This week we were told to watch an episode from the newsroom season three episode one. I never seen an of these episodes before but its basically what happens inside a newsroom while a crisis had just happened and how thy get and report what has just happened. It was actually very interesting because I’m the type of person who loves investigation type stuff and this was definitely right up my alley.

The episode starts with two people talking about there wedding and how many brides mates are gonna be there and then the girl notices an explosion on the tv. It appears to be some kind of bomb at the finish of a race. Right when it happened yo can see the silence in the newsroom become absolute chaos and everyone trying to get evidence. One person was referring to tweets but that idea got turned down fast because as we’ve learned in this class before, you can’t always trust people on social media. They also said that they wont able to interview them either because it wont be credible information.Like I said I’ve never watched this show before, but the newsroom is being very hesitant to put out any information because they want to earn back the trust of there viewers. So I’m guessing something happened in the past to make the viewers question their credibility. There were a confirmed 140 victims with severe burns on there body. Every piece of information they get that is credible they are reporting right away. And by the way I love the actor that reports the news too, he’s from dumb and dumber which is one of my all time favorite movies.They have sent two people to Boston to further investigate and get more information and I think the episode is going to start spicing up now.One of the people in the newsroom seems to have a lead o the attack which makes this even more good of an episode.Throughout the episode the reporters do in fact use the information on social media to piece some of the information together and joke about not even needing to watch the news and to just pop twitter open and look on there.three quarters of the way through the episode there is basically a man hunt for a suspect and suspect has been killed in a chase. Near the end of the episode they find information off of Facebook that is credible and seems to be a win for the company. Eventually they get the terrorist and the episodes transitions into what the next will be

Overall I really enjoyed this show and will maybe continue to watch it. I thought the acting was awesome and I loved how the detective work was done as well. This show definitely gives me like a criminal minds kind of vibe where they have to slowly piece together the evidence one thing at a time while also protecting their own people and company. This has definitely been one of the more enjoyable things we’ve watched this semester.

Check out this article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/29/politics/donald-trump-government-officials-hatch-act/index.html

Social media, we have a need and want for it, it’s like this entity that has a control over us that we cant seem to push away. The average use of social media per day from one person is 144 minutes a day. Now thats a lot of time spent on your phones and for what to like a picture or to comment on a post about your best friend. This is really what we concern our daily lives about, seeing things happen on social media and then dropping everything to see whats happening. It’s almost like we are being controlled by these apps in sense because it makes us give up our morales or change who we are just to fit in this new world of social media. What concerns me more and what makes me wonder the most is what were these companies trying to accomplish from creating these social media sights, in other words what was there end game?

Now if we really look at it Facebook really revolutionized how we understand social media. For instance the whole idea of showing your relationship status didn’t come around until Facebook made it a thing. Or the idea of posting pictures and letting the world know what you’re doing all the time, it’s these ideas that have changed how we share our lives with people and what we want to share with them. This week in class we had to read a couple of articles and actually watch this movie that was about Facebooks upbringing and how it got to where it is today, it was called The Social Network. What I liked about the movie is that it really showed the end game or the bigger picture that I was talking about earlier with other social media apps. This showed me that Facebooks first primary goal and what they wanted people to get from it was more of like a dating site rather than the place it is now where you share and get to know people in a friendly way. This comes back to the relationship status that Mark Zuckerberg incorporated into facebook. If you look at all the information from how they started the social media giant, you see that the app they were making in there college dorm rooms was meant for college students. It was meant for these students to find out who was single and just people you wanted to get with. In other words a dating app and thats crazy to think about because I bet when you go one Facebook now a days thats not what you’re thinking about when on the app.

As for the articles the one that we read that stood out the most is “Essena O’Neill quits Instagram claiming social media ‘is not real life'”. Essena is from Australia and she had over 612,000 on instagram and her reason for getting rid of her social media was because she felt that she had to be perfect all the time for her followers. Having to set an example and be on your A game all the time is no small challenge for anybody so I understood why being a social media star changed her way of thinking and made her leave the social media platform all together. Also to think that at such a young age of 18 she was able to realize how toxic and hard it was to be perfect all the time. It just goes to show that even with all these different aspects of social media there will always be flaws to which people just don’t agree with or want.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/us/lori-loughlin-college-admissions-scandal-sentence/index.html

This article is about actress Lori Loughlin has reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, to begin her two-month sentence, for the college scandal.

