Since the rise of social media, it has been fairly obvious like most technology, that it can be either used as a tool or be wasted on us. How we got about using it is on us and through the years we have seen its capability. The whole world has basically incorporated social media into their daily routines and even into their careers. We find that everyone is basically on several platforms and it’s definitely allowed them to reach a wider audience to the point that people have become always famous by this tool, social media. Social media has become huge for people trying to get publicity and gain a huge following around the world. 

Marketing yourself is very important if you want to make it as a musician or gain a following in whatever you may choose to do. A couple years ago, marketing could have been posters, flyers, word of mouth and the list goes on. Social media has allowed for the opportunities to be a bit easier to obtain. By using social media as a tool, you can market your skills and ability. For example, YouTuber, producer/composer, audio engineer, and music theorist Rick Beato is a man who has a huge following and online presence with 1.96 million subscribers on his channel. In one of his videos he briefly mentions that some of his following might have come after one of his videos went viral of him in his son doing music related things in his studio. For many other people trying to earn use social media as a tool, viral videos have been one of those things that can really get things started. In Rick Beatos case, he just produced videos of things he liked to do and wanted to put some of his knowledge out there. His videos offer information to the public that it’s viewed as worthy that he has been able to put more out there and in essence has become in my opinion successful on using social media. Social Media has allowed for people to find others with similar interests.

I believe Lilian Chifley makes an excellent point and connection when she said “Usually, social media marketing is a great way for companies to build their brand, get new customers and promote their products and services. In a similar way, musicians need social media marketing to grow their audience and get spaces filled at gigs they’ll be playing at.” I find this to be valid in many cases. As a person who loves music, my genres go all across the board, but as of the last couple years I’ve been following bands on social media and it’s interesting how they use this platform to promote themselves. Based on personal experience it seems like older bands don’t do much promotion on social media rather than sticking to their usual way of promotion. A couple years ago, as I walked the street of New York’s East Village, I had seen posters on display for an upcoming GunsNRoses tour. It was interesting because I didn’t ever really see promotions on posters for bands either promoting an album or tour on the street fow a while although I was aware that this was a marketing technique used before. I compared them to indie bands that I listen to who are just starting and although I did find a lack of poster/display promotions for them, I did notice that a lot of their promotions were happening online. Could this possible be a shift in how promotions and advertising is being done nowadays? Will social media just be much simpler to use as a way of promotion and dropping in information?

One of the key platforms of social media that has been instrumental to people achieving a following and using it to promote themselves is Instagram. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and launched in 2010. At the time the primary focus of the app was “to feature photographs, specifically those taken on mobile devices.”. Currently it is part of Facebook which was acquired in 2012. Since then Instagram has shifted their focus and have included several new features. These features have been beneficial to the ability to try and start putting your name out there. Mike Khorev posted a blog titled “Music Marketing:7 Perfect Tips for Promoting Your Music On Instagram”. In this blog he mentions a lot of several ways you can market yourself as a musician on Instagram using all of the features to your advantage. I think this blog is great especially since it was published on February 18th, 2020 so it is very contemporary to when this is being written. With that being said, it’s up to date with the features that Instagram has added since the beginning when it was just for posting pictures. Khorev says “It’s no secret that the primary target market for any music regardless of the genre, tends to be younger people below 35. 31% of the internet users aged 18-34 and 32% of users between the ages of 25 and 34 are active on Instagram… Another key reason why Instagram is a great platform to promote your music is the fact that it’s really versatile: you can choose between ‘traditional’ posts, IGTV, and Stories, and various advertising options. I think it is interesting he mentions these features because several of the indie bands that are coming up or I have seen coming up,  have used these tools to promote their music through posts, merchandise drops with links or you can even buy it directly on the Instagram app. I think another interesting thing mentioned by Khorev is when he says “Before the digital age in the early 2000s, musicians are tied in what we can call the label infrastructure that typically goes like this: a musician gets noticed by a label (can be a major or indie label), the musician gets signed, and the label would handle everything from recording the single/album to publishing the music to promoting it.” I like that he mentions this point because it supports the idea that social media as a tool has definitely changed the process and it seems it puts more control on the artists although they have to put in the work themselves. There is no guarantee that you can become famous because that would depend on skill. However, it does make it a little easier to actually build a following and recognition. In essence social media can be used as a tool and this has caused change through the industry which isn’t necessarily a negative thing. 

