Essena Quits Social Media

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Essena O'Neil shocked her followers when she decided to quit social media. She's made a living for some odd years off of Instagram, blogging, Tumblr, and Youtube videos. She says she became to what others thought of her and valued her self worth in the number of likes she got online. I've mildly followed Essena on Youtube for a little bit in the summer. I remember finding myself insanely jealous of her life. She's beautiful, has a great body, is a model, she was able to quit university just to focus on her social media job, she was living what I,and many others thought was the dream life. I remember scoffing at videos she'd post where she said she needed to get her body in better shape. She already had a flat stomach that I would have killed to have. She'd say she feel alone,and I'd think nobody that stunning could ever actually feel alone. When I found out she quit social media I rolled my eyes thinking it was just a publicity stunt, or a way to make her seem more 'edgy' or something like that. I made myself read the article and my hatred for her that was really only derived from pure jealousy seemed to dissipate.She said she quit social media so people wouldn't compare their selves to her,   so she wouldn't be living in a constant 'does everyone like me' state, and she put captions on her instagram photos describing how fake and staged they were. The unattainable image this girl painted for herself seemed to wash away. You always see models in magazines or on TV and think how great and beautiful they are. Perfect hair, perfect skin, flat stomach, nice legs, and you just get defeated because 'I'll never look like that', but the girls don't even look like that. Professional hair and makeup can do a lot. Not eating before a photo shoot will make any stomach look flat. She really did show from her actions that what you see online isn't always true, it all depends on how the person makes them self look.

Catfish Reflection

In regards to my argument paper about why people catfish,it is slowly but surely coming along. I found a pretty reputable source giving reasons why catfishing occurs, and another describing the definition, usage, and origin of the term catfish. These will be great sources for my paper seeing as they are content rich. I still need to do some more research but I like taking things one article at a time.

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I plan to begin 'drafting' or making an outline of what should go in my paper later on today. It's kind of hard to do this paper, because it's breaking the traditional mold of 'write about one side, write about the other side, pick your opinion' paper that's been drilled into my brain since probably elementary school. With my argument, it's describing that it's a complex and complicated reason why people chose to cover their identity online. None of my other school teachers would have ever gone for that approach. I think it's going to be difficult to write this paper, but a good experience to learn as in real life, everything doesn't always fit into the cookie cutter mold that we've been taught. I just have to think it through, find the sources, and believe in myself!

Why Do People Catfish?

'Catfishing' came to the public light by the television show that features Nev and Max helping figure out if their online lover is real or fake. There's many episodes everyone with a different, but similar story. There have been countless people that have been duped by people online posing with a fake persona. This lead me to think, why do people catfish others? Is it solely a personal choice, a mental problem, or does social media play a role? According to Krystal D'Costa from Scientific American, 54% of online daters have believed that they have talked to someone posing as someone else. This may have to do with social media making it so easy to find information about people. Just type into the Facebook search bar and find someone who doesn't have a private profile and you can often find links to Twitter or Instagram. You can also see where they go to school, if they have siblings, find out hobbies, social media isn't very private unless you go out of your way to make it private. Pictures can be pulled off of Instagram or Facebook and used to pose as that person.

Social Media and Body Image Microtheme Brainstorming

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      When you log onto social media, turn on a TV, or flip through a magazine, what do you see? In my experience, I always see models with perfect bodies advertising anything and everything, articles about losing weight, and segments about thigh gap work outs or how to get a "Beyonce booty".
    All these things may seem harmless, or more so the norm in today's society, but is it hurting people, specifically young girls body images? On Instagram there's thousands of posts under #bodygoals or #thinspiration. These are all people wishing they had some other body, and hating their own.
    Seeing perfect models advertising everything from Versace to Carl's Junior's hamburgers can hurt girls self image. If they never see someone like them on TV or on a magazine, they can start to get self conscious. Seeing pictures of thigh gaps and articles about how to lose weight fast or get the "six pack you've always dreamed of". What if you've never dreamed of a six pack? Should you dream of a six pack? All these types of things can negatively effect the sense of confidence you have with your body. If society constantly is constantly putting out the same image of what's 'beautiful' and what's 'in' that can't help girls with their body issues.

       I know this can be true because I've fallen victim to shaming my own body. I'd follow Victoria Secret models on Instagram and just feel sad and beat myself up over not having a body like them. I'd see people on magazines, and read their articles and would look at my stomach and frown, knowing there was a layer of fat that was concealing my abs. I'd want a bigger thigh gap, smaller arms, and a butt that didn't cast me in stereotypical 'flat white girl' realm of butts. I learned to hate my body before I loved it. I taught myself to point out my flaws before my strengths. If it happens to me, I'm sure it happens to other girls as well. While some people may say it's the person's fault for looking at those types of pictures, it's not so black and white. It's hard to learn to love your body when certain types are constantly shamed in our society, especially on social media. #Thinspiration might be doing more harm than good to girls everywhere.