This week was a very interesting week with The Social Network being discussed in class, along with some other articles we will get into a little later. First off before I get into the class material I want to talk about the upcoming election and the nomination of the new Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett. I can’t believe the election is already here and I’m very excited to vote for the first time. All over social media it is pretty much a war, as it usually is, but this election is a lot different them previous. Due to twitter you have the ability to fight whoever you want and whenever you want. This was seen very much so when Amy Coney Barrett was put into. I saw about 51% of the nation was in favor of this move, so when the country is split like they you are definitely going to get a hell storm unleashed on twitter.

Now onto the film The Social Network. This film was very good for many many reasons. This was a film that was recognized by a lot of critics and reviewers as a great film because of how close it is to the real story and how well it captured the hardships of having a startup, like Facebook and how friendships might be ruined in the mean time. Thats one of the big things that I took from this film. I think it would be great to be creating a startup or a business with some of my best friends, but one of the most prominent sayings is you should not mix family or friends with business.

I had no clue what the story behind Mark Zuckerberg and really had no clue what the movie was going to be about. I had no clue about the controversy in pretty much starting Facebook with how he got dumped by his girlfriend, then made a site to pretty much get revenge on her and her friends where they put up pictured of girls and have people rate their attractiveness. Overall this was a great film to watch and I really enjoyed getting the rundown how pretty much all of the social media as we know it is formed today.

This week we also read an article about how people get mad with celebrities on kickstarter and why they probably should not. It goes on to say how a lot of people can have misconceptions on how much money celebrities really have, because of a number of reasons. I think this can be translated well into professional sports and the money that they really make .The low end guy sin the NFL have a lot of expenses that they have to care about and also have to worry about the taxes that they make. A lot of these guys don’t play very long and need to worry about getting other jobs, or in this case starting a company or a training type thing to help them pay the bills after they retire.

My question to you is, what do you think about the film?

Here is an article about Amy Coney Barrett: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/30/amy-coney-barrett-girl-scouts-tweet-delete-congratulations-post/6082801002/

This week, I watched a movie called “The Social Network” on Netflix where the birth of Facebook became extremely influential from Mark Zuckerberg. In today’s world, social networks have improved over the past five years. Facebook made myspace less impactful where Facebook has partnered with the world’s largest and most entertaining media organizations. The benefits that Facebook offers is reaching millions of potential customers, build your email list, gain insights for your audience, and Facebook is the world’s top consumer social website in 2020. When dealing with new changes such as Facebook, you’re going to deal with people who would use it for problematic reasons. In history, evolution has pros and cons witch the lives of people were sacrificed in a way for those with a stronger drive to further improve on their own selfish desires. Whether it’s good or bad, it is debatable for anyone to voice in but the website’s influence on people’s lives is extremely high.

The downfalls of Facebook are addiction to being on the website for too much, identity theft, relationship problems, and anti-social behavior. In life, there are going to be risks in everything one does especially dealing with online people. On Facebook, it can lead to a sense of false consensus, but the app makes your internet searches more personalized on your newsfeed from posts of like-minded people on the app. There are people who went missing because of Facebook having so much access to one life it makes it easier for the wicked-minded people to find their targets. Many people have used trending sources to further insist on the misbehavior online and people who are major influencers on social media. In 2020, Joe Biden used Cardi B to gain more of the minority votes for his presidential campaign. This use of promotion can be debated by the people as good or bad depending on the point of view of the person. 

The social network has the power to bring people together, but also destroy them too. Zack Zuckerberg showed me that there is always room to improve and not to be an ass-hole. At the end of the movie where things seemed to be clearing up, Zack Zuckerberg started to see things in a better light where the young lady expressed a few words of encouragement. Why did Zack prefer someone other than his best friend? Could Zack Zuckerberg treat his only best friend any better than he did? Has Zack Zuckerberg ever find a good connection with someone on Facebook? Why did Zack Zuckerberg drop out and is college worth it? When entering the business world is college a good place to start? In the future how strict will you be with your own children about the use of the social network?

Worked Cited: Netflix, The Social Network

This week’s topic brings a new discussion in-front of us i.e. “Celebrity, Branding and Marketing” and the material provided have given the information not only about the life of celebrities on the social media but how different people are using this platform for their own purposes.

