Alternate Reality Games

 Ah, alternate reality games--or ARGs, if that’s too much of a mouthful. I used to love those things way back when, and I still appreciate them even now. I find the concept of ARGs extremely fascinating--it’s a fictional, collaborative medium that we the audience know isn’t actually real, but dang if it isn’t fun to craft theories and solve clues. It makes you feel like you’re a part of some secret club that only allows really smart, sophisticated people, except half of the time your theories turn out to be wrong and you probably overlooked a clue somewhere down the line. 

That said, there’s an aspect of ARGs that tends to be overlooked--namely, how the medium is used to tell the story. Marble Hornets used multiple YouTube channels and video distortions to create a horror-mystery, while The Blair Witch Project used a shaky handheld camera and method acting. Ben Drowned used YouTube videos, written forum posts, a website that housed cult members, and video game footage to weave an ambitious storyline based off of The Legend of Zelda, of all things. Even lesser-known ARGs can pull off a few neat tricks-- Daisy Brown, for example, used YouTube captions to provide backstory and hide other Easter eggs for the audience. In those cases, part of the fun was seeing how the creators used their chosen medium to engage their audience in the mystery, making the experience feel much more personal to the viewer. You’re more likely to watch things you’re interested in--and ARGs are no exceptions.     

#Healthtok: TikTok and Healthcare Marketing

Within a platform such as TikTok, it's not surprising to find that there are numerous smaller communities within the overall user population. People come together over shared interests to form groups, to share relevant and interesting content and discuss among one another their common interest. One such subset of TikTok is health TikTok, sometimes shortened with the catchy portmanteau #HealthTok. Various threads seem to run through the larger HealthTok banner -- fitness learning and inspiration, healthy eating (including special diets, such as vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, or low carbohydrates), the medical community (including doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals), and health related organizations are just some of the major contributors to the #HealthTok content pool.

Medical Media Marketing Online's Sarah Mahoney recently wrote an article about how some healthcare brands are embracing the wildly popular platform as a new way to get the word out about public health campaigns and brand awareness. Some of the highly successful COVID 19-related campaigns highlighted in the piece, particularly Proctor and Gamble's work with TikTok star Charli D'Amelio for the viral #DistanceDance to promote social distancing and Reckitt Benckiser, parent company to Lysol and creator of the #Healthyhabit6step filter (matched with lyrics from the rapper Twista) to encourage safety measures around COVID-19 transmission concerns. These campaigns were wildly successful because they embraced the young, fun nature of the app to spread their message.

I think this is a fantastic strategy. A large portion of the TikTok user base is in the 13-25 age range, and are a prime target for many health campaigns, including healthy eating and diet culture, dating and sexual health, drug and alcohol use and abuse, not to mention concerns about the spread of COVID-19 that are especially relevant to that age group, many of whom are in K-12 or college or university school settings. The marketing groups that took a look at the existing culture of the app -- who the major influencers and popular creators were, what types of content have a tendency to trend or "go viral", how to make health information interesting and fun in a way that would encourage participation and buy-in from the younger population -- and synthesized all of that into marketing campaigns that celebrated the culture within the app instead of trying to force it to fit the mold of traditional advertising campaigns. These campaigns end up feeling a lot more organic within the context of the app itself.

Just as collaborations with creators on other platforms like Youtube, collaborators need to be wary of obscuring their involvement so much that the content seems disingenuous when the connection comes to light. This is particularly true if the collaboration involves a for-profit company -- while advertising can be fun and take advantage of the uniqueness of the platform to portray their message in a certain way, they still need to make sure that viewers know they are watching an advertisement.

Wikipedia Has a Bad Reputation

I've been told to never use Wikipedia as a source more times than I can count. From the amount of times high school teachers talk about it, you'd think that half the papers they see cite Wikipedia and nothing else. I'm not a high school teacher, maybe that's true, but I feel like it's given Wikipedia a pretty bad name in general. Like yeah, the whole point is that anyone can edit a page, but it's not unmoderated. In fact, Wikipedia actually does a lot of work to ensure crowdsourcing goes smoothly. Editors need to make an account and it's pretty easy to get banned for posting misinformation. Particularly controversial pages are usually locked and require special permissions to edit. For example, the page on climate change has a dedicated group of editors who fact check and remove any additions or edits that don't stand up to scrutiny. Editors can be anyone, but anyone includes experts in many different fields and others with deep knowledge of specific subject areas. So why is Wikipedia shunned so harshly?

