments than Higa” (Wotanis & McMillian, 2014, p. 9). Mourey, being female, received more comments about her body, appearance, and sexuality.  Some of Mourey’s viewers are less interested in her personality, and more interested in her body and appearance.

            These differences between a male’s audience and a female’s audience leads one to question why these gender roles exist on YouTube, and online in general.  I believe that post femininity has influenced females to rely on their appearance to reach their goals.  A post feminist, in my eyes, is a woman who glorifies her beauty and her body to make herself feel powerful and strong.  If women, such as Jenna Marbles, paid less attention to their appearance and more attention to the content of their videos, perhaps their comments would be less critical of their looks and have more focus on their humor.

            One of my favorite apps is Vine.  There are a lot of talented and humorous people who become extremely popular and well known on Vine. I have tried to make a few vines myself, but none have really gone anywhere.  However, one vine I made got more attention than I was expecting, and numerous people “liked” it, commented on it, and re-vined it.  Most of the comments were nice but some were not.  Some examples of the content of the comments were, “She is funny, but her roots look awful” or, “She’s funny, for a girl”.  I can relate to how Mourey must feel when she reads the comments on her videos.  The constant pressure to please someone with your looks can very easily overpower the desire to please someone with your personality, and that is why, in my opinion, post femininity exists.  This is why women on the Internet broadcast their bodies as more important than their personalities.

  References

  Coté, M. & Pybus, J. (2011). Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: Facebook and Social       Networks. Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor. 1, 1-32.

  Martens, M. (2011). Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media            Technologies. Transmedia teens: Affect, immaterial labor, and user-generated     content. 17, 49-68.

  McMillan, L. & Wotanis, L. (2014). Performing Gender on YouTube. How Jenna Marbles negotiates a hostile online environment. 14, 912-928.

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The Personalization of the Internet & Maintenance of the Self.

In this day and age, the Internet has become more and more of a personal commodity used by the masses. There are so many sites and services where you are asked to personalize and create what is perfect for you. From settings on a shopping website to playing games and even social media platforms and blogs, it is all about you. The profile encourages you to input favorite movies, books, music artists, sports teams, and so on to tell your friends who you are. You can even decide who on your friends list sees specific information. While on Facebook I always notice ads on the side that have nothing to do with me or my interests. Over time, that has changed. Now there are ads from sites I have visited, pages I have liked, and interests that I have shared via articles posted or videos watched. For a while they even featured an option where you could say that the ad was not something you were interested in or that it did not apply to you (I am not sure if it is there now since I have Ad Blocker on my browser). They even have contests on who can make the best personalization of a product. An example from my own experience would be the Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” contest hosted on Facebook. Users were invited to create their own flavor of Lay’s chips, decide what kind of chip it would be made on (regular, wavy, or kettle cooked), and tell the company why they deserve the grand prize of $1 million (I created Kettle Cooked Spicy Guacamole). The four finalists had varied options, from wavy mango salsa, regular cappuccino, baked mac & cheese all the way to wasabi ginger. The options were limitless. One thing that is not realized is that even though customers get to vote for their favorite, the company also has to keep in mind what options would be marketable, which may affect the outcome of the contest results.

What is not realized is that even though the power of the individual is encouraged, it comes with a set of unspoken rules. In the Andrejevic reading, the author says, “The interactive nature of the Web…opens marketers to limitless opportunities for personalization and dialogue” (Andrejevic, 24). Because these advertisers and companies have the information that you use (such as websites visited, items bought, sites liked/followed on social media, people interacted with, etc.) they can target you and specify exactly what you need to see to get you to go to use their services. They are essentially “offloading some of the duties of consumer interactions onto consumers themselves” (24). However, what you choose to use has to be in line with what the company finds acceptable to have their name on. For example, in the Andrejevic reading, the NIKEiD project was talked about. People were allowed to customize the sneakers with “freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are,” when that was not the case. When Jonah Peretti wanted to get the word “sweatshop” printed on the sneakers to give credit to “who really made the sneakers,” Nike did not let that happen. This would make them look bad if their brand was connected to the word sweatshop, whether that fact was true or not. Last thing they would need is this going viral and causing a PR scandal that the company could not control, since all it takes now is one status, tweet, or blog post.

The main goal of the control of the personalization is to not critique those who are allowing you to be an “individual.” Most of these companies fear the worst when it comes to people gathering to protest something. In the Doctorow reading, there is a point made about being able to support causes that you choose by meeting in that social space with like-minded people. That is how revolutions in countries began, how protests are planned, and attention is gathered. For instance, the Ferguson hashtag generated attention from news outlets in a matter of days after the shooting. These groups can also be infiltrated by the resistance (ex. Cops in Ferguson to find protest sites), which makes them hot spots to be watched. With this comes the problem of anonymity. When you tweet or post something, it is linked to you. So being part of a revolution can have repercussions.

So is the maintenance of being you a chore? It can be. I have often had to change my profile picture after a certain amount of time because I feel like it is old. A lot of people do this. Posting pictures and statuses have to be done every so often for you to stay “updated.” By updating your profile you are also making sure you are being seen in the way you want to be. Last thing anyone needs is to be misinterpreted because of an old status or picture.

Works Cited:

Andrejevic, M. (2007). Three Dimensions of iCulture. In ISpy: Surveillance and power in the interactive era (pp. 22-51). Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas.

Doctorow, C. (2012, January 3). The Internet is the Best Place for Dissent to Start. Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2012/jan/03/the-internet-best-dissent-start