This week, the class got to see group 5 present their book presentation on Information Wars:How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation. It was an interesting presentation with a lot of information to offer. I believe the book is very relevant today as the last couple years have been sort of confusing for many. With social media platforms becoming very popular and having most of the world on it it has been easy for a lot of disinformation to reach a bigger audience. This book explores this issue and how a lot of this disinformation tactic has bleed into the realm of politics. If you look at the issues with social media and the internet, I think what you’ll find is that a lot of these issues are overlapping or blended into each other to some extent. 

For example, another issue related to social media is social media dependency which is something a lot of people are facing. These two issues I think lend themselves to each other. With people being dependent on social media, it allows for a lot of room for disinformation to get across and be exposed to more viewers at probably a higher frequency.

After the presentation we discussed how we as a society go about being able to understand and comprehend what information is valid and was false. One major point brought up was that perhaps higher education, at least college, would benefit people by opening them up to different experiences that a university or college can provide. It is unfortunate that not many people care or have the opportunity to go on past high school education and that really sets back a lot of people. It’s a difficult task to think of the best way to combat disinformation or to be able to convince people that not everything posted is true. I think disinformation definitely adds to the division in this country for example during times of elections. 

As technology continues to give people a larger platform to reach people, it can also add to the amount of information that gets put out with no credibility. For now, I believe it’s just about people trying to be accountable for themselves and in their best interest, do research or even attempt to look a little bit into the people they are listening to or source of information. I think truly the generations coming up are going to be worse off, most of us grew up at the time where social media has too but the upcoming generations are coming in being younger than the take off of social media’s popularity to where it basically is here before them. 

There are five positive things that I believe about my generation and they are 1)basic social media literacy, 2)ability to use social media for creating a presence for whatever we may be into, 3)communication with other people around the world who share the same interest.4) Access to quick information. 5) ability to make money online.

5 negative things that are faced by generation is 1) falling for online fraud, 2)hacking, 3)addiction 4)OverSharing and 5)dependence ,it basically becomes a part of you.

News of the week

https://www.chicagotribune.com/featured/sns-tweets-flagged-election-disinformation-fake-news-20201117-ccqqmdqmfrg5dhjdhicqnetffm-story.html

Communication is key. This is one of those ideas I think will never change and will always hold true. We communicate every day in a variety of ways such as speaking, signaling, texting, or sending images. After all pictures can be wroth a thousand words, right? Although Communication is a broad topic, I’d like to focus on the communication on social media. Not only is this important but I actually think it’s interesting that having being born in 1997, I feel positive saying I’m seeing  that he evolution in communication in social media unfold and get more interesting. It’s actually quite impressive, but is it too much?

If we are asked about emojis, I think most of us would agree that the first thing that comes to mind are all the emojis that have appeared on our key boards. It seems that after a certain period of time the collection continues to grows and in general this sounds like a good idea. I’m sure many us use emojis wether its use to send to our friends to express reactions or to decorate our Bio’s or even screen names on any other app that allows. I think it’s fair to say that emojis have taken communication a little further in a digital platform. They are basically universally known and are even seen on commercials and listings on sites like craigslist. 

With around 3,053 emojis as of 2019, we have seen it expand by adding several skin tones to reflect that of society and even included a lot of variations of a general idea. For example, Ian Bogost who wrote “Emoji Don’t Mean What They Used To” mentions that a general idea such as a beer has gone through expansion such as now being able to pick a beer mug, two beer mugs clinking, and even cocktails are included. Ian Bogost, expresses the idea that perhaps an expansion to the library isn’t at all convenient and even maybe defeats that purpose of the emoji.

“Pictograms (including ideogrammatic ones) are powerful because they are specific but flexible. The train can represent a light-rail line, a subway, a toy, and so on. A snowman can mean a literal snowman, or a warning that it’s cold out, or even a gripe about the office thermostat. The pleasure, and power, of emoji arises from the ambiguity inherent in pinto-ideographic writing.”

To back up his claim Ian Bogost gives us a brief history of the beginning of the emoji. We learned that the original emoji was created by Telecom NTT Docomo in  1999 for Japanese cellphones. At the time they were simple because of the technology back then but the simplicity also was what made them unique. They were so simple and general that they could serve several purposes to express and idea or emotion. It still benefited communication because there was context through the chat.

Ive come around to the idea of using Emojis, and it’s been real entertaining because to me, it feels like i get my ideas across more. Maybe, it’s because I’m a visual person. I do believe that Ian Bogost has a great point that perhaps the Emojis shouldn’t try to cater every aspect and combination of life. After all its just pictures and such. However, I admit that emojis have also made some of my personal communication experience better and it does help to sometimes have the emoji that fully straight up says what you have to say. Where do you stand on emojis? Do you think they’ve lost their meaning along the way trying to cover all aspects and variations or should they have stayed simple enough to be used in any situation? 