I think there's an element of fear involved. Pretty mild fear compared to most, but it's still there. People are afraid of being wrong and the fact that Wikipedia has an obvious risk factor makes it more dangerous than other sources. Sure, a newspaper article or printed encyclopedia can also be wrong, but Wikipedia is upfront about its crowdsourced nature and that highlights the possibility of mistakes. This is both good and bad. It allows people to make an informed choice about who to trust, but it also somewhat discounts the hard work Wikipedia editors do and undermines the public trust in crowdsourced information in general. Like Wikipedia itself, this is a double-edged sword.

The public focus on Wikipedia as the poster child of crowdsourcing definitely colors how people see the whole concept. And when the popular narrative surrounding Wikipedia is that it's untrustworthy and easy to mess with for a prank, that reflects on crowdsourcing as a whole. So I have to wonder if presenting Wikipedia in a more nuanced way would make crowdsourcing as more popular option.

An example of strict Wikipedia moderation:

https://mashable.com/feature/climate-change-wikipedia/

About Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is a valuable “tool” for information aggregators. I use quotation marks around the word “tool,” because it isn’t really a tool, crowdsourcing is the effort of people. We can get into the semantics of whether or not other people’s labor constitutes as a tool some other time. Crowdsourcing is when companies or other sources of information reach out to their communities and as the people, in general, to contribute their time and effort to bettering their information. Sometimes that looks like people describing images for the Library of Congress to catalogue; sometimes it looks like people editing Wikipedia pages.

 

The reason people contribute to crowdsourcing is because they want to. Since it’s volunteer work, crowdsourcing isn’t usually paid. People may do it because they’re passionate and knowledgeable about the topic, or because they want to learn more about the topic, or to practice skills in information gathering and verification, or any other reason.

 

There are, of course, a few problems with crowdsourcing. The information is only as good as the volunteers can make it. This is why Wikipedia is often called inaccurate, or at least an unreliable source of information. The people doing the checking are doing it because they want to, not necessarily because they are qualified. And as I wrote about previously, sometimes people will mess with Wikipedia pages just for fun or to prove a point. This doesn’t mean all work done by crowdsourcing is going to be wrong, intentionally or not. Like I said, most of the people behind crowdsourcing are doing it because they’re passionate about the topic. Plenty of stuff edited, aggregated, or otherwise done by crowdsource volunteers is accurate and professional, it just isn’t necessarily verified or unbiased.

 

I go back and forth on my opinions on crowdsourcing for information. Objectively, I know that people who would put significant effort into maliciously messing up crowdsourced information aren’t that common, but I’ve personally known a few people who will go out of their way to cause problems for others, so I’m wary. I’m also aware that people’s biases—conscious or unconscious—may show up while editing. What I consider a trustworthy information source might be different than what someone in my family or workplace might consider trustworthy. So someone might go to a Wikipedia page, decide the information posted isn’t quite what they consider the truth, and edit it according to their own beliefs. Politics, politicians, and political events especially are going to bring out people’s biases.

 

I stand by the “traditional” view for learning things from Wikipedia or other crowdsourced information: It’s a good place to start when looking for something, but not something you want to be your main source of information, and definitely not something you’d cite for class or work or something professional.

Crowdsourcing Issues

 The ethics involved in crowdsourcing appears to be a topic of contention, not the least because it’s an easy way to get free labor. Of course, much of those concerns revolve around crowdsourcing as it’s used in the business world--it’s a bit harder to justify using underpaid and underprivileged workers to save a couple of bucks when you compare it to volunteers who willingly devote their time and resources to a project. The article “Crowdsourcing in the Digital Humanities” illustrates this difference quite well, in my opinion; however, I also think that there are still issues to keep in mind. 

To demonstrate how crowdsourcing can be applied to the humanities, the article lists several projects that relied on online volunteers to perform certain tasks, such as transcribing documents and cropping pictures--in other words, tasks that don’t require a lot, if any, training. This approach ensures that the bulk of volunteers are people who have some sort of interest in contributing to the project, which means that the organizers can sidestep criticism of exploitation. In addition, it also allows academics to collaborate and contribute to research undertaken by other universities, giving them a chance to broaden their horizons. While these points do sound positive, I think it’s important to keep the phrase “too many cooks spoil the broth” in mind: the amount of people involved in a project might make it harder to keep track of progress, or there might be issues with steps that require another person to act as a mediator. Still, I concede that those are issues that could happen with any group project. As a result, I think it would be a good idea to have a way to iron out certain details before the project begins. 

Works Cited

Schreibman, S., Siemens, R., and Unsworth, J. (Eds) (2016). A new companion to digital humanities. Wiley-Blackwell.

Let's Knit Together and Feel Alright: a review of the social media website for fiber crafters, Ravelry

When you picture someone who does fiber arts as a hobby or artisan -- whether that is knitting, crocheting, weaving, spinning and dying wool, making lace, and so on -- do you picture someone's grandmother? It's a common misconception. However, nowhere is it easier to see evidence of the wide variety of people who enjoy fiber arts than on the website Ravelry.com, a social networking site designed specifically for those who love a good stash of yarn.