The article: “Essena O’Neil Quits Instagram” was one of the article I found really appreciating and finally the one with whom I can relate my opinions. Essena O’Neil who was considered the teenage social media superstar, deleted many of her social media accounts and change the name of her Instagram account to “Social Media is Not Real”. Later in the series of the confessional videos that she made for her social media family she stated that while she was being watched by thousands of people and considered to have a dream life, but in reality she was becoming miserable and tired with this fictional world and highly edited life style.

On one of her Instagram post she said: “Without realizing, I’ve spent the majority of my teenage life being addicted to social media, social approval, social status, and my physical appearance. Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real.”

The second article: “Why People Get Annoyed at Celebrities on Kickstarter (And Why They Probably shouldn’t)” was totally a different from the previous one and it showed how the celebrities used the social media in for their branding and marketing purposes. In this article, it has been stated that an actor/director Zach Braff launched a Kickstarter and raised money to almost $2 million in just two days. While originally Kickstarter was launched in order to make the young people fund their dreams. Like for the youngsters who have the big ideas but no bank balance to make their dream come true. This was the idea for those sort of people but then we had seen an actor/director launched the Kickstarter in order to raise fund from the people for his new upcoming movie and that’s what make the people offended from the celebrities. But that’s really not the truth or is it? What do you think about it?

The question that was raised here is why an actor needed to do this?

Was it because of the shortage for the movie funds or just an act to grab the attention?

And I think that people should really focus on what they are raising funds for before just getting started with whatever they see attractive. They should know the reasons and then decide either to put their portion in it or not. Like in this case I think what Zach did was wrong and he had taken the rights of other little people who was first not able to make their ideas turn into reality and then the people like Zach grabbed their rights in order to gain more and more profits.

“The Filter Bubble” a term being used by Eli Pariser, the main idea or theme of the movie was based on the fact that internet is vast and can be taken as a universe of information but what we are able to see is made filtered by the giants like Google, Facebook and YouTube have made things personalized for us. It is just our thought that we are having access to everything but in reality every click of ours is being monitored and guided.

Keeping in mind this week’s topic, I am going to share an article which is also describing that now many celebrities are freezing their Facebook and Instagram accounts.

– https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/high-profile-celebrities-are-freezing-their-facebook-and-instagram-accoun/585291/

When Kickstarter was launched in April 2009 it paved the way for young boys to fund their dream projects. Someone with a great idea but a small bank account can still earn money through crowd resources. Recently, that seems to be changing. We see a lot of people with big ideas and big bank accounts getting sponsored. People like Zach Braff, perhaps best known as Dr. John ‘J.D.’ Dorian on the TV Scrubs program. Last week he launched Kickstarter to sponsor his film Wish I Was Here. The film, which follows his indie love story Garden State, tells the story of a 35-year-old actor and father trying to find himself. According to Braff’s court, the film needs fan support because it believes Kickstarter could be a small “film”, which does not involve signing all of your artistic controls. “Braff is the latest on the Kickstarter hat-trick.” the biggest ever asked for Kickstarter to get their funding. Hat this sweating looks as bad as Amanda Palmer Problem. Last year the Dresden Dolls singer raised about $ 1.2 million for Kickstarter with his Album Theater Is Evil, which is well over $ 100,000 did not ask. When he turned a few months later and asked the artists to join his tour without getting a beer and a hug, a few people were outraged.

That you have solicited donations and the giving of work, you are openly admitting that you are stupid, and obviously have no experience in your work as… the team will continue the journey without a slush bag. Palmer continued to make TED speeches on “the art of questioning” and participated in a Southwest-panel panel to explain and respond to the attack. “I’m not Oprah, OK? I think there are people who have negative thoughts about how much money I have,” Braff said in an interview with Wired. “I’ve been very successful in my job, I’m going to put in a lot of money for this project, but I can’t go out and pay about a $ 5.5 million movie in my wallet. If people think they are. While it is unlikely that Kickstarter will overthrow Hollywood anytime soon – making one episode of Game of Thrones more expensive than any other ever-funded campaign – it would be a little unhappy when Hollywood played in the indie world box office. Even Thomas acknowledged this when he told Wired that “it would be a great deal of courage” to try to unite people with a multimillion-dollar project that was not well-known. And music blogger Bob Leaflets wrote after Braff’s campaign that “when the big boys come to play, the wannabes are squeezing. While it is natural not to want to help someone who seems to be in the middle of what they have, telling them not to play on Kickstarter can hurt those who have it. The day Braff’s campaign began, Kickstarter saw more traffic than ever before, and it’s not hard to imagine that at least some of his supporters received, and supported other campaigns.

