what is that? "trending"

 We have finally arrived at Unit Two!

Woo-hoo! For the first post of this Unit, we will be talking about virality and spreadability. It’s not hard to know what's up with the world, we all know what's trending, either a song, video, dance moves, style, there are infinite things to go viral with, heck since the superbowl the number of memes have increased! From all this, I want to know your thoughts on what makes you want to share things, either with a few people, close friends, maybe even to the unknown public? Is it “friendship-based” or “interest-based”? What are the feelings you get from sharing something be it political, opinional, or simply for the sake of your personal image -even the tête-à-tête it inspires with another.

If you could post one thing to have go viral, what would it be and why do you think something like that would spread far and wide to many other people?

Social Media and our 'lack' of empathy

In the most recent tragic events that happened in Fort Worth, I caught myself thinking "This could have easily been avoided if the necessary precautions were taken". Instead of taking into consideration the lives that were lost, changed, and quite possibly forever ruined,  I was simply thinking of ways this can be avoided in the future. I first thought that I was a monster for not being able to empathize with these people, but Social Media has changed the ability to empathize with human beings. Do we simply not care, or do we choose to overlook these issues? Many researchers connect the inability to empathize directly to social media but with this technology giving us the ability to communicate with others with others with ease, why is our ability to empathize challenged?

Social Media creates this bridge between Creator and Viewer which, at first glance, should facilitate the ability to place themselves in someone else's shoes from the sheer amount of content we are presented with, but sometimes this content can harm us emotionally to the point where we view terrible things all the time. According to a blog post in Move,  we as human beings can suffer from compassion fatigue since we view the same (but different) event. Although this can be seen as indifference, it's just us shutting out the reaction since feeling bad about someone aside oneself can become emotionally exhausting, and by accepting that the world is a bad place where bad things happen, we can save a lot of emotional energy.

Candlelight Vigil held for the victims of the Sutherland Springs shooting

Empathetic concern is ironically the reason why many tend to empathize less and less with the world. In a theses by Franklin Thomas from Georgia Southern, this concern leads to an altruism that is selfless and focused more on reducing the distress of others than on reducing one’s own distress, but what happens when this concern is something that seems to be repeating itself nonstop?  It begins to become something too big to bear, and one gets tired of carrying someone's else's cross. But sometimes, we are so uneducated towards the issue at hand that we use our own personal beliefs to determine between right and wrong which results in ignorance, which tends the main issue in every aspect of social media. 

Similarity and group membership can also influence the expression of empathy and with the media portraying the fronts of war between 2 groups that are in conflict, we then begin to take sides for the group we share more in common with. The Black Lives Matter movement was a huge event that showcased peoples true color. The movement was popular amongst the common population since many were shown that life for the average African American is challenged with everyday racism, much of it that we are not aware of. This lead to the other side of the argument, with many battling the movement by saying All Lives Matter! Which although is 'true' since no life is more important than another, this hugely overlooks the issue of brutality against the African American population and creates an ignorance towards the issue at hand. People were tired of feeling like second class citizens compared to the Caucasian population, and many were aware of this negative behavior but since it was normalized in American Society, chose to overlook it. When they decided enough was enough, many took the streets to protest peacefully yet those on the other side of the argument saw these people as rioters and criminals, seemingly unempathetic towards their cause. 

University of Chicago students protesting for the BLM

Twitter is notorious for unempathetic behavior with the defense of 'Chill out, it's a joke'. At times we thrive off someone else's misery and give not much thought about it past the retweet, but this active form of social ignorance can branch out to subtle parts of our social behavior since the idea that we trade our offline personality for our online personality is myopic. We are subjects to shocking media so often that one views this media to the point where its normalized, but we have the ability to not be affected but know we have to somehow enact change in this sort of medium. We can accept that things are happening, but fighting this "Normalized" behavior can begin a snowball effect of many stating their distaste towards the media presented which can lead to major movements. 

In conclusion, our inability to empathize with others can stem from many things, ranging from the exhaustion of our empathy, choosing to ignore certain things because of its sensitive or controversial nature, to simply accepting that things happen. Although many of these actions can be perceived as negative, in the end it's how we cope with bad things happening around us and if one is used to these bad things happening, why would they choose to care if it's going to happen again?

