"I like it...."

Although I have incorporated Face book into almost every blog so far, there was a topic this week that I could not pass up. One night last week, I received a number of Facebook messages with the breast cancer "I Like it Campaign" challenge. In order to support breast cancer, the campaign was to send out a series of messages to all of your friends asking them to post where they like to hang their purses. That night, there were hundreds of statuses with the quote "I like it...... on my bed" or "In my car" etc. etc. Of course this was only the statuses' of women and it left many of the men on face book feeling very confused, as it alluded to a certain other activity. It was amazing to me how fast this trend caught on, and how many of my face book friends were actually posting their statuses as such. Many of the statuses I saw were meant to be funny or a joke, some were serious. And the more statuses there were, the more boys on Face book started to get fed up. One of my guy friend's status' read "If I see one more "I like it" status I'm going to kill myself". While a little extreme, the overload of status updates were starting to get annoying. I didn't really understand how posting such a telling status was professing your support of breast cancer, but I also figured that at least people were becoming more aware. The Times Newsfeed said ".. What exactly does provocatively saying where you like to keep your purse or bra have to do with a horrible disease that has challenged the lives of so many?". Regardless, the campaign was catching on, and gaining a lot of supporters, which is what social media is all about in our generation. The spread of news and information over the course of hours and the ability for this trend to catch on and create such a frenzy, gives light to the power of social networks. This article explains that the idea is to leave men in the dark and that the "I like it" trend is an attempt for women to unite around the cause in a top secret way. While some think that this demeans breast cancer, I think it is a clever way to raise awareness and there is no better way to spark people's interest than to start the trend via facebook.

When online bullying goes too far..

In last semester's new media class we talked about the effects of cyber-bullying. The internet gives kids free reign to endlessly torment their peers without actually having to do it to their faces. The victims of cyber-bullying are often too embarrassed to tell an adult, or they just don't want to be picked on more. Kids bully each other in chat rooms, through websites where they can post anonymously, or within groups or face-book walls. Unlike face to face encounters, cyber-bullying has no boundaries. More recently in class we talked about how any photo, video or status that you put on the internet will be there forever, for anyone to see, no matter how embarrassing or unflattering it may be. People need to be more careful of what they put online because it could end up having terrible consequences.

For me personally, I didn't think cyberbullying existed in my generation. I thought that kind of teasing and gossiping stayed in high school and ended with high school. However, the recent and horribly tragic death of Rutger's student Tyler Clementi proved me wrong. This link from the new york times describes the lengths to which online bullying can push someone. It talks about something we've touched on in class, which is how online you can say anything, or be anybody and you can believe that there won't be in any consequences. (In my opinion, 18 is far too old to find "cyber-bullying" funny or even morally right) Why make fun of someone in person when you have the ability to humiliate them on a much larger scale? The author points out the fact often, the line between what is real and what is online is blurred. These kids acted online thinking that there would be no consequence for their behavior, because they were sitting safely behind a screen. Unfortunately, it takes something as horrendous and vicious as this case to get people to stop and think about cyber-bullying and the effects that it is having on the victims.

Lastly, I wanted to post this video An Important Message - From Ellen DeGeneres (Gay Suicide) made my Ellen DeGeneres that I have seen everywhere from Facebook to twitter to Youtube. Ellen spoke out on her show, but through the power of the internet, millions more were able to see her important message. As devastating as some of the effects of the internet can be, the widespread sharing of this hopeful video shows that the Internet can be as helpful as it is harmful.

