(SUBMITTED LATE WITH APPROVAL). Another week, another topic of social media. We focused this week’s discussion on newspeak, memes, emojis, & participatory culture and the semiotics of social media. We read the articles “emojis don’t mean what they used too,” and ‘ if it doesn’t spread, its dead,” and breaking up isn’t as hard as it used to be (on facebook)’ and last but not least we watched movie called “White Christmas” which is a black mirror episode. In the episode, it starts off with two men in the cabin and Matt wants Joe to open up about why he’s there in the first place. He ran a service where he helped men meet women and he placed a camera on him to help him out. This led him to accidentally being killed because the women he was pursuing was mentally ill and thought he was too so she did a murder suicide on both of them. Joe then open up and tells Matt that he was ” blocked” by his finance after they fought over her decision to have an abortion. Blocking means that they see each other in kind of like a grey blob or so and you can’t see or hear them but you know they’re there. Each Christmas Eve he goes to his ex fiancés fathers house to see (spy)on the little girl even though he is blocked from seeing her. The block was removed when his ex died and it finally allowed him to see the little girl’s face and he discovered that she had an affair and wasn’t the father. He confronted the father and struck him in the head which led to him dying and then left which then led to the little girl to find her grandfather and walk in the snow to go find help which ultimately led to her freezing to death. There’s more to the movie but I’m going to focus on the blocking. 

I found it to be very interesting that the movie portrayed “blocking” as in real life blocking and not just on the internet, however, it does the same thing in a sense. When you block someone on social media sites you really do not see them unless you happen to run into each other by accident but even then there is no communication ( for the most part I guess). That relationship is terminated in a sense. In the article,”Breaking up isn’t that hard as it used to be,” it talks about how they use algorithms when a relationship is done in order to avoid ties or contact or association with that person. By not seeing them as often on your feed, it allows for a quicker healing time of a break up because you are not constantly reminded of them. 

In the article, “emojis don’t mean what they used to” it talks about the evolution of emojis and how they are now being used in today’s atmosphere. It has moved away from ideography and more towards illustration which is very interesting. Im must admit I do use them quite a bit if I am being honest and I love to use them. You don’t even have to type sentences to express yourself.. just put emojis. Another thing Is memes as well. Memes have really transformed and like it said in the ted talk, if it’s not trending then it’s dead. Which is true because it’s basically not being seen which has zero benefit. I love memes because they are so funny and they are funny to me because some memes hold truths for me and some I can personally rate too. Others are political or poking fun and all have an agenda and that is very interesting to me. 

News: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/10/24/132228/political-war-memes-disinformation/

This is a link that has a some more added info on the weaponization of memes.