Worthy News of the Week.

lhttps://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/health/pfizer-vaccine-distribution-cold-chain/index.html

Privacy is a topic that has become very controversial over time. There is no simple conversation when it comes to privacy because it covers a lot from surveillance to little things like your pictures being used without permission if its on the web. If you ask me I think we all benefit if we try to take control of our privacy or at least be aware that there is a problem. 

I agree that sometimes we have to give up a bit of freedom in exchange for security and safety, but I think the people should have a say in how it goes. Obviously, there will be abuse of power when it comes to surveillance and it sucks. From a quick perspective and without giving it to much thought, phrases like “you shouldn’t be worried if you have nothing to hide” seemed interesting to me. I used to think this was a valid reasoning but I think if you really sit down and dissect the different aspects of privacy with this phrase, what I think you’ll find is that it is very flawed. This flaw is well explained in the article “ Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’’” which can be found in The Chronicle. In the article the author mentions a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who said “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.” I think that this is a valid point. Not everyone has the same secrets or is trying to hide the same things. Everyone has their own thing and it would just seem to be impossible for someone to be so open about all aspects of privacy. 

Another person that was quoted by the author is Canadian Privacy Expert David Flaherty, who said, “There is no sentient human being in the Western world who has little or no regard for his or her personal privacy; those who would attempt such claims cannot withstand even a few minutes questioning about intimate aspects of their lives without capitulating to the intrusiveness of certain subject matters.” This is something he said that the author believed related to this “If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph-so I can show it to your neighbors?”. I believe that this is an aspect that people don’t really consider. It’s easy to see why since the topic is very complex.

I’m sure we all worry about our privacy because we know how bad or embarrassing it could be. It’s unfortunate that some people have had issues with their privacy being violated and it’s something that happens a lot. One person who made headlines when their privacy was violated was Representative Katie Hill. She had some private photos leaked and shared all over the internet. I would imagine it was not easy for her to deal with as I’m sure most would as well.

https://www.businessinsider.com/prop-24-privacy-california-data-tracking-facebook-google-2020-11

I’ve alway questioned the power of influencers. If I’m being sincere, I’ve always seen them as sellouts. Why might I have thought they were sellouts? I think to be able to explain this I should lay out my reasoning. Often when the word influencers are seen on social media, the first names to be thrown around are the models like the Jenners, the Hadids and athletes like Cristian Ronaldo. If I’m not mistaken, the job of the influencers are to sell to the regular people, and sell as in show off clothes and lifestyles from brands/companies that pay them to post on social media how much they love their product. To me, it seems a little cheap to buy something because I was influenced by someone else who is getting paid. I say this, because If I’m correct, I believe that many of us wouldn’t mind endorsing something if we got compensated for it. If compensation is involved, how accurate and truthful can the endorsement by the influencer be? Now, I’m not saying that all influencers don’t stand by what they try to sell, but it does bring a little question if they’re getting paid to tell us this brand is the best or that we should buy into this experience.

But I digress, not all influencers fall into the category of sellouts, some actually see that perhaps in a world where people are influenced, there needs to be truth and integrity. Some see that although being an influencer can bring in huge bucks, there needs to be some realness that influences can provide as well. An influencer that I’ve recently learned is Essena O’neill. I believe that she is one of those who believes that there should be integrity in influencing. She has given up a lot when she quit Instagram and social media. Since then she has started a website where she still influences, but only things she truly believes in. She saw how much Instagram “Likes” were toxic and approached her site with the ability to not show or allow things such as “likes” and “views”. Perhaps not all influencers are in it for the money? What do you think?

The Social Network. It’s the movie I’ve been trying to see but have never had the time for. This Week and assignment required me to watch it so I finally got around to it. After watching it, I kind of hated myself for not watching it sooner. During a lot of the time Covid allowed, Ive seen a lot of movies but this definitely would have gotten me through some of this time. This movie is based on the story of Facebook. It’s really interesting because there’s actually a lot of drama and twists and turns. Mark Zuckerburg is portrayed as quite the Tech Rockstar and his Win at all cost attitude is definitely admirable as long as you’re not Eduardo or the Winklevoss at the end of the deals. To me the biggest mind blowing moment of the movie was seeing how Sean Parker,  the guy from Napster played a part of this story. In some way Zuckerburg and Parker had this connection but in some ways I think I wouldn’t be wrong if I said that perhaps in some way, Sean Parker was a sort of Influencer for Zuckerberg? If you have not seen the movie, I recommend you do! And if you have, let me know what you think about Parker’s possible influence on Zuckerburg in terms of lifestyles or professional mindsets?