Ravelry, founded in 2007, fulfills a few roles for fiber arts enthusiasts. The first is that of a traditional social network. In order to access the website, you need to make a (free) account. Much like that of a traditional social networking site, you will create a profile -- sharing information about your hobbies, which fiber crafts you like to do, your photo, where you are located, and a few cute get-to-know-you questions. You can also connect with other crafters -- search or browse people to follow, join groups based on nearly anything under the sun, chat with other crafters in forums, see what your friends have been posting lately, and check out upcoming fiber arts events such as festivals, classes, and meetups both near and far. Maybe you want to connect with other people who like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or knit the same sweater pattern alongside people from around the world and help each other out. You can do all of that under the Community tab on Ravelry's website. Many of these functions are very similar to more generalized social networking sites such as Facebook, and will likely feel familiar to those who have used a site like that before.

Another, more fiber arts-focused aspect of Ravelry is the My Notebook feature. Here you can track the tools you have (or want), the patterns or handspun projects you are working on, a project queue to plan out your crafting, your library of patterns or crafting books you own, your yarn stash (down to the detail of the dye lot of the yarn), and your favorites. These tools serve as a planner and inventory management system for craft supplies, providing organization and structure. If you do not enjoy any arts or crafts-type hobbies, you may not realize how easy it is to accumulate materials, supplies, patterns, tools and more. This provides an easy and accessible place to track all of this information. These tools are not just for your personal benefit, as well. You can mark items in your stash as ones your willing to trade or sell to other crafters, allowing you to get rid of extras and make room or barter for a dream item. Additionally, when you track your progress on a project, other people can see this information -- including which yarn you used, your rating of the pattern or yarn, your notes and photos, and a link to the pattern page if they want to try it themselves. This is a fantastic way to make decisions on whether a pattern might be a good fit for you, see feedback on problems with the pattern, and see how other people's finished projects turned out.

Finally, Ravelry boasts a positively gigantic database of patterns, yarn, and supplies. A typical profile of a pattern highlights where and when the pattern was published (book, magazine, Etsy listing, blog post, on Ravelry itself?), technical specifications such as the size of needle or hook, category of pattern, weight of the yarn, suggested yarn, difficulty level, language, and craft terminology type. They can also feature key words, such as character names, specific stitches or techniques, whether or not the pattern has photos and note other features about the pattern, such as the price. The pattern searching features are robust, allowing advanced searches by these traits and allowing searchers to really hone in on pattern traits they are interested in. With over 1 million patterns, these advanced searching tools are a very useful tool.

Ravelry boasts over 7 million users, a suite of tools made by fiber crafters for fiber crafters, and allows crafters from all over the world to chat and share knowledge about their crafts. This social networking site is a great example of how information needs can be met on the web.

Finding Trustworthy Sources

If you’ve been to school in the past decade or two, especially in high school or middle school, you’ve been told not to use Wikipedia as a source for a paper or research project. It makes sense; anybody can edit it, publish an article, or delete content from it. Over the years plenty of teachers have told horror stories of students trying to use Wikipedia as a source only for the entire page to have been messed with so not a single fact was true. I think it might even be an urban legend among teachers at this point. I’ve also seen posts on social media of people editing little pieces of Wikipedia articles, slowly, over time, like enlarging a state on an image of a map without changing any of the surrounding states, in the hopes that nobody notices until it’s obvious. So, it’s something we all know don’t trust Wikipedia for “official” sources. You can use it for a jumping off point, but don’t put it in a bibliography.

 

But what sites can you trust? You’ve probably heard that websites that end in .org are more reliable than ones that end in .com or .net, but this isn’t necessarily true. Anybody can get a .org domain for their website, which can be used for any purpose. Some people will use the borrowed credibility to their advantage and run scams or misinformation through their websites. Just because it’s supposed to be more reputable, doesn’t mean it is.

 

Another domain people tend to think of for trustworthy domains is a .gov site. As the domain suggests, a .gov page belongs to the government. Sometimes, if the site is for a specific state in the US, it’ll include that state’s initials in the domain. So a New York website would be “.ny.gov.” IN a similar vein, countries other than the US have country codes in place of the .gov domain, such as Canada having .ca as it’s domain. (I don’t know if this means the US-government sites have a country code when accessed from other countries.) Now, you can trust .gov websites as along as you trust whatever government is behind them. Politics will obviously color anyone’s views of what is trustworthy and what isn’t.

