New Media as a Mirror
We’ve talked a lot about identity, (as well as lots of other things!), but diving into the social media here got me thinking about the sheeramount of people we have access to in the net environment. I know there is a lot of negative implications regarding the interconnectivity of our world today, but I have to think that this one point is a positive. When we look out at our media community, we don’t just see the corporate view of ‘normal’ any longer. There are hundreds of people on Twitter and Facebook, all of them with at least one picture, and a wide range of social status so to speak. Popularity is usually tallied by Likes, hits, and reblogs, all things that are driven by the user as opposed to a marketing division somewhere in Corporate America. We are deciding what normal or popular looks like, and there’s a lack of competition for that popularity. If you’re shopping for a designer purse you’ll get this one instead of that one, but there’s no limit to what we can approve of and/or support on the net. All this leads to my ‘Hallelujah’ thought. The chances of us looking out into the world and seeing a positive portrayal of someone like us are a hell of a lot bigger than they used to be.
Cheryl