News of the week

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/kendall-jenner-pay-90-000-settlement-promoting-fyre-festival-n1212011

Fake news is something that I believe has been very popular in the last few years. This is not to say that we haven’t had fake news before, but that it’s become more popular lately. This is very unfortunate because it causes discrepancies between people. Personal experience, on Facebook I come across a lot of absurd articles shared by people. These articles seem to offer no substance and lack information that I wouldn’t consider credible or let alone use it in a professional setting. But, I always do have this idea that what if what I consider credible news is really fake news, and the absurd news is telling the truth. It can really go either way, and I believe as time goes on it might be harder to distinguish credible news.

Real news, Fake news, they both exist but they aren’t just appearing from thin air. People are actually writing this stuff and its journalist. Can we really fault the Journalists who sometimes are looking and reaching for stories just for clicks? I believe Journalists have a responsibility to have integrity when it comes to their writing. They are the ones who should report the facts and not what favors them. But it’s also understandable when you have to consider that their industry might be dying because people are getting news online and aren’t paying for subscriptions like “back in the day”. 

John Oliver explains the situation very well on his show. The video can also be found on youtube named “Journalism: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver”. On the show he explains the situation that is happening in the news industry. Unfortunately it is a dying one and it has caused the newspaper companies to cut employees and just make cuts all around, some have even had to merge or downsize to try to maintain being profitable. This kind of stuff has caused journalists to have to resort to finding news that would attract customers and even have to make up news for clicks. In some way, if you think about it, journalists have had to sell out for the sake of keeping their industry a float. We are in an age where paper isn’t cutting it and a lot of things are online which makes me wonder, if there is genuinely anything that can happen to save the industry? I don’t believe finding a solution will be the right way to approach this but I do wonder where we would go from here. I think most of the solutions could lie in just the people being aware of what to look for when determining whether something is fake or not but I think even then, we’ve probably seen examples where this proves that people will believe anything. This upcoming election has definitely proven that people will stick by what they believe even if it seems absurd. As long as there is a reporter willing to write what people wanna hear, there will be real and fake news out for the public.

Do you believe you can spot fake news? What ever you choose to believe, do you ever wonder if you’ve been believing the wrong thing?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/10/16/donald-trump-retweets-babylon-bee-attack-joe-biden-twitter/3675923001/

Music plays a huge part of my life. I’ve been playing guitar since the 6th grade and that’s when my music taste started developing. I can remember the first band I was really into and since then many bands have taken the spots on what I would consider my favorites of all time. Since the 6th grade, many years have come between then and now, and with all the time spent listening to music, reading up on histories of bands, and watching documentaries I’ve learned several things about the music industry. One of the issues I learned through this time was about the idea of Copyright, Piracy, and Fair Use. 

I believe that understanding these things are important because when you know the rules and/or regulations, you can move around and avoid any trouble. It’s understandable why these things are in place, artists/musicians don’t want to lose out on making money, or others in Don henley’s case, are misinformed. About 2-3 years ago I heard a song over the radio (I know, old fashion) called “Boys of Summer”. It turns out that this very popular song is Don Henleys. I looked it up on Youtube and could not find the song at all. It was strange to me because every song that I knew was a Youtube click away. I never really thought anything of it until recently. During one of my classes, we talked about Copyright, Piracy, and Fair Use. One of the things that were interesting that related to the topic was the video of a well respected musician named Rick Beato. Rick Beato has a Youtube channel where he uploads a lot of music related things. From a few videos I saw, it looks like he has an appreciation for music and is knowledgeable on the things he is talking about. In class we saw a video where he expressed his anger and ideas about one of his videos being flagged down because he used a couple seconds of a song in a video where he was showing his appreciation in a video series called “What makes that song great?”. One thing that was interesting about the video to me is that he explained how some artists are misinformed about how a lot of the stuff works in respects to youtube, spotify and the use of copyrighted material. With these misunderstandings, artists seem to be going to great lengths to make sure no one uses their music without permission. In Henley’s case, they went as far as to hire 60 people who are in charge of filing complaints against people who use their songs despite for what the reason maybe. In most cases, it is not used to monetize.

