Does Drama Trend?

    Yes. Saved you from reading the rest of this article I suppose. But for real though, let's dive a bit deeper into this and really think about what kind of drama circulates on social media. We already know how polarized the posts and comments can be from political conversations on the internet and those typically just end up with people being spiteful rather than productive. While this certainly has been amplified by social media, being cutthroat about your political beliefs is not exactly new. So what else trends drama-wise? Influencers. Cancel culture and accountability culture seem to have increased influencer popularity, but of course, this kind of publicity is usually harmful to the influencer's careers rather than actually boosting their career. 

    More of a personal note than anything, but I think accountability culture is good as it makes people take responsibility for their past actions, but also does not go to the extreme ends of trying to delete a person off the platform if they have grown past it. Don't get me wrong, there are cancelable topics that we should not tolerate whatsoever, but there are also ways that people can grow as a person from their past mistakes. The internet is not as forgiving it seems and unless you have been a perfect human being all your life, someone will find something in your past to cancel you if you are an influencer on social media. We might not always recognize the impact of our digital footprint, but the content that you post to your social media can at any given moment come to haunt you should someone actively want to find something against you, especially if you are an influencer where people have access to a plethora of Tweets and other posts. I mention Tweets specifically because it seems as though Twitter has turned into the platform to specifically deal with this type of drama against influencers. As the Reddit user, u/tehsmittenkitten comments in the subreddit r/nosurf, "I deleted it [Twitter] months ago and never felt better. I would wake up and see something on there that would upset and it ruined my whole day. That’s when I realized I needed to change. Twitter is toxic because it’s much harder to control your feed compared to Reddit and Instagram (which is also toxic). It also feeds off drama because that’s what gets you 'clout'. I will never go back to Twitter even if it was funny at times, the bad just out weighs the good. Not to mention what a time consumer it was!" 

Just your typical week on Twitter

   We can see that drama, specifically from influencers, tends to trend the most on platforms on Twitter and it seems as though there are subgroups forming from this weird trend. People who defend and "stan" the influencer in question, the people who dislike the influencer and want them off the platform, people who cover the drama, and people who are actively annoyed by this and want nothing to do with the drama. The internet drama will circulate regardless on social media though and there truly is no way of avoiding it entirely. However, Twitter does seem to host more of this dramatic content and other influencers will usually highlight this drama and talk about it as if it were news (hello Keemstar) or in podcast-style (hello H3H3) or even a simple Twitter post and comment reading (hello Bowblax). Influencer drama, in a basic sense, can be broken down as follows: Two budding parties fight on a platform on Twitter, people join in on the conversation to make it trending, a "drama" channel covers their fight, more people join in and thus make the drama trending even more than it was before,, some sort of resolution/stalemate occurs while people who were not active in the conversation get annoyed at petty influencer drama.

Yes I will admit, I even watch "drama" channels (but I like how Bowblax is not overdramatic with his content either)

     Accusations and hate spread like wildfire it seems when it comes to influencers and drama. The strange phenomenon that occurs is that this drama, as harsh and publicly as it was in the beginning, seems to have a short lifespan... until it doesn't. Let me clarify that for a bit by comparing two drama scenarios from the Bowblax channel. The fight between Trisha Paytas and Nikita Dragun lasted approximately 7 hours on Twitter and then it sort of fizzled out. That's not to say that it is not still being talked about here and there, but the majority of the conversation happened during that time frame and then it seemed to almost abruptly stop. The James Charles one however seems to have an exponential rate of being talked about as now news outlets and bigger media channels are talking about the situation more than ever. This is what I meant by most of the drama seems to have a short lifespan until it doesn't for bigger controversies and influencers like James Charles. 

     Whatever your take might be on Influencer drama, you cannot deny that these stories do trend on platforms like Twitter and YouTube. There are many people who thrive on this content and many who are annoyed and have actually stayed off Twitter to avoid it. One thing is for certain, as long as influencers exist, the drama will seem to follow them in some shape or form and it is not going away. Better to delete all social media while you still can before you get sucked into the drama and question what you are doing with your life as you mindlessly scroll through subtweets based off of influencer drama.

The pros and cons of protest devised through social media

    We learned this week about the pros and cons of the protests of the BLM movement and the #Metoo movement. These are both great movements with great intentions, but sadly they do have some downfalls to them both. We see downfalls in the way that they are interpreted by the actions through protest. Mostly everyone knows that black lives matter and can agree on that. Protests are needed to make a statement and show when change is needed. Protests shouldn't be used to tear others down and destroy lives, businesses, and buildings. In my opinion, this isn't how you are going to get someone to agree with your movement. 