References:

1. WIRED (2013); Why people get annoyed celebrities on kickstarter (and why they probably shouldn’t)

Received at: “https://www.wired.com/2013/04/zach-braff-kickstarter/”

1. CROWDFUND INSIDER(2013); Today in “should use kickstarter”

Received at:” https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2013/05/14659-today-in-should-celebrities-use-kickstarter/”

I found some news about Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon stocks plummeting after earnings failed to dazzle Wall Street:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/30/apple-twitter-facebook-amazon-stock-down-after-earnings.html

This week brings an interesting topic to make discussions on. When I gone through the reading and watching materials I found out really interesting topics to discuss with you all and also it gave me new thoughts about these social media accounts and this universe.

First of all let’s begin with the article: ““Essena O’Neil Quits Instagram”, she was taken as a teenage super star with half a million followers on Instagram, 60,000 friends on Snapchat and more than 200,000 subscribers on YouTube. She was taken as a diva, a star to whom many follow and many wanted to be like her. But then the world had seen that she quits her own dream land. She deleted every social platform and change the name of her Instagram account to “Social Media is Not Real”. Later she made her own website and with the name: Let’s Be Game Changer” and made the confessional videos there to make people realize that all that glitters are not always gold. She explained the reasons that why she quit the social media and how tired she became while promoting the life style which was not even real. In one of her video she stated that “Social media, especially how I used it, isn’t real. Its contrived images and edited clips ranked against each other. It’s a system based on social approval, likes, validation in views, and success in followers. It’s perfectly orchestrated, self-absorbed judgment.”

Coming towards the movie of the week i.e. “The Social Network”, a film based on the origin of Facebook that how Zuckerberg had made a revolutionary change while sitting in the Harvard. The movie was quite obvious by many of us that how a man who cared very little about money became a billionaire in such a young age but in the process lost his one true friend. The main idea of the movie that I perceived was the change that one thing brought into the lives of many people. The Facebook became so popular I felt like people were so in wait of such a platform where they can socially interact with each other and the distances between them no longer remain a reason of separation.

What do you guys think about this movie?

Do you also believe that “The Accidental Billionaire” is what best describes this movie?

The next article: “Why People Get Annoyed at Celebrities on Kickstarter (And Why They Probably shouldn’t)” brings forward a new face of the celebrities i.e. the famous people did not leave a chance to grab more and more from the general public either in the form of appreciation or for monetary purposes. The Kickstarter was being started in order to promote the little guys who have the ideas to make a change in the world but not the money to support their dreams. An actor/director Zach Braff launched this program and raised almost millions in just few days but then the contradictory from many of the people started to come. People started asking that either the funds are for the Braff’s new upcoming movie? In answer to such nonsense Braff stated that: “I’m not Oprah, OK? I think there’s people who have slight misconceptions about how much money I have,” Braff said in an interview with Wired. “I’ve been very successful in my career, I am going to put a ton of my own money into this endeavor, but I can’t go out and fund what will likely be a $5.5 million movie out of my wallet. If people think that, they’re very wrong.”

For this week’s news post I am sharing an article based on the fact that many of the famous celebrities of this era have taken break from social media at some point in their careers. https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/pictures/kim-kardashian-more-celebrities-who-took-social-media-breaks/

The Social Network was about Mark Zuckerberg and how he got his start with Facebook.  Mark and his girlfriend Erica break up and Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm at Harvard and starts to come up with the algorithm for “Facemash” which used the photos of students who belonged to different houses on the Harvard campus.  Using pictures from the Kirkland House and the formula for the algorithm, he created Facemash and within 2 hours he had 22,000 hits which ended up crashing Harvard’s Network.  He was accused of intentionally breaching security and ended up getting 6 months of academic probation.  Over the next couple of weeks, he worked on the algorithm and spent time building the code for what eventually would be called, “The Facebook.”  He wanted it to have exclusivity and he wanted it to be a way for college students to meet each other. 

In the movie, a friend inspired him to create the relationship status.  He ran into some issues when he was asked to work on Harvard Connection by the Winklevoss brothers in which he agreed and then kept blowing them off to work on his project.  He continued to ignore their requests to meet and eventually they take him to court for possible stealing their idea for Harvard Connection and using it for The Facebook.  The Winklevoss brothers tried to get Mark in trouble for being in violation of Harvard law, stealing from another student but it backfires.  Eventually, they lawyer up and take Zuckerberg to Court and he settles and pays them.  Zuckerberg ends up meeting up with Sean Parker who had already been seeing the results and financial gains of Napster. Mark is influenced by Sean and moves out to California to grow Facebook and advance the company, but he is facing a strained relationship with his best and only friend, Eduardo who helped him start the company.