It’s funny how these things work in life. This week Rick Beato posts another video that was entertaining to watch and as usual he brings up several good points. This video mentions a current event that I’m sure many people are familiar with. Several weeks ago towards the end of September, a video went viral of a man who was riding some sort of board on his way to work while also drinking a huge bottle of Cranberry juice. The video was loved by many because it was just this man living his best life all to the tune of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Rick Beato explained to us that if the man had used another Fleetwood Mac song like the popular “Go Your Own Way”. The video will possibly get flagged if not now, soon but In this case Dreams was used and it’s interesting why this is. Although the two songs are from Fleetwood Mac, the songs were each written by a separate member. Lindsey Buckingham wrote “Go Your Own Way”  and Stevie Nicks wrote Dreams. Each of them gets a say pertaining to their song. In this case Stevie Nicks embraced this situation. She has gone out to show her appreciation and credit the man for putting Dreams back on the charts. If she wanted to, She could have possibly had the video removed but in some way this is also exposure for the band. Everyone on these platforms, especially TikTok, probably never heard of Fleetwood Mac but this video opened them up to the possibility of expanding their music taste. 

Channeling the rules of Copyright, Piracy, and Fair Use can be a tricky thing because a lot of the situations vary case by case but for the most part all end in the side of the people who aren’t trying to make a profit from popular works.

This year, 2020, has been a roller coaster of a year. In my 23 years of life never have I seen such a crazy year. I think people will be talking about all the many things that happened this year and i’m sure one of the important ones will be about the protest happening during the pandemic. Essentially people were putting their lives at risk from either catching the virus or being involved in violence during protests. They did that because they wanted to fight to make sure people got justice for being racially oppressed. From the protest, we got a lot of information in the form of videos and pictures.

Because of the virus, many people stayed home but could still see a lot of what was happening at the protests. I think in a way we have social media and internet activism to thank for that. If it weren’t for these things we wouldn’t get the perspective of the side that most of us think is right. Sure, we get some footage from the media, but the ones posted by the people often catch more of what’s happening. Often the people at the protest catch everything happening in real time and it allows other people to see what’s happening. I think this was instrumental in the protest over the summer where a lot of footage was put out there which essentially was used as proof of how some of the police were biased and how they treated the situation and protestors. I question if the protestors did not have the ability to capture what’s happening in real time for people to watch, would the news even talk about it. An example that comes to mind is during the summer, two incidents captured by protestors were trending all over twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. One was one a police van driving through protestors, and the other of an older man who got injured when he got shoved by a police officer. 

One thing I also learned during the protest is how instrumental social media and internet platforms are for spreading information. With people having no one to answer about posting or releasing content, it’s so much easier to put things out there for others to see. I would ask myself if this kept going on, would the government or some higher power try to block social media and platforms to stop us from watching or posting things that they might not like us to see. When I read about the Cute Cat Theory, I understood why they couldn’t do that. I think it was smart for protestors to use these platforms not just to get the word out but in a strategic sense if the platform they are on is a also a platform for all sorts of interest then the higher power would not be able to block websites or apps because those who initially were not involved will be involved, and with a huge upset crowd, it just doesn’t seem worth it. 

I think living in this moment when social justice is being demanded and the people are willing to protest is very important to seeing how things are really like. Perhaps people will be “woke” and hopefully someday we will see progress and justice. I believe digital activists have definitely made more people aware even if they don’t know it. What contributions do you think Digital activism has contributed to social justice?

Credible News of the week:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/summer-digital-protest-how-2020-became-summer-activism-both-online-n1241001

If you were to ever take just one movie recommendation from me, I would suggest that you definitely go check out Oliver Stone’s 2016 Drama/Thriller Snowden. The film does a great job telling the story of Edward Snowden, who I would go as far as to say is in some way a hero. Although there are many who share this common opinion with me, there are obviously people who oppose this view and that’s understandable. My objective is not to persuade people to change their minds about Edward Snowden but to explain why I believe he can be considered a hero. In order to understand why some people would oppose my view, it’s important to get an understanding of the situation. Although I believe the film does great telling the story, if you are interested, doing some research is never a bad idea.