 

My preferred method of finding articles I trust is to use a database if I can, or to find a website that has a good reputation. I used to use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) when I was in high school but have since become rather fond of JSTOR. JSTOR does have the problem that you need to be affiliated with an educational institution, though, so it isn’t available to everyone. If you already have a school email, then you probably also have access to a school library or database, as well. Everyone can use Google Scholar, though.

Advertising and Social Media

 It was reassuring for me to find out that people have discovered how to use social media to make a profit. Sometimes, it’s good to remember the constants in life: the sky is blue, the grass is green, and there’s always people who, somewhere and somehow, are quick to jump on anything that might look like a new marketing technique. God bless ‘em. 

  I’m not knocking this practice, exactly; honestly, it’s not that much different from regular advertising, in that it’s usually out in the open and screaming for attention. Occasionally irritating, to be sure, but still obvious. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you consider, let’s say, the increased social media presence of librarians and library-based programs; sometimes, social media is the best way to advertise your services to the community, since there’s a good chance that people will see it. That said, when content creators are being paid to sponsor certain goods and services, that’s usually enough of a sign for me to raise an eyebrow and question the validity of the content being presented. 

Like advertising, sponsoring products is nothing new--if there’s a celebrity that needs cash, you can bet that you’ll be seeing them in a commercial sometime in the future. Heck, The Flintstones used to sponsor Winston cigarettes back in the 60s, so that alone tells you how much money sponsorships bring. It wasn’t authentic back then, and it’s even less authentic now; today, you have companies that send their products to reviewers on YouTube, all for the purpose of generating buzz for the company and money for the reviewer. Sponsorship like this isn’t bad, per say--business is business--but it certainly makes the content feel less genuine and organic.

Social Media and Social Engineering

Recently, I have been thinking about memes and social media. Memes, which Merriam-Webster defines as "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture" or "an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media" (Merriam-Webster), commonly take a few forms on social media. They can be items that are spread as they are (sometimes called image macros) or slightly modified to add relatable nuance to the joke, such as changing a caption to reference a character from a popular television show or celebrity. Memes can also take a different form, however. Some memes rely on answering questions or providing personal information through quizzes, questionnaires, or supplying photos or videos in response to prompts. On the surface, these can seem like a fun way to connect with your friends and remember the past (or brag about your accomplishments). You might be asked to rank the ten best concerts you have been to, mark off which unusual foods you have eaten, or share photos and answer questions about your life ten years ago. Depending on where you share your answers and who you are connected do on that particular social network, it might be a trip down memory lane for long time friends or finding out something new about a newer acquaintance.

However, what many people do not consider is that sharing pieces of information about yourself on social media, however seemingly innocuous, can make yourself vulnerable to a cybersecurity incident. Many websites that require a password also have a system of security questions on place to allow you to access your account should you forget the password. These questions are theoretically things that only you and perhaps those closest to you would know -- your father's middle name, your first grade teacher, your first pet, your favorite candy bar as a child. Some of these questionnaire-type memes, however, ask questions that either are information that might be used in security questions such as these, or questions that when taken together, particularly in conjunction with other public information about you on your social network profile for that site, allow a savvy person to put together a profile about you. This can include your full name, where you grew up, how old you are, your interests, et cetera, which can then make answers to those questions easier to crack. (For example, if the question is who was your first concert, there is a good chance that the answers will be very different for someone who is 25 versus someone who is 45.)

In a Wired article about this phenonmenon, Kate O'Neill reflects on a popular 2019 meme like this: the ten year then-and-now profile picture challenge. She semi-jokingly tweeted that providing carefully labeled photos of yourself ten years apart en masse like this was a great way to "train facial recognition algorithms on age progression and age recognition". By Facebook's account and her own conclusions, she did not think that this was ultimately the goal of this particular meme -- Facebook maintains that it was user generated and spread. However, it did provide an interesting platform on which to muse about how much information we share about ourselves with the internet, and the ways that this could come back to bite us. That's not to say that sharing a cute photo of you when you were younger or getting into a deep discussion on the best pizza toppings will necessarily result in our online banking passwords being hacked. (It's pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and pineapple, in case you were wondering.) It is a good exercise, however, to regularly think critically about what we share and evaluate just how much of those seemingly inconsequential details about us are out there in the digital space, and being mindful about what we do share.

A Crowd of Trolls

Crowdsourcing, especially in the public sector, can be a difficult proposition in my experience. We've all seen big publicity stunts that rely on crowdsourcing go horribly wrong. Turns out some people can't be trusted to help out with things that don't directly benefit them. For example, look at the whole Tay fiasco. Tay was an artificial intelligence program developed by Microsoft and set loose on Twitter to learn from regular users. It only took about a week for Tay to be shut down because Twitter trolls had taught the bot to repeat the worst things they could think of. In other words, they made a robot racist. Of course this wasn't the fault of every Twitter user, it was clearly done by a small group of dedicated trolls who actively worked to make it happen. They saw an opportunity to annoy Microsoft and took it.

