Where is the li(f)e?

What's your favorite filter?

Mine's Valencia, although Lo-Fi is gaining in popularity on my Instagram. Or maybe X-Pro II? So many choices, and I can control them all. Isn't that cool? I can dictate what my friends think my life is like by pressing a button. In a matter of lighting, my hastily-grabbed cup of coffee before work becomes a relaxing stop at the local cafe, and a quick literary caption paints the image of spending hours musing over the works of my favorite authors. In one tap, I've built an entire li(f)e for myself, and an outsider might never know the truth.

I have an image in my head when I read the title of Chapter 2 of Jill Walker Rettberg's Seeing Ourselves Through Technology that looks something like this:

(Photo found here)

Filtered Reality. It's reality, but something is a little bit off about it. 

Rettberg raises a good point about filters-- they are generally used to remove what we don't want. On the most simplistic level, a coffee filter is used to keep the grainy, gross coffee grounds out of our morning (and afternoon and evening-- I don't discriminate) cups. Likewise, those handy Instagram filters lessen the features we'd like to hide. In popular culture, we don't just filter pictures, we filter our email, our social networks, and news sources. Filters have become so commonplace that in many instances we don't even realize that they are there. 

We live in a highly filtered culture. Most news cites offer a feed of "Top Stories," comprised of the stories that are popular at the time, the most shared, most read, most commented on. The rest of the stories on the site are still there, but the algorithms of the site push them lower down the list in favor of the stories that have more views. If we're only seeing what is popular, are we only learning the popular opinion? How is our awareness being swayed by only being shown the news that is popular?

Rettberg offers Reddit's up/downvote system as an example of a filtered system, and I can add Facebook, Twitter, and, most recently, Instagram, to the list. I have friends on Facebook who I never see and, due to this, I forget we are friends, because my likes and Internet tendencies have made it so the Facebook algorithms pushes them to the lowest priority. It's not even an active choice on my part, the social network does it all for me. Are our machines controlling us? Perhaps our dystopian worlds are not far off? (mostly kidding)

In the midst of Chapter 2, I found a particular paragraph that spoke to me-- I found it both interesting, and frightening. Rettberg says:

We cannot represent our lives or our bodies without using or adapting, resisting and pushing against filters that are already embedded in our culture, whether those filters are cultural or technological. Cultural filters change over time and are different in different cultures. We can and often do resist or change cultural filters, but most of the time we simply act according to the logic of the filter without even realizing that is what we are doing. (24-25)

The concept that we are so controlled is a scary one because it paints us as puppets, manipulated by "filters" well beyond our control. Going back to where I began, Rettberg comments that "One reason the filter fascinates us is that it gives the image that strangeness that defamiliarizes our lives. The filter makes it clear that the image is not entirely ours. The filtered image shows up ourselves, or our surroundings, with a machine's vision" (26). Following that thought, is my filtered cup of coffee trying to fool you into believing that my life is something other than it is? Or am I trying to fool myself. By looking at my life through the impartial camera lens, does it make it anything other than what it is?

Selfies can be raw and revealing. They can feel too authentic, too honest. Perhaps running them through a filter to boost the colours, overexpose the skin to hide its imperfections or give them a retro tinge is sometimes the only way we can bear to share these images of ourselves. (27)

This reminds me, almost unbearably so, of Frankenstein, when the monster says to Victor, "You are my creator, but I am your master." Are we too to be so controlled by the lives we create and dream into existence? What is this filtered lifestyle doing to our realities and our perceptions of the world? A recent article also comes to mind in light of this filtered, #instagood world-- Australian Instagrammer Essena O'Neill decided to walk away from the filtered life and, before leaving, edited the captions to many of her photos, explaining the emptiness and fake reality of the world that once consumed her. What does this say about the world in which we live?