 Eduardo initially invested $1,000 to start the company and has been investing and providing money to the company to get it up and running.  When Eduardo sees that Mark has been heavily influenced by Sean who Eduardo thinks is bad news he freezes the bank account and assets.  Mark then finds an investor, Peter Theil who makes an investment of $500,000.  Eduardo was in NYC trying to secure ad deals for the company which Mark and Sean didn’t see as a good direction.  He and Mark saw something bigger for The Facebook, which eventually upon Sean’s suggestion become just “Facebook.”  When Eduardo returned from NYC the last time, he found that his shares of the business were diluted down to .03 percent and Eduardo was outraged.  Zuckerberg ended up eventually settling with Eduardo and the Winklevoss brothers.  Facebook had just broke one million members.  Facebook is valued at 25 billion dollars, making Zuckerberg the youngest billionaire in the world.

In the TED Talk, The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser talks about Facebook’s News Feed and how it only shows us information that we click on.  He said that Zuckerberg said when asked about it, “a squirrel dying may be more interesting to some than people dying.”  There has been a shift in how information is flowing online.  Facebook looks at which links I am clicking on without consulting me and editing out information, Pariser said.  It has an invisible algorithm and so does Google.  The News Feed gives us personalized news and different people get different news.  The internet shows us what it thinks we want to see – not what we need to see.

“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.”                      

-Eric Schmidt, Google

Your Filter Bubble is your own personal unique information that you live in online.  What’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are and what you do, but you don’t decide what gets in and more importantly, you don’t actually see what gets edited out.  The News Feed and Google do not provide a balanced information diet.  We need to be able to see that are also uncomfortable, challenging, important, and other points of view.  We need to gain control so we can decide for ourselves.  As Pariser says, “the internet will not connect us if it leaves us isolated in a web of one.”

Question:   In the movie, Zuckerberg squeezes Eduardo out due to differences concerning the direction of Facebook.  Do you think that Zuckerberg was wrong to do that to his best friend?  OR Did you feel he  was justified and it was necessary in order for the business to grow?

Works Cited:

The Social Network (NETFLIX)

The Filter Bubble, TED Talks https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

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

The movie the Social Network is about how Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook while he was an undergrad at Havard. In the making of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg took an idea of people who he went to school with and made it his own. He was asked to help make a website but ended up making his own and not giving the other students their credit and also his best friend who ended up not being apart of Facebook because of a contract that he signed not knowing what it meant. Mark Zuckenberg had 617 people sign up for Facebook a day after releasing the website. Mark ended up expanding the website to different continents with the help of Sean Parker who was the creator of Napster. The movie takes us through both lawsuits that Mark was involved with. I understand why these people decided to sue Mark. Mark was only thinking about himself and how to advance Facebook. In the process, he hurt people and had to pay for it literally. Mark’s best friend got paid an unknown amount ( I bet it was a lot of money) and was named the co-founder of Facebook while the guys that Mark got the idea of creating Facebook Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss got 65 million dollars and had to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

The article “Essena O’Neill quits Instagram claiming social media ‘is not real life’” talks about a woman named Essena O’Neill who felt that she was being consumed by being on social media and living up to the hype. She deleted her Instagram page that had over six hundred thousand followers. She got a lot of backlash and response to why she decided to delete her Instagram so she made a video explaining why she felt living for social media was not real life and what I think she really meant to say was that life should not be for social media, there is more to life. She was not eating most days and her days were consumed with creating content for social media accounts and youtube. She ended up creating a website where there were no likes and followers where she would post about things she wanted to post and if you looked at it, it was for your own enjoyment. You can tell that she was living her best life without the weight of likes and comments determining how she felt. This happened in 2015 which was 5 years ago but you can tell that not many people took her advice and maybe had to learn the hard way or maybe people don’t even realize that their lives on social media are toxic. People mainly do things like that becouse it is glorified on social media and thinks it is cool and also pays the bills. Being a social media influencer is considers a job nowaday and that is crazy but who am I to judge. This world is consumed by advertisements and new ways to get people to stay on their phones when real life is going on around them.

Weekly News: Cops kill a man in front of his mother

https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/philly-police-shooting-of-walter-wallace-jr-what-we-know.html