But do you REALLY like it?

Do you ever just wonder why you have social media, why do you post pictures, why do you share pictures on your stories, or like photos of others. What is the point of it? Really think about it for a second... (ill wait................) 

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Okay cool, now that we have thought about why we do it now we have to be honest with ourselves on if we do it for ourselves or if we do it for society. Because everyone else is doing it does not mean that we have to do it as well or even have the social media platform. I personally look back to all my posts and things that I share and like and I would have to say that I post to remember all the memories and fun times. I do like photos for the aspect of just liking them and to keep scrolling because I like EVERYTHING that is on my feed, even if I do not like it or like the person that posted it (WHATT?) yeah, how does that make any sense? These are the things that we are diving into and really trying to find out why we do it. I realize do not like Twitter I can not stand it and I had it when I got a smartphone because everyone else had it and all my friends used it. I never like Twitter I do not like the aspect of it and therefore I got rid of it. I do have many other social media platforms to begin with because you weren't cool if you didn't have it or it was the first thing you got when you had a smartphone. 

While I was trying to write this I just posted on my instagram story about my 17s club volleyball team taking 1st place again this weekend. Its the little things that we do not notice. But i did it so everyone can see that our team is amazing, I love my players and that their coach appreciates their hard work as well. No matter what it is that you are posting are you doing it for a personal purpose or for your own self? Do you record them for the popularity, the likes and views on the pictures and videos, or are you doing it to look back on and for those who you are posting about not caring about the likes and views? It is a hard thing to realize but when we know our purpose I think we can see the selfishness in us or the selflessness in us. 

Are you a selfish person for all the likes or are you a selfless person to do it for yourself? I am interested to know based on the fact that we will be talking about this topic for the next couple of weeks. 

Why Do We Share Photos?

 Hey Everyone,

This week in class we discussed why we choose to post pictures and the importance of what it means to post a picture. This concept goes along with our main topic of the class which is Meads theory of "I" and "Me" and how we view ourselves. When posting pictures there are a lot of different reasons why we could be posting a picture (which I will talk about later on) but for the majority of reasons we are mostly posting a picture or sharing something to somebody to try and make ourselves look good or to impress. When we are posting pictures or sharing memes and tweets to our friends, we are thinking about "is this gonna be funny"? or "how would people like this"? We post and share things for the satisfaction of how people will react to the things we share and post which has become a constant norm for social media in society today. This is a direct sign of Meads theory being the "Me", because we are posting and sharing things to make people see us or to get a reaction of others which is part of that "Me" that Mead talks about. This is showing that we are wanting to see how other people see us and we want people to see us as funny or having good taste in a picture we post which is exactly what Mead talks about.

We see this in social media as a lot of different social media influencers will post crazy or random things all over there feed to try and get reactions from there followers and other influencers to boost the "clout" of there name. One person who is really good at this is Travis Scott, he will post super random things on all of his platforms such as twitter, instagram and snapchat to throw people off or get his fans guessing about what he is doing. For Example:

Travis Scott is known for posting super random things and saying random things all over his social media. He will say random things like the last tweet on the picture from up above saying "who drew the first Santa Claus". Also for example on his instagram posting random pictures of the desert or just random images like cups, glasses, fans just super random things that nobody knows why or even understands. You have to wonder, why does he do this or what is the purpose for this outlandish photos? This is exactly what we were talking about in class this week as to why do we post and share the things that we do, and for Travis Scott I think it is definitely to gain puplisety and to gain more followers as it leaves people confused and wondering what is going on. He is doing this because of Meads theory of "I" and "Me" as he is only posting these pictures for the purpose of his followers and to see how people like him. I feel like this is exactly what most of us do with our social media cites as well. We are posting for other people and the likes and follows as to what we post, rather than posting the things that we just want to post because we want to ourselves. We do these things to impress the people of social media and try tp gain this "fame" that everyone is trying to get, rather than just posting and sharing the things we like and care about and not for the likes of others.

We can see that almost all the things we go through with social media lead back to Mead theory of "I" and "Me". We are trying to impress people and see how other people see and look at us which is the "Me" rather then just focusing on who we really are and want to be, to post and share the things we want that show people who you are and not who others see you. We do so much to impress others as to posting pictures and sharing memes and tweets just to get the satisfaction of others, when in reality its our own satisfaction we really seek.