On the flip side of all of these concerns, there is beauty to be found in the filters, and this thought occurred to me upon reading about #365grateful. Rettberg points out that an artful photograph of dirty laundry might remind us that there is a family to make that pile (okay, I know several people who would argue that they are perfectly grateful for their families and don't need the pile of laundry to remind them, but you see my point). This thought also led me to think about the past, and question if this world is so different from that of the past. After all, the Romantic poets certainly saw their worlds through a filter (if you follow my meaning). and we hail their work to this day. Is it so different? Aren't we also using our own filters for the purpose of making beautiful?

Chapter 2 ended with an interesting discussion on the racial implications of photography and the selfie. I had never considered the misrepresentation angle of photography in my view of filters and selfies but, especially when coupled with the discussion of photography and the African American community, I found that it raised an interesting case against the fears expressed in the rest of the article: "Taking selfies can be a way of avoiding cultural and technological filters that you don't like or that don't represent you in a way that feels real to you" (30).

Moving on to Chapter 3, Serial Selfies, I found that the abstract presented an interesting case for observing the full story, not just individual posts or pictures, but all of them combined, in order to attempt to understand the entire picture-- the entire person behind the profile.

I think about this a lot. A lot goes into the way one presents oneself on social media, and I often wonder what my profile looks like to those friends who don't know me all that well. Most of my posts are directed toward the people who I know look at my profile-- a moderately sized circle of friends and acquaintances-- but every so often I get a notification from someone who I barely know and I realize, they can see everything I post too. My friends know who I am, but what do I look like to those who don't know me?

Rettberg's study of the daily selfie is an interesting one, because it raises an interesting question of observation. Why do we like to watch the time pass via one snapshot a day? What are we hoping to learn about ourselves that a compilation of pictures might reveal? And further, how do people's responses reflect on the content we are putting out there?

I've seen some of these videos, but I decided to watch Rebecca Brown's video, mainly because her 6.5 year commitment impressed me, and made me think that she had a story to share. And wow, did she ever.

Beckie Brown's video is a poignant tribute to her life story, and it is a story that could not possibly be grasped in pieces. Just like life goes on, as do the photos, through the good and the bad. Brown used her story to raise awareness of her struggles, and further, to help people know they're not alone. Between the years of 14 and 21 are some of the most important developmental landmarks in a life. We see one snapshot from every day in her life through it all.

Pictures serve as representations of who we are, which is why Rettberg moves to her next topic, profile pictures on social networking sites, and ties this into self representation. Why do we choose the things we choose to represent ourselves? If the only thing a stranger could observe about my Facebook is a profile picture of my dog, or if a potential friend is looking to add me and sees a poodle, what must they think? And why would I choose that image as my social network "first impression"? These are all questions I have considered over my own social profiles, as well as in observing others.

When we are able to dictate for ourselves what is put out there, it is interesting to see what we choose. Regardless of filters or "the chosen selfie," there is a mindset which goes beyond. Getting to the root of why we do what we do has only become more complicated by the digital age and our new selfie culture. I look forward to further discussion of this in class!

White Flight and MySpace?

"White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with Myspace and Facebook"
danah boyd

The beginning of this article took me by surprise. I've openly admitted this before ,God only knows why, because I should probably be ashamed of my middle school self, but nevertheless, my entrance into the world of social media was widely influenced by MySpace. I was a huge fan of MySpace.com, and I never, not for a second, thought of it as being "ghetto." MySpace was the place where I and all my friends could set up our highly personalized profiles, upon which we would showcase our angle shots, poorly edited pictures, and unnecessarily emo music-- I don't know why 11 year old Marissa thought that My Chemical Romance "just got me" but oh man, she did.

So, for this reason, "ghetto" was a description I was surprised to hear coming from a kid who was the same age as I was at the time of the interview. Take into consideration, I've grown up in Elizabeth, NJ. The school I went to was by no means homogeneous in terms of race. The reason I moved on to Facebook my freshman year of high school, was because it was new and interesting. It was the next big thing.

boyd certainly put in the research to make a case for a more racially based view of things. I found what she had to say interesting, especially that digital environments are shaped by race and class in similar ways to physical spaces. I think this stands to reason, as ones digital life is typically spent with the same people they would spend time with in the real world. However, boyd also invokes the idea of "white flight," and draws parallels between the digital and the physical in order to show how "people's engagement with technology reveals social divisions and the persistence of racism" (4). This is where I jump ship on her argument. I think the concept of white flight certainly draws a provoking parallel, but it's going too far, and here's why:

People abandoned MySpace because it was no longer the new thing. People follow friends and fads and, on top of Facebook being the new kid on the block, MySpace was going downhill as a website. It didn't have a solid basis as a company, as it grew corporate issues arose and metastasized beyond control, it became too big and too bloated, along with several other death blows that are very well laid out in this article from The Guardian. MySpace was poorly handled and it fell out of favor because of that reason. People didn't drift away from it because of "white flight" to Facebook, they drifted away because Facebook had a future as a social networking site-- and this is coming from someone who, once again, would love to have her old MySpace profile back. MySpace was going downhill, and when Facebook became available to the public (aka anyone with an email address) in 2006, the site began to gain traction. Between 2009-2011, Facebook took off as the next big thing, and all others fell to the wayside.

That aside, boyd's research reveals that many different justifications were offered by the teens she interviewed, in order to explain their choice of one site over the other. Overwhelmingly, this had to do with preference in what the sites had to offer, usually based around where friend groups gravitated. It's an interesting thing to note that kids stay with kids who are like them or, as it's said, "birds of a feather flock together." This proves to be true in many realms and social circles, in school, and in life, it stands to reason that this would follow to the online sphere. boyd had the data to prove this, however, I don't think that noting this is admitting anything breakthrough. Of course people follow their friends, and they'll go to the site that is better suited to their needs and desires. The business failure of MySpace aside, if I had made my Facebook account in high school, and came to find that all the kids were on MySpace, I would have gone back to MySpace.

I think her article is well written and incredibly interesting, and it certainly made me consider racial implications. However, I don't think the case she makes holds water.

"Self- Segregation: Why It's So Hard for Whites to Understand Ferguson"
Robert P. Jones

This 2014 article takes us back to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a case which caused racial tension to boil and underlying instabilities to rise to the surface. It serves as an interesting juxtaposition to the racial conversation in the previous article, regarding the nature of races to group together. Sadly, the line between white and black seems to be becoming all the more bold every day, and is aggravated by more and more instances that seem to drive a wedge between the groups.
The area of New Jersey we live in is, luckily, very diverse. However this is not the case in many areas, as exemplified in this quote from the article:

"The social networks of whites are a remarkable 91 percent white. White American social networks are only one percent black, one percent Hispanic, one percent Asian or Pacific Islander, one percent mixed race, and one percent other race. In fact, fully three-quarters (75 percent) of whites have entirely white social networks without any minority presence. This level of social-network racial homogeneity among whites is significantly higher than among black Americans (65 percent) or Hispanic Americans (46 percent)."

It is important to expand beyond social circles to truly attempt to understand what the world is like beyond your proverbial front door. Every day there is a new news story that makes this case again and again. Much like the social circles of children, it would appear that adults don't tend to expand beyond the "birds of a feather" mindset. By acknowledging this mindset, we can attempt to work past it in all areas of life and see life through different eyes.

But first, let me take a #SELFIE

Fair warning, I'm going to have too much fun with this section.
To begin, the original "god" of selfies,

And to continue on through history:

But to get to the important point of this post, selfies. Love them or hate them, they're here, and they're a part of culture. I found these blogs on selfie culture to open up an interesting discussion on society's apparent obsession with...taking pictures of ourselves?

Full disclosure, I'm vain enough to love taking selfies. When I was in middle school, the "Myspace angle" was the thing to master and oh man, did I master it (and oh man did I ever delete all those pictures 5 years later, when I realized how stupid they were).  Selfies are interesting, because yeah, they're vain. They're pure vanity, and they're also an odd form of idealism, i.e.:

Above: Something I really am mildly upset about.