But focusing on the bad side of things isn't the only way to look at crowdsourcing. There are some very good examples of crowdsourcing working, particularly in the realm of creating content. The now-classic monster Slenderman is actually an example of crowdsourcing. Slenderman was created by Eric Knudsen on an internet forum and exploded from there, morphing into a mascot for crowdsourced internet horror stories known as creepypasta. Since Slenderman wasn't connected to a published work of fiction, copyright on the character was basically nonexistent and any type of media had free range to capitalize on the trend. There are Slenderman video games, movies, YouTube series, etc. The character evolved from a simple creepy design with a few vague concepts to a whole mythology, including related crowdsourced characters and common tropes.

And for those of us who crave even more there's also the SCP Foundation, an archive of thousands of horror stories centered around a single fictional world, all crowdsourced and freely available. Some of these stories are great reads and others are... not so great, but the SCP Foundation is much more controlled than something like Slenderman. It has a moderation team and strict rules for how stories should be formatted. This sort of crowdsourcing is way safer than Microsoft's racist Twitter bot, controlling how people are allowed to submit new content and imposing a barrier of entry to prevent low effort trolling. You actually have to write a story, not just send a tweet. Of course there's still trolls, but moderation deals with them quickly and effectively.

Censorship, Misinformation and Access

     Recently I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal (which can be found here), discussing Amazon pulling from sale in print, Kindle and Audible formats a book that portrayed LGBTQ+ identities as mental illness. Immediately I thought back to a time where a patron requested us to purchase a book that had a similar theme. I felt uncomfortable with the request because I thought that the book undermined the LGBTQ+ community in a similar way that the book from the recent article did. I also know that as a library staff member, I am not there pass judgement or filter the information that they request, especially when it is something I do not agree with. We are bridges to help reduce the gap between patrons and the information they seek. But where do we as librarians draw the line with having misinformation within our stacks? Or when a patrons requests materials that are considered subjective, disputed or contentious topics? 

    I also thought that it was a very powerful move that Amazon made halting the sales of this title. According to the article, a 53% of books purchased in the United States are through Amazon, and 80% of eBook titles as well. Amazon put out a statement that they provide customers “with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content.” I am intrigued to see if going forward Amazon pulls more titles that are deemed harmful, or controversial. 

(Not So) Personal Information

When I was a kid and the internet first started being, well, the internet, everyone I knew was told never to post your name or address or any personal details online. It wasn’t safe, someone would steal your identity or kidnap you. That started to change around 2010, when I was in high school and Facebook was on its way up to the giant platform it eventually became. When I first signed up, I used a fake last name because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. My friends all had the same reaction, which was that they thought it was a little weird but understandable. Eventually I just switched my last name to my real last name.

It’s always going to be weird to me how much information we’re expected to post about ourselves online. You can find a person’s name, birthday, school, and friends through Facebook. You can find where they work and have worked on LinkedIn. I’ve never liked LinkedIn, but I’ve been told it’s necessary in order to get a professional job. It hasn’t helped me too much, and I hate having the actual location of where I work just out there for people to see.

Facebook isn’t any better. A lot of people I know don’t really use it much anymore but keep it around for the messaging system. Back in “the day” everyone had heard of Facebook-stalking. It was a regular practice for meeting new people. You’d go to their Facebook profile and learn everything about them you could by checking out their “liked” pages, friends, pictures, status updates, everything. Of course, we knew that a person’s online presence was curated to show what they wanted to the world, but it still felt like sneaking around. It’s kind of terrifying to think about how much people I’ve never actually met could know about me.

It’s not just what we willingly put online. Everything you search or like gets catalogued somewhere. People joke about how you’ll have a conversation about something and then get ads for it later on when you check your phone. “Oh, it’s listening to me,” you’ll say. The phone may or may not be monitoring your verbal conversations, but it does see what you’ve been looking at. Targeted ads track your internet activity, including google searches, videos you watch online, any post you “like.” Any site with a like button automatically reroutes the information that you’ve “liked” something back to Facebook, where the like button originated. That information is also sold to third parties, which use it for advertising. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a member of Facebook and aren’t on the Facebook website. It is redirected there anyway. So if you “like” something about a book on Twitter or favorite a movie on Letterboxd, it goes back to Facebook and you receive ads based on that information down the line. It’s definitely concerning. The fact that all “like” button information goes back to Facebook is, to my knowledge, not a well-known fact. The amount of information about you out there, whether you put it there yourself or otherwise, is staggering.