The Internet is a Disease? How Fitting...

     It just seems that talk about something spreading amongst people or something being viral cannot escape the internet these days. Fortunately, I will be talking about something that will not make us social distance or wear masks, in fact, this has been a topic of discussion for many years. Today we will be talking about the contrast of two different ideas, "spreadability" and "virality". These two concepts explain why pieces of media are shared and why people are attracted to certain types of content as well.

    Virality vs Spreadability

    We can understand the idea of a picture, video, or other pieces of media being shared because it seems entertaining or because it aligns with our beliefs. However, this idea actually goes deeper than many people realize when it comes to why we share these pieces of media. You more than likely have heard of something "going viral" as people share these pieces of media on their social media pages or with their friends and it quickly explodes on the internet to the point where almost anyone with some social media account has heard of it. Many marketers seem to want to try and reach this explosive sharing of content for their company, in a positive way of course. After all, who would not want their product or service to be shared in large numbers? This idea of "viral marketing" though is sort of an oxymoron though as viral pieces of media are not supposed to be active necessarily. The idea of virality comes from a passive audience being "infected" by a "virus", which of course would be the media itself. One reason why people share this kind of content is that they want to entertain their audience in a performative way. Think back to the GrubHub ad that went viral not long after its release. As of writing this, the video has over 9 million views, which is fairly impressive for an ad as people usually do not go out of their way to share company ads. However, that does not mean that virality will equal to follows or even people caring about your brand. As Tiffany Luther states in her article, "viral content is not great at sustaining interest for a long time, but more of a 15 minutes of fame reaction". This is especially true for the Grubhub company. They only have 44.8k subscribers on their YouTube channel and have a massive dislike to like ratio, which tells us quite simply that people thought this ad sucked and it sucked so bad that people shared it. Of course, we might be more familiar with viral content like the infamous Numa Numa kid dancing on YouTube, which really had no rhyme or reason to be shared except the fact that people found it entertaining and loved the energy of the guy dancing in the video.

A little nostalgia for us who remember the early days of YouTube

    So, what exactly about spreadability? It's probably not exactly right to think of it as virality's opposite. Instead, imagine it as virality's more active cousin that does not rely on the terms of "infectivity" or "contamination". Audiences, in this case, play a more active role in what they want to share instead of serving as a carrier as the book, Spreadable Media by Jenkins, Ford & Green would suggest. An audience based on spreadability means that the audience shares the content because it was their choice based upon their own agendas, what they value, or for more personal reasons. With that in mind, Tiffany Luther also tells us, "shareable content is targeted to a specific group of people who overtime will trust your brand's opinions and they will continuously be inspired to take action (share)". This what companies really should be striving to achieve. It would be nearly impossible to interest EVERY single person on this planet in a certain product or service, so instead of trying to achieve virality (which is not necessarily bad, but not the right way to market), finding what your target audience is within your niche is much more effective for spreadability. 

Reacting to a Reaction Video

My favorite reaction channel, which features a couple reacting to different pieces of media

    An interesting phenomenon that seems to play off both of these ideas is reaction channels and videos. If you think about it, reaction channels like to react to content that is "viral" as many people know about it, which is how they ultimately get views and make their content shareable. More than that though, the reason why their content seems to be popular amongst people is that we love to see other people's reactions to certain pieces of media. We want to see if they react similarly to us or if they have a different viewpoint from what we have seen before. Mirror neurons might also be able to explain this as neuroscientist Lisa Aziz-Zadeh tells us in an article by arstechnia that mirror neurons '"support a system that could simulate other people's actions onto one's own motor representations, it is thought that they contribute to social understanding"'. This might explain why we resonate with people and their reactions to media, it all comes down to how we socially interact with media and want others to join in on seeing it with us. I would even argue that it really also depends on the reactor themselves. As I mentioned above, Dwayne N Jazz is my favorite reaction channel on YouTube. I even watch their videos even if I have not seen the original video because I love their energy and dynamic together. They make new content out of the content we are both viewing, which is not too distant from the feeling we feel when we are watching a movie with family or friends.