    There are many pros of gathering a group of protestors through social media. The easiest part of devising a protest through social media is garnering a following. It's simple to make your message clear through social media and find people that agree with your message. You can create a social media page that has all of the values your organization represents, so know one interprets your message the wrong way. If someone thinks that your organization represents something different than what they perceive, then there could be confusion throughout your movement. Another pro of gathering a group of protesters through social media is that it is much easier to get your supporters together in one place at the same time. This makes it easier to get a larger group to show that your movement has numbers, and people are behind your message. You can post pictures on your social media page of the protest to show support of your message to garner new members. Pulling out ads for your Facebook group so that the friends of your fans can see the group helps as well, and this can attract new members. As you can see, there are a lot of pros when it comes to gathering protesters through social media.  

    While there are pros to gathering protesters through social media, there are also a couple of cons. It is easy to face backlash through social media. Everyone always has something to say, and everyone seems to be a critic nowadays. If you are the type of group with the mindset of " you're either with me or against me" then you are going to have many people trying to rile you up to make your organization or movement look bad. You have to be careful what your leaders are doing or saying on social media, because one slip up can cause a lot of harm to a movement. If there is a protest set up through your group and people from another group start causing destruction and harm, it is important you disaffiliate yourself from them as fast as you can. If you don't, people will start to slowly distance themselves from the movement because they don't want to associate themselves with that. Another con of gathering protesters through social media is that people may say they are with your movement when they really aren't. You may seem like you have enough protesters riding with your movement, when in reality no one wants to be in public representing it. 

    In conclusion, there are most definitely pros and cons to gathering protesters through social media. It's how you deal with them which is the most important part. I think that before an organization tries to gather protesters through social media, they should have a plan. They should have a plan for of the protest goes good or bad. There are always going to be bad apples in a movement, and organizations need to distance themselves from those to not deter from the main message. If the organization doesn't distance themselves from those bad apples, then it will hurt the organization and the message. This is what hurt the BLM movement the most. Encouraging violence to get the message out there actually hurt what was supposed to be a great movement and message. There are always going to be people who criticize your movement, but it's imperative to be open to criticism to expand your audience. 

#TidePodChallenge

 Hi everyone, it's me AGAIN!

    Do you ever wonder what sparks someone's mind into doing silly social media challenges, and by silly I mean challenges like - the ice bucket challenge or even challenges like standing in the mirror with someone else and turning the light of to then you have both swapped clothes - aka #FlipTheSwitch. It's viral challenges like these that are somehow so fascinating to us. 

    Today's society is so gullible to do anything trendy. TikTok for example is the new creator in developing random challenges for kids and even adults. The simple sixty second videos are easy to follow and quick to learn. You will see a lot and I mean....A LOT of kids, teens, and even adults doing TikTok dances publicly (how embarrassing - I know). The reason so many social media challenges become so popular and successful is because they are so easy to follow. Especially when you create a hashtag, like from my example above - #FlipTheSwitch - these challenges will somehow pop up on your "for you page" (#fyp) because they are what is trending at the moment. Most of the challenges are supposed to be fun and inclusive for everyone, but in my opinion most of them are just REALLY silly. Let's not even get me started on the thirty day song challenge (LIKE WHY), which was where people would post a song of their choosing each day for ~thirty days~. On all of your social media platforms, usually things of your likes and interest will pop up even if you are not following them. 

    Social media challenges are what cures boredom for society nowadays, they have especially carried us through the Coronavirus pandemic. Creating social media challenges has been a way for many people to creatively pass the time during the pandemic. Challenges are so popular now that even Instagram added a "challenge sticker" for people to put-on their stories to make it easier for people to follow the challenges (this is similar to a hashtag, but more creative). There are many different challenges but there are challenges that can bring the family together, challenges to create art, and like I said above - challenges like dance routines. The choreographed dance routines on TikTok are annoyingly popular. Honestly, if you were at any public place and you looked around, I am almost positive you would see one person filming themselves dancing with their phone propped up on a wall. There are literally people who have gotten famous and get PAID for doing these dancing (that is crazy to me). Can you just imagine dancing for your own phone for just sixty second and then getting paid for it? 

    Let's talk about another popular challenge, the challenge you have ALL been waiting for.....the #TidePodChallenge. For some odd reason, people won't necessarily consider the fact that eating laundry detergent could kill you. Have you ever heard of clout? Well, these people do dumb and harmful social media challenges just for CLOUT. No one is sure how this challenge started, but the point is that there are people in our world that will do anything to get views on social media. Now I have a question for whoever is reading this (Hi Dr.Vrooman), do you think that there is a problem with social media challenges? Of course there are different levels of severity for each challenge, but does not doing a less severe social media challenge still create a high severe social media challenge? Obviously it is sad that there are people out in the world that participate in these challenges for fame, but the world is still giving these people attention which could be part of the problem as well. 

   Sadly, we all know that in today's society anyone will do absolutely anything they see on social media. Although most of the challenges that are created are very silly and dumb, they can actually be very entertaining. There are a few social media challenges that are fun, inclusive - and maybe if it is a workout challenge, good for you. With that being said, no matter what challenge you or someone else has created, just for heaven's sake make sure you don't send yourself to the hospital! #TidePodChallenge!