Edward Snowden is a man who bravely made a choice that I don’t think too many of us would have made and that is to expose the NSA and their surveillance activities amongst other things. But the choice was not that easy to make considering that it meant he could get into a lot of trouble but regardless, he was an intelligent man and even understanding the implications of his actions, still chose to do what he felt was right and in the best interest of the public. Lately, I’ve noticed that in the internet community there’s this meme that is usually video shot from the point of view of your phone’s front camera and you see someone doing something and it’ll say something along the lines of “What my assigned FBI agent sees”. These memes if i’m not mistaken originated because of internet conspiracies and Edward Snowden. The reason I say that is because this idea that the government was watching you was a big deal when I was growing up through high school, I had classmates who would put tape on their computers and always say that the government could hear us through our phones and spy on us. It was all fun and games till in 2013, Snowden exposed the NSA and their Surveillance activities on it’s enemies but also its citizens. This was a huge deal and it basically made him an enemy to the states. He risked it all so that the people would know what was happening because he believed that not only was it morally wrong but also believed people should have the right to know. 

Some people believe Snowden is not a hero but a traitor to the United States and that he should be brought back to the States and prosecuted. It’s easy to understand why people would feel this way but I believe they are naive to think he wanted to do this for money or fame. Had Snowden not done what he did, where would we be now? Would we have known about the surveillance yet had he not blown the whistle? 

I remember when I first heard of the Snowden leaks. I thought it was crazy that he did it because I understood that anyone who would do something like that would not be able to live their lives comfortably or the same ever again. I also worried that no one would care and that he would have gotten through all that risk just to be ignored. The film does very well showing what it was like for Snowden to do his job while knowing that the NSA was spying on everyone and you can see how it’s got him paranoid and it starts to bleed into his health and his relationship with his wife. 

Although I do believe Snowden is a hero for what he did, I don’t think he went about it the right way? Maybe I’m understanding it incorrectly but from what we know, Snowden did not want to leak the files because he didn’t believe he would do it in the best way possible and that journalists were the people who should publish the files. I think that’s interesting because it worked out for him and it went the way they wanted it to go, but I still think that maybe getting  journalists involved wasn’t the way to go. Getting more people involved could have brought more room for risk and the files were not just any ordinary files that were easy to understand. Snowden had placed his trust that the journalists he was working with would be able to correctly tell the story.

Edward Snowden knew that because of his actions he would have to leave the United States before they could arrest him so he had a plan to go to Ecuador. On his journey to Ecuador, things took a turn and since then Snowden finds himself currently in Moscow. In all his interviews, Snowden expresses that he misses the United States because to him it is his home, but knows he won’t be able to return. 

I find it interesting that as someone who lives a good chunk of their life on social media and the Internet, I always find myself sort of bashing it. One of the reasons I think social media is bad for us is because of how people behave or express themselves. Having spent too much time online, I would say I’ve seen pretty much everything, picked up patterns, and noticed behaviors from people on these platforms just as i’m sure most of you have as well. It’s nothing shocking to see arguments/fights take place on social media and platforms from youtube to Facebook and anything in that nature. So then I ask myself, what is it that is making these people express themselves so angrily towards one another?

There’s an idea that I’m sure most are familiar with in one way or another and that is that people gain this testicular fortitude when they hop behind a screen and type away. I believe this in some way applies to everyone from internet trolls, who live to argue or “troll” others, to people who don’t care about arguments but might step in to get their quick one liner.

The internet has made it easy for anyone to express themselves online, so I ask myself, should we be expressing everything just because we can? Self awareness is something that I think rational people have. Self awareness to stop themselves from posting idiotic things or behaving poorly on the internet. But on the other hand the internet has become a playground for people who pick arguments and behave poorly toward others. I’ve always said this that the internet has both good uses and bad uses and it really depends on the person and how they choose to use this tool.How the internet created an age of rage is an article that can be found on The Guardians website and this article does well in explaining the behaviors of people who troll or leave unflattering comments. 

“The psychologists call it “deindividuation”. It’s what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed.”

I believe that the line above is a solid definition of Deindividuation that also works in respects to the internet. One of the examples used in the article is one I’m sure we can relate to or at least have seen and is in road rage. Sometimes a person you wouldn’t expect to be confrontational can get upset and start shouting things at other drivers because they feel protected in a car and they’re safe. In this case it would be the internet trolls and people who like to argue and start up problems that find benefit in saying what they feel because they feel protected behind a screen. 

I personally don’t believe there is a solution to this except for trying to pay it no mind. People don’t really change and sometimes arguing back over a computer will not satisfy the mood you might find yourself in.  I may not have any solutions to offer but Imagine if someone else did. It would be even crazier if it were like the Black Mirror episode Hated in the Nation. Perhaps we shouldn’t take the internet so seriously?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/donald-trump-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court/index.html