    All this talk about things spreading and becoming viral may seem a bit off in today's climate, but this is certainly a more pleasant conversation to have than talking about rising Covid cases. We see that virality is more passive and we are infected by that media, whether we like it or not. Shareability is more active as we want to share that content based upon our ideologies and interests. If you ever want to see a unique blend of these two, reaction videos are typically the best way to see these combine in a unique way. Whether you realize it or not, we are sharing content constantly and we want people to see what we see. Yes, you are actually more social on the internet than you realize, even if you never go outside and see the grass as "realistic textures".

Sharing is Caring

Hi again, 

    Today I'm going to be talking about the dynamics of sharing posts and pictures on social media. For starters, have you ever asked yourself why you are publicly sharing a post or do you just do it without thinking about it? This is something I personally REALLY had to think about. While digging into the question I looked back on the last thing that I shared on my Instagram - which was Taylor Swift's post about redoing her old album Fearless. Now I posted this because I freaking love T-Swift and I will be a fan until I die (that was dramatic I know). I shared this news of hers because I am obviously very excited to listen to her album every day, but then I started to notice that everyone and their mom was also sharing it and that made me feel cool and relatable. Now, that wasn't the reason I originally shared the post but then I shared ANOTHER one to make me feel even cooler than everyone else and their mom, right! This just goes to ask the question of- are we really sharing for ourselves or so we can be relatable to others?

    Social media plays a big part of who a person is nowadays. It is really easy to share your opinions now without them directly coming from you, which we would call this sharing. Sharing can mean retweeting on Twitter, reposting someone's picture (or your own) to your story, or sharing a post on Facebook. But something that isn't really talked about when we talk about sharing is "liking" a post or picture. Politics would be a good example for this because they will always be a controversial topic and depending on what you share or even like, people will notice. During the election I noticed people tweeting things like "Unfollowing everyone on my feed who likes Trump's posts", so even a like can count as unintentionally sharing your interest in something. It's also crazy to me that what you like is physically not a private thing on some social media platforms. Have you ever had a friend who would fight with their significant other because they would go through their followers' pictures to see what pictures they liked? BIKINI PICTURES are a very hot topic when talking about this, because some girlfriends believe it to be disrespectful if their significant other is liking a scandalous photo.

    On a deeper level, many people will share pictures and posts that are from a loved one who passed, or maybe even someone who just is not in their life anymore. I can't speak for everyone who shares these posts or pictures - but I know I do it out of remembrance. Not to get too personal here, but anyone who follows me on social media probably sees the same photos of my mom and I every year for her birthday. This is just my way of wishing her a happy birthday in heaven, so instead of reposting these pictures every year on my feed I will share them to my story instead. I especially will share things when I am sad and grieving and it's not to seek attention, it's more of a coping mechanism to help myself. I would say that this way of sharing is a very healthy thing, even if you don't want to talk about the situation or to that person - you still are able to look back on your cherished memories. 

    The big question is simply why do we as humans enjoy sharing posts? There can be many reasons for sharing a post like "the sunset looks pretty" or "Nick Jonas looks so hot so I just had to share". But would that mean that we are self centered in the fact that sharing the post was really for yourself even though it was made to be seen publicly? This is something I have spent time thinking about because I do this all the time. I will share things on my Instagram stories because I like them or because I think they are cool, even though I know that people are just going to skip over my story anyways. In all honesty, sometimes there is no actual meaning for a post at all, and that's perfectly okay. I wouldn't say that this makes you selfish at all, because it's your social media accounts and if people don't like what you post then there is a giant unfollow button right around the corner. 

    Sharing on social media is the perfect way to connect people to certain things of your interests, to share songs, to share amazing pictures, etc. Without sharing, what the heck would social media even be?! As a human, you are entitled to your own likes, dislikes, and opinions. My mom always told me "sharing is caring", so whatever you want to share on social media- go for it.

   

Mead in music

    Music is an activity that brings people of all walks of life together which means one bottom line for people who are in a space to assist with the marketing and production of the artist work, profit. Because of this many times we see a stark contrast between what an artist is prior and post record deal. There are countless examples of this throughout history like when The Beatles signed with their personal record label, Apple Records and subsequently started making more groundbreaking and psychedelic music. More recent examples would be the transition made by childhood stars such as Harry Styles and rapper Mac Miller, in Styles case choosing to defy gender norms by wearing dresses and in Mac's case leaving the space of commercial rap in order to pursue his own view of music. 