Social media and professional identities

 Where do we draw the line between personal and professional identities? A lot of it probably depends on how you define a “personal” identity and a “professional” identity, but the basic idea likely remains the same: your personal identity is what you’re like outside of work, and your professional identity is what you’re like during work. But what does it mean when your personal identity interferes with your professional identity? 

This issue existed before social media, of course. However, what makes social media unique is that, depending on what account is being used, you are granted an illusion of anonymity, which might be a problem if you fall into a certain state of mind. Not only that, but if you use social media in your daily life, it’s very easy to slip up and use language that might be acceptable for a personal account, but not a professional account. The company Twitter accounts of Wendy’s and Burger King has been mentioned by a couple of other students, but I think there’s an aspect to them that’s often overlooked: both Twitter accounts might be entertaining, but they are also EXTREMELY belligerent in ways that are, quite frankly, unprofessional. It’s one thing to use Twitter to advertise your company’s 2-for-1 burger special; it’s quite another thing to use your company’s Twitter account to cuss out your competition. 

In my opinion, it’s important to have a good grasp on both your personal and professional identities. You wouldn’t go into work with a massive hangover (or at least, you shouldn’t), so why should social media be any different?

Twitter and Purpose

People seem to be of many minds when it comes to the 'purpose' of social media. I say purpose in quotes because I don't mean the purpose of social media companies, I mean the purpose of the platforms themselves. Like all companies, Twitter and Facebook and all the rest exist primarily to make money, that purpose is about as clear as it gets. But the purpose of the platform Twitter is a lot more murky. Is it a recreational activity? A place to promote goods and services? A networking tool? Different people have different ideas of what it's truly meant to be and when those ideas conflict, things don't always go smoothly.

The concept of professionalism on social media is both loved and reviled. People are mocked for being too formal, but also mocked for being too casual in certain circumstances. I get it, it's jarring to see a respected professional say the fuck-word on Twitter and it's weird when some random person runs their account like they're holding court. Fundamentally it's a conflict of purpose. If you think social media is for fun self expression, you won't like it when someone refuses to open up in the slightest. If you think it's for promoting yourself in a professional way, you won't like very unprofessional behavior. There are social media platforms like LinkedIn that make their purpose very clear, but platforms like Twitter take a more Swiss army knife approach. Twitter is for whatever you want to use it for, which means that very different people are always going to come into conflict with each other.

The Importance of Social Media to Society During the Pandemic

     We all can recognize the importance that social media has in our lives and the role that it plays. When we look back on the last year of our lives, I think that we can all agree that social media was somewhat of a positive factor in many peoples lives. At the end of the day, social media was created to keep people connected that can't always be physically near. 

    Humans bond over shared experiences, and quarantining during a pandemic is definitely an experience people across the world had to suffer through. Social media acted as some peoples main communication between friends and family members both near and far.  Facebook introduced the "care" button during the pandemic, a new reaction showing a smiley face hugging a heart. While this may seem trivial, to many an emoji hugging a heart was a way to send an emotion and an action that was for many impossible to convey otherwise. When talking about the new emoji, Facebook product manager Misbah Uraizee explains, "Love already works really well. But we also tried to find a reaction that can work for use cases where it's not purely about love, like when someone wants to show an emotion like sympathy, support, or care. Something beyond Love.” Social media is also a great place to share content. Many were able to get lost in the TikTok trends and stay entertained that way, others were able to find a relatable comic and share it with family and friends. 

Across the Web and Down the Street

So much has been said about social media and the Internet's ability to bring people together across incredible distance -- we can wish a friend happy birthday in Belize, fire off an email to a colleague in London and then take a turn in a game of Words With Friends with your sister in California, all from the comfort of your New York home. But what happens when your social network is centered around being around the corner and down the street? NextDoor is a social networking site centered around neighborhoods, allowing communities to connect and communicate online instead of through the time-honored method of stapling a flier to a telephone pole. As you might expect, people use it in a variety of ways -- advertising their local plowing or dog-walking businesses, selling unwanted items, sharing photos of lost pets and found mementos, complaining about the person who doesn't clean up after their dog, and asking for local recommendations. During the pandemic, however, use of the site ramped up, both for better and for worse. CNN ran an article on March 18th, 2020 by Samantha Murphy Kelly, right as the United States was locking down, about how rapidly usage on the site was changing in light of the pandemic. Some users saw the site as an opportunity to make a quick buck or trade high-demand goods for their own needs. Hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies like Lysol wipes were difficult to obtain (and though we may not have realized this on March 18th, but would be nearly impossible to get for weeks and even months after this article's publication.) Selling these sought-after goods to your neighbors is an ethically dicey situation, particularly when combined with rocketing prices for the most in-demand items, but many newfound entrepreneurs used the site to profit from pandemic fears and shortages.

