Brutally Honest

First, I’d like to informally apologize (again). What I am about to blog about is controversial and perhaps offensive to the modern person. But I said I would be brutally honest, and I have to maintain my candidness, no matter how contentious. I hate Twitter. Here is a haiku describing it: Twitter: ew, yucky. Superficial time-waster. Negative black-hole. Okay—now I will support my claim. I had a Twitter in high school and into my first year at the Mount. I spent an absurd amount of time watching Buzzfeed Tasty videos (which I still am addicted to via other media) and post-wisdom teeth removal clips. I deleted the app and probably recovered 1-2 hours of my day. Then, Dr. Kennedy kindly offered 50 points of extra credit, which is no small amount; in the form of Twitter posts! AGH! What a conflict—remain stubborn in my hatred of the microblogging, nonsense that is Twitter or harden my heart and make a new account. Extra credit won me over. I made a new account ...

I remember when I was 12 and begged my mom to let me make a Facebook. I knew everyone at school had an account and I wanted to be virtual friends with my real friends. My mom would read horror stories (probably on Facebook) about kids putting too much personal information on their accounts and being abducted. Obviously, she wasn’t going to let her pre-teen daughter make an account. We negotiated on being 13 before I made my account. I remember waking up, receiving “happy birthday” messages and making my desired Facebook. Finally… Well, Facebook was not all it was cracked up to be. By the time I was 15, I had hundreds of “friends” and got constant notifications about ads, more random friend requests, and game invitations. I deleted my account. Before I left for my study abroad trip to Ireland, my mom made me create another Facebook account. Ironically, this is the same woman who vehemently refused my requests to create one in the first place. To please my mother, I made ...

I would like to informally apologize for my lack of patience with Professor Van Dijck’s second chapter. While my first impression of the chapter induced a desire to either go to sleep or crawl into a hole and await the next assigned reading, I was mistaken. Well, probably not about Van Dijck’s writing style thus far. It was incredibly dry and sleep-inducing. However, Dr. Kennedy kindly made this boring piece of academic pie into an award-winning tasty variety on the “theoretical underpinnings” of social media. The constructs discussed are perhaps the “platform” of social media platforms. Technology, users, content, owners, governance, and business models are interlinked to support social media usage. It’s kind of scary to think about the underpinnings of such commonly used technology. It could be compared to trying to figure out how a car is made and sold. As social media users, we eat up new technology. We cry when our Wi-Fi is slow, or Snapchat changes the shape of its ...

“Hello! Get to know me! But not really me, just who I want you to think I am.” Impression management freaks me out a little bit. Defined in class as, “the process by which individuals attempt to control people’s perception of them” suggests a façade created by media users. Are we really that superficial? Or scared to express ourselves? Isn’t the purpose of social media to show our “friends” and “followers” who we are?             I understand that it is hard to be vulnerable. I know what it means to want to maintain a reputation, or impress others. Yet, impression management seems fake.              Authentic relationships, even through social media are possible. Receiving a message and responding naturally, without giving yourself too much time generating the response you think the other person wants to hear is authentically you (obviously, you can take time...