Summary

 

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My main experiences with summaries were just single paragraphs, summing up the movie, book, or article I read or saw then jumping right into analytic commentary. Summaries are not as easy as you think, especially when the purpose of one is to be your whole paper. There needs to be detail, but not including every little thing that happened in the film. You need to be able to word the summary professionally, so you avoid sounding like a teenage girl telling a story about the drama going on with her BFF Jill "And then this happened... and this happened..... and this happened". It's very easy to make your summary emulate a sports caster football play by play, or like you're rewriting the script of the film on paper. Especially since documentaries might be hard to understand if the background knowledge isn't there, or if the film uses large vocabulary and technical terms.  I do think summary are a very valuable skill to have. It can help in professional life during meetings and such. Being able to pull out the important information and focus on that can really help people when in the work place. 

Coming from a heap of chemistry and biology classes, the summary writing was kind of difficult for me. I've always been taught to make detailed notes and make loads of observations. While this helped me in taking notes for the summary, it didn't help when I had to sift through a whole page of notes just to write the darn thing. In science it's all about the details and the observations. That's also true for summaries to an extent, but for summaries it's more of the main picture big big details.

Documentary Reflection

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I. Love. Documentaries. Most of what I watch on Netflix are documentaries. I'm always looking for new and interesting educational flick that I can watch grab some snacks and cuddle up in bed. Call me a nerd, but documentaries are my favorite kind of films to watch. It's always been hard for me to sit through a "regular" movie. I don't even really like going to the movies and shelling out cash for a sub par movie.Any movies I see I never end up loving, or I find myself thinking that I wasted two hours I'll never get back. I never feel that way with a documentary. Maybe it's because documentaries tend to be less deceiving than "normal" movies, meaning you're never really 100% positive how an action movie or rom-com is going to pan out. At least if I've watched a documentary I know I've learned something, while if I don't like a movie I've wasted upwards of two hours of my life.

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I'm assuming my love for documentaries comes from never ending and most likely eternal curiosity. I've always been a curious little thing. I was always the kid who liked to going to school and wanted books about animals and science for Christmas.  I just liked knowing things. Ever since I've been a little kid, I've been asking questions my mom couldn't answer and by the time she flipped through our stash of encyclopedias and found out how horseshoe crabs swim, I've thought of three more questions to ask. Documentaries satisfy my curiosity, with mounds of knowledge at the tap of my keyboard. I can find out about literally anything I want to without having to read a dry text book. I like knowing things, and documentaries let me know things.

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I don't believe people who say they don't like documentaries. I think they just haven't found one that they liked. When someone says "documentary" people usually shiver as they think back to grade school when the teacher would role out a TV cart and put on a film about the American Revolution narrated by some British guy (but I also think you're lying if you say you didn't like it when Bill Nye the Science Guy played on those TVs). There's a documentaries for everyone. Sports, science, food, religion, travel, biographies, animals, fashion, the list goes on and on. Some of the best, most interesting movies I've seen have been documentaries. One of my favorites is about a company putting American men in content with Ukrainian and Russian women in what's called a modern mail order bride company. I've seen one about people whose lives have been consumed by a game called Second Life, Blackfish about the whales, AIDS victims in different countries, veganism, the list goes on. I challenge those who hate documentaries to watch one that a lines with their interests, and see if they still hate documentaries.

Social Media Stereotypes

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If social media was a high school, call it "Internet Academy", every platform would be a stereotype straight out of a John Hughes 80s movie. Facebook would the popular guy on campus who everyone knows, or at least has heard of. Twitter would be the loud mouth debate team captain who never knew when to stop talking, Instagram would be the 'self absorbed' rich girl who is so into herself she's always snapping a picture of her perfectly done up face. Tumblr would be the hipster kid who listens to bands you've never heard of and is always wearing a beanie even in 90 degree weather because that's his aesthetic. Sounds like the typical kids in high school who you pass in the hall, but are what the kids are stereotyped as, what they really are, or do they have more levels to them than meets the eye?
Is there anything wrong with these archetypes that social media are placed under? No, there's not. There's nothing wrong with social media having niche markets. On the contrary, I think a lot of society is too focused on the stereotypes they put the platforms under than accepting them for what they really are. People are too busy saying "Instagram is for rich kids taking selfies" "Twitter is only for people who need to share everything about their life to make it look interesting" and "Tumblr is only for the hipster snobs". After falling victim to believing all these stereotypes, I'd always join with some skepticism.
Once you join the different medias and do some digging beyond the surface, you find the stereotypes aren't as prominent as you thought. If you want a feed filled with selfies or life updates, you can get that no problem. However, you can find amazing photographers on Instagram, world travelers on Twitter, and scientific articles and political movement information on Tumblr. It's not as one dimensional and flat as people think. There are
communities within the platforms, there's something for everybody, but you never hear about that. All that's reported on is the "selfie generation" or oversharing of our lives.
I think if we want to overcome these stereotypes society just needs to dive in head first and sift through the pictures, updates, and tweets until they find a sub-community they can feel  comfortable in. If you like who you're following or what you're seeing the stereotype fades away.