    Now you may be wondering what it is that all of these music references have to do with Mead's concept of "I" and "Me". These are proof of the concept working before our vary eyes as these young stars are many times subjected to tactics used in order to make them as commercially appealing as possible, yet reject them as soon as they find that they cast an influence and their platform allows them to call their own shots. Artist calling these shots are the "I" at work, choosing to reject what may have gained them notoriety in order to pursue a more authentic path. But one may ask what gives an artist today an opportunity to dictate terms and headlines in ways they may not have been able to in the past? The answer is social media not in just your traditionally thought of sights like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but in your entire life. 

    For the vast majority of people I could ask where they listen to music and they would say either Spotify, Apple music, or maybe even youtube. Though these may not immediately seem like social media sights in the classic perception as you typically don't have as intimate of an experience on these forms as you would on an Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat they are some of the most relevant and influential of all social media sights. These Music streaming services have boomed in popularity and continue to grow exponentially. Statista notes that since 2019 worldwide use of these streaming services has risen from around 300,000 to over 400,000 people. This mirrors the baby and cultural boom of post-war America in the mid twentieth century in the way that the introduction of these new ideas have significantly altered the way we intake media as a society. Contrary to prior generations, we intake music at the rate which we desire. This has lead to a cultural divide within large factions of Americans that can be attributed to the individuality or the "I" in Mead's terms afforded by the ability intake media at our heart's content. These factions can be seen in the fan bases of artists previously deemed too "out of the box" or "unconventional" for mainstream audiences. Examples include but are not limited to the ascendance of Tyler, The Creator, the rebranding of Miley Cyrus, and the onslaught of Post Malone.

 

    Harry Styles started out his professional music career as a contestant on the once critically acclaimed "X-Factor" TV show. During the show he was placed in a group that go on to be called One Direction. They were a boy band in the classic sense of the word. This of course means that the fundamental part of their marketing campaign was to sell male dominant sex to little girls. If you're feeling a bit unsettled, you should. Corporations profited off of this for over five years. As one would hope the band grew uneasy in this fact, and after the secession of Zayn Malik from the group, the band was poised for a breakup. Enter Harry's solo career. He released his first self titled album in 2017, however we would not see the transition to the more groundbreaking Harry for a couple more years. Upon the release of "Fine Line" his second studio album, he started to embrace a more free-spirited personality. For instance, he started publicly wearing unorthodox clothing for a male. His transition continues to snowball to this day as he grows further and further from the mainstream marketing gurus, opting to express what he finds in self reflection. As he puts more of his own personal touch on his music, people have responded well, shooting Harry up the pop charts and into everyone's Spotify rewind because of it's personal and intimate feel derived from Harry's "I".

    Malcolm Mccormick (aka Mac Miller, aka Larry Lovenstein) was a Pittsburg based rapper that first came on the scene in the early 2010s. His original art focused on upbeat music and good vibes. His following would grow exponentially during this phase, leading him to sign with Rostrum Records in 2010 following the lead of Wiz Khalifa, another famous Pittsburg rapper of the day. His style, however, would go through many transitions throughout his career. These transitions directly mirrored his emotions throughout his life. His music never failed to project what type of head space he was in whether that be through love, heartbreak, or his battle with drug use. He was able to do this because of the power achieved by growing his personal following as opposed to just his musical following. Though his early stuff was stereotypically commercial, as his career moved forward, there was no lack of "I" in his art. 

    Though it can be said that everybody follows a leader whenever listening to music, I believe there is a much more nuanced answer within the argument between Mead's "Me" and "I". One does not simply follow blindly, rather by assessing the situation and choosing what is appealing to themselves. Because of this the "I" is not lost, rather supported and influenced by "Me" found in the society around us. Humans are selfish in nature and as such they commit actions in hopes of gaining a certain outcome they want to achieve. With this in mind it can be noted that all humans do to express themself's whether that be making, listening to, or completely unrelated to music is done in pursuit of defining who they are and what impact they want their personal "I" to have on the world.