All joking aside, our culture is big on how one presents oneself. Because we're in control of what we're putting out there, we portray life on our terms-- i.e. I know exactly what lighting I look best in to take a selfie, and that's going to be my profile picture. And that's also not going to be exactly what you see when you see me IRL (in real life). The selfie presents an interesting form of idealism which, I think, has the potential to be dangerous because, whereas I had several years of living with myself and becoming grounded as a person, there are a lot of kids out there who are growing up surrounded by perfect looking selfies and the #instagood life which, sadly, are far from reality.

The first point that I want to note from the blogs is from Part I: The Digital Humanities and Selfie Culture. Losh cites Posner's idea of "the creepy treehouse," which is the way Posner and her students seemed to describe the social networking community, "where the authority figure wanders into a realm where students feel entitled to privacy." Being "entitled to privacy" is an interesting concept to me, and I question, is it real on the internet? Sure, you're entitled to privacy, but having a Facebook page connecting with 500 of your "closest friends" is not close to the same as being in your private clubhouse with your two besties. The idea of privacy is certainly changing, as is the definition of friendship.

Although a lot of topics were covered in the blogs, I'm stuck on the idea of selfie and self image, and how that is affecting people in our culture. Part 3: Networked Spaces, Slut Shaming and Putting Selfies in Dialogue with Theory brought up the case of Amanda Todd, the 15 year old girl who committed suicide, as a result of bullying, which began when it came out that there were nude photos of her online. She was in 7th grade. She was a child.

Kids are always going to make bad choices, get in trouble, and be made fun of. To pretend otherwise is to be ignorant of the human nature, but this one of the landmark events in the history of bullying, because it took place in our new online world. Amanda Todd is an example of a worst case scenario and, heartbreakingly, she is now one of many. She was a struggling child, she made a bad choice, and she was taken advantage of, but the magnitude of the tools she used led to the ramifications being far greater than she could have ever controlled. This is the dark side to our selfie culture. On its face it is harmless, stupid, and vain but, as with all things, there are deeper implications. With great power (or, perhaps, great audience or great tools) comes great responsibility. This brings me back, once again, to the question of kids who have grown up only knowing the online world. Parents must decide where the boundaries are because, quite evidently, the repercussions of online actions can be a lot more lasting.

Moving on, I found myself going down the rabbit trial of the "Familiar Stranger" theory of Stanley Milgram. Before I read further into the definition of the term I could immediately guess how this would connect to the online world, because it sounds like something I believe many of us can understand. Milgram, a social psychologist, identified this theory in the early '70s in regard to urban anonymity. The theory is quite simple, that people recognize one another through regular mutual activities, but do not interact. Taking to the digital realm, this could be likened to that one kid you met in high school and friended for the heck of it, and you haven't spoken since. Sometimes you like their Facebook status, and you don't necessarily want to unfriend them because you feel like you have a connection but, in reality, you've never had a real conversation.

Part 4: Diversity, NetProv and Service Learning made, in my opinion, one of the best points in the series. Losh cites Marino as speaking on the importance of "look[ing] at the history of self-representation, not just portraiture but semiotic self-representation of all kinds that was fundamental to human culture. This could include writing, such as autobiography, letter writing, and journaling." He expounds upon this by detailing the assignments he gave to his #SelfieClass at USC.
I think that Marino's assignment to his students was inspired and made the selfie into something so much more. His assignment was a study of introspection which went far beyond taking a good picture. I particularly liked Know Thy Selfie: An Exercise in Selfie Revelation. The proposed analysis of elements in each selfie is supposed to allow for self reflection, and it's something I would like to try. Upon identifying key elements between the pictures, the students then had to write a thesis analyzing what they saw in themselves. For similar reasons, I also found Why do my Facebook Friends look just like me? to be a cool idea for a class assignment. I think that these kinds of activities would be great to bring into a writing classroom, because they offer a way of keeping students relevant and interested, and not just working toward a grade by doing assignments they don't care about.

I think it is great that so many of these courses are shared online freely, and it's certainly appropriate, considering that the subject matter is our current digital age. One of the biggest benefits of the internet is the opportunity for collaboration and communication, and for building communities, and it's nice that all teachers are able to share and access material across the community.

#SELFIE

It's haunting me.