On the reverse of this, however, were people using the site to help out their fellow neighbors. Unlike Facebook, in which your social circle may live all over the world and are often people you already know, such as friends and family, NextDoor consists of people in your neighborhood who you may not know at all (or only know as "the person down the street who really needs to get their truck's muffler fixed.") Some people, seeing the unrest and fear swirling through their streets as the country began to understand the seriousness of what we were dealing with, used NextDoor as a way to check in on their neighbors and their community. Some reached out with offers to grocery shop, pick up medicine or run important errands for elderly people, immunocompromised people, those who were quarantined from exposure or a positive test result.

Even for users who limited their interactions strictly to online-only, the pandemic brought about a big increase in a behavior long-present in both online and in-person social behavior: the spread of misinformation. While conversations about how misinformation spreads through online communities and social networks are not new, well-known platforms with global audiences, such as Twitter and Facebook, often have at least some form of method for identifying and annotating or removing such misinformation to prevent its spread. Additionally, these user pools may contain people knowledgeable in the fields of the alleged information who may choose to dispute or discredit these posts in their comment sections or by posting to their connections in an attempt to mitigate the harm of the misinformation. On NextDoor, however, the communities tend to be smaller, as they are made up of people in a neighborhood. While a post on Facebook about a supposed COVID cure might go viral and have a nationally known and trusted medical professional respond to debunk it, that is a lot less likely on NextDoor -- unless you live down the street from a celebrity doctor.

NextDoor may make the internet feel a lot more local, but the COVID pandemic has highlighted some of the holes in the plan. This site can bring people together and encourage neighbors to help each other, but it also is a place where scams, schemes and misinformation can spread.

Social media and the People

 In this age of technological advancement, it shouldn’t be surprising that people are using social media to “connect” with others. When I set up my Instagram account (against my will), I immediately received a message from someone whom I haven’t seen since middle school, which came as a shock to me. It wasn’t that I was shocked that somebody from my past found me on social media--I was just surprised that she found me so quickly.

The ability to find people with a mere search bar is one of the most fascinating things about social media, as well as the most dangerous. It’s all well and good if you’re looking up someone you used to be friends with, or if you’re just looking for that casual friendship that comes from liking and boosting certain posts; it’s quite another thing when the searcher is somebody who has less than benevolent intentions. That’s not even getting into the friend requests from people you either don’t know or don’t like, or the people make social media their own personal battlefield. In my opinion, social media is a tool that you have to be careful with, which is a definition that varies from person to person.

DM For Cheap Promo: Native Advertising Disguising Itself As Reviews

If you currently use Twitter, you might have clicked on a viral tweet or two, scrolled down, and saw the author of the original tweet post something about a green tea face peel or something along those lines. There are a few things for sale that typically pop up in these scenarios, such as a stuffed squid you can turn inside out to make look happy or sad, or a galaxy lamp. There is always a link to buy them. For awhile I didn’t understand why I was seeing these. For a while I thought they were just really popular products that consumers felt strongly about. I was wrong. It is, of course, a “new” type of advertising. The people whose tweets go viral are being paid to advertise these products.

 

It isn’t really surprising. As the digital landscape changes, advertising needs to change to keep up. It’s well known that on Instagram, companies will hire social media influencers to sell various products, whether explicitly in an ad or by having the product in posts. On YouTube, companies will sponsor videos for popular creators. The same sort of advertising would have to crop up on Twitter eventually. The biggest difference, to my understanding, is that in the other cases with Instagram and YouTube, the company and the influencer have more of a professional relationship. There are often contracts involved. But with the Twitter case, it’s usually a one-off deal. You go viral once and a company contacts you, asks you to plug their product below your viral tweet for some quick cash, and that’s it. Sometimes people will even announce they’re willing to sell space under their viral tweet by saying something along the lines of “DM for cheap promo.” Reading that once is actually what tipped me off to the fact that the product tweets were advertising. It’s not frowned upon to do this. In today’s “hustle” culture, people are encouraged to take whatever deals they can for extra money. Making a quick buck off a good joke or witty observation is fine.

 

If the Instagram and YouTube promotion deals are official, with contracts, then the Twitter users making promotions like this are like freelancers. They aren’t officially tied to the companies or anything, but they still do a bit of work for them in exchange for money. It’s all part of how advertising is adapting. Native advertising needs to look more and more like word-of-mouth advertising. People are more likely to purchase something or try a service if they’ve seen or heard good reviews than if they just see the advertisement. By camouflaging these advertisements as endorsements and reviews, the companies are using social capital they wouldn’t have otherwise. However, it can’t pass for this forever. People will realize, probably faster than I did, that since the same few products keep popping up in the same ways, that it’s native advertising. To my knowledge, the companies using this advertising technique aren’t big companies. It’s not like Nike or Apple are doing this. It’s companies that need as many people to see their products for as cheap as possible.

Dunbar's Number

One of the most interesting ideas in this unit's lectures was Dunbar's number, a concept I've seen floated before using other words. If you don't remember what I'm talking about, it's the idea that people can only maintain about 150 meaningful relationships at a time. Where I've seen it before was in an old article from the humor website Cracked, where the author proposed the concept independent of any academic knowledge and dubbed it the monkeysphere, since it's a holdover from early human evolution. It's really cool to see that this idea, which I found very insightful, actually has some scientific basis.

The humor article in question wasn't about social media exactly, it was more about the problem of online harassment. Back then it was mostly an issue in the comment sections of articles, but constant social media usage has really pushed it to the forefront in recent years. I don't mean that in the 'cancel culture' way you hear from politicians. People talking back to those in power is a perfectly normal political process. I mean harassment of ordinary people who don't have power. The original article I read introduced the 'monkeysphere' aka Dunbar's number to explain why so many people feel comfortable being awful to strangers online. In short, their brains are out of room for new people and make it hard to see some random online stranger as a full human.

I have a lot of experience with online harassment, mostly in fandom contexts, and definitely true that the people who participate in it don't see their targets as human beings. There's a very strong level of dehumanization required to do some of the awful stuff I've seen and most of them have no trouble expressing it in explicit terms. They will say the words "you're not human" and show all signs that they fully believe it. So while Dunbar's number only applies to meaningful relationships rather than larger questions of worldview, I think there's probably a logical extension of the theory that deals with seeing the humanity of others as well. It could be a larger number than 150 or something more complicated that includes stuff like in-group out-group dynamics, but I agree that the human brain most likely has a hard limit to the number of people it can understand at once. At some point, we just stop thinking of others as fully human. Most of the time that's really not too important, but it can definitely get dangerous.

Social Media Highlights: Letterboxd

When you think of a social networking site, you might think of Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Perhaps you think of earlier incarnations of the websites that digitally connect us, such as Myspace or Friendster. But as the social web has developed and connected so many of us to each other, many social networking sites beyond the most popular and generalist ones have popped up, including ones centered around a common interest -- such as watching movies.

Letterboxd (letterboxd.com) is a social networking sites for movie aficionados. The free membership allows you to track, rate, and review movies you have seen, make lists of movies for yourself or other people to browse, follow other people for their reviews and activity, 'like' lists and reviews, and keep a diary of your film-watching. Upgrading to a pro membership (currently $19 USD per year) most notably allows you to have no third-party ads and access to additional statistics about your film watching and site activity, as well as filtering films by what streaming services they are on and getting notified when films you want to watch become available on said streaming services. Additionally, some minor but useful actions also become available to you such as pinning reviews on your account, filtering your activity feed by type of post, duplicating lists, and changing your username, which are nice extras. There is one additional account level type, the patron account ($49 USD per year); this allows you primarily to visibly support the website via your name's inclusion on the patron website, some fun cosmetic upgrades such as being able to add a background to your account, and early access to beta features on the site. While this final account type would likely mostly appeal to power users and does not offer the practical upgrade of features that the pro account upgrade does, the perks do offer a fun way to support the site and flex on your fellow movie buffs a little bit.

It should be said that I am not truly a movie buff in the way that most of Letterboxd's users seem to be. However, even as a casual movie fan, this website offers interesting content. While browsing the site for this review, I found myself very drawn to the user-created Lists section. These lists seem to run the gamut from informative to humorous to extremely niche and back again. As a sample, the top three lists on the highlighted display of lists that are "Popular this week" are:

• Guide to Film Movements (History of Art Cinema)
• All films Scorsese mentions in his "Il Maestro" essay
• Movies Jared Leto should be nominated for

The last one is an empty list and at time of this posting, has garnered over 2700 likes and 100 comments, dwarfing the responses to the other two lists for the week.

One other thing that I found both notable and delightful about Letterboxd is that you do not actually have to have an account to browse the content users have posted. So if you are not a huge movie buff but your brother-in-law keeps raving about how good a certain flick is, or if you are a public librarian suddenly finding themselves needing to bolster your library's collection of horror films when your tastes tend more towards the Rom-Com section, Letterboxd would allow you to browse reviews for specific titles and see how fans of a genre categorize and review both the titles you have heard of and the ones you know nothing about. Tech-savvy movie buff patrons might also appreciate the website suggestion for tracking their personal watch lists and finding new films as well. Overall, I think that Letterboxd is a neat site that integrates useful social networking site features into a site that can bring film fans together.