In colle

Celebrities and Facebook

Talking about privacy on facebook in class this week got me thinking about those people in society who have perhaps the least privacy of all....celebrities. A while ago when I was a freshman in high school and had just joined myspace, I remember one of the big "fads" was to post your pictures on worldisround.com. This was right around the time when the tv show, laguna beach had come out. Obviously this show became a hit fast, and to myself and most other 15 year old girls (the target audience), the people on the show became instant celebrities. I remember being at my friends house one night, when she told me she had found one of the show's characters worldisround account pictures. This was a huge deal to us and to everyone else who we showed, because it was like a personal insight into these kids lives, which revealed things that the show did not. However, a soon as the show became a big time hit, the pictures and account were removed.
Similarly today, as soon as someone becomes famous, their facebook account is bombarded with requests, messages etc. etc. As fans people tend to view facebook or online accounts as personal, private insights into these celebrities lives. Most really big timer celebrities (think julia roberts or tom cruise) don't have any sort of social media spaces. They get enough attention as it is. However, people who are lower down on the popularity scale have taken advantage of facebook's Fan Pages. Facebook fan pages are another way for celebrities to interact and connect with fans, without it being a total invasion of privacy. They can update funny statuses and pictures and receive hundreds of comments. This is usually a one way street, as they typically don't respond to those who write on their wall, and you are not a personal friend of the celebrity but one of thousands of fans who "like" them. The amount of people who become your "fan" can be directly linked to how popular you are in the media at that moment. for example this link talks about how lady gaga surpassed president obama with facebook fans. A testement attributed mostly to the types of people who are on facebook and who actually like celebrity fan pages. As of this past summer, when Gaga was perhaps at her highest peak of celebredom, she managed to rack up 10 million facebook fans.
In regards to privacy, celebrities are not able to have the luxury of having private facebook pages, as we have seen firsthand through class discussions that that rarely works. Pictures posted of celebrities on facebook are just one more way for the media to obtain them and for the rest of the world to see, which has happened numerous times. However, fan pages have become a new way, along with twitter, blogs, websites and other social media forms, for fans to feel like they can have little taste of their favorite celebrities day to day lives.

Internet = A Dangerous Outlet

Some people use art to express themselves, others do so through sports or yoga, but today increasingly more young people are finding their identity through internet blogs and sights such as myspace and face book. Its no secret that most of us spend way too much time on the internet. But as seen in this weeks reading, many young people have started to use the internet as a space to express themselves through pictures, blogs, statuses, quotes etc. It is a way for kids to get away from their hectic daily schedules and socialize in a free space, where they can do and say what they want. Some people take this to the extreme, and use the internet to expose every detail of their life, to post inappropriate pictures or to vent about a problem they are having. Talking about this in class reminded me of my senior year of high school, when we had a speaker talk to us about "cleaning up" our images on the internet, before we started applying to colleges. In other words, we were told that it would be smart for us to take down any pictures of underage drinking, or other inappropriate behavior, cursing on our page etc. Back then, I didn't really think much of it, but as my younger brother starts applying to college, I thought I'd do a little research about just how many colleges actually check Face Book or MySpace. I came across this article, which basically says that today, one out of 10 college admissions officers checks applicants Face books, and 88% of recruitment officers. Because of this, the Internet may not be a space for kids to socially connect and express themselves anymore. Anything kids today put online could be held against them, which, in many cases, they do not understand.

Private or Public?

In class this week we talked a lot about privacy online. In a world where almost everyone has their own personal online space, it is hard to define where to draw the line with what information you make available and to whom you make it available. Pretty much everyone that you meet nowadays can be searched for on Face book, Linkedin, or even google. This is where the privacy in the real world verses online becomes blurry. For example you may meet someone briefly in person, and form your opinion on them based on that meeting. From that meeting they may seem like someone who is quiet or someone who is reserved, but when you search for them online (Face book) their pictures could present an entirely different persona. They could have pictures of them dancing on a bar or taking shots with friends that rival your initial opinion of them. Privacy on Face Book can be controlled. The reading on SNS argues that such sites "do not provide users with the flexibility they need to handle conflicts with Friends who have different conceptions of privacy". This could create trouble for offline relationships. If someone was to make all of their information private, it could offend those who can no longer see their information.

Privacy can also affect personal offline relationships in other ways. For example a good friend might find out that you are engaged at the same time as someone you barely know, because of Face book. This complicates relationships, because you would obviously want your good friends to know of your happy news before anyone else. However, this is all a part of "social networking". I think that in time, people will learn easier ways to bridge the gap between their online and offline relationships.

Is Cloaking easy to spot?

This week in class we discussed cloaked websites and cyber-racism. From the article, we learned that there is a wide-range of cloaking websites, from political cloaking to corporate. There are also different levels of cloaking in which the website may either openly identify itself and its agenda or it could be more complicated, in which the website might operate out of different countries or lie about its broadcasting. During our discussion, I tried to think of a website that I may have come across that was cloaked. Then I started to think, would I even know if a website I had visited was a cloaked website? I think in some cases it is fairly obvious, as we discussed in class, but in others it may not be as simple. Thinking back, I remember for a project in one of my classes, we had to look up websites that were Pro-Life, and those that were more informative on reproductive health and Pro-Choice. I remember coming across one website called www.teenbreaks.com, that seemed to be Pro-Choice from the outside. This was a website for teens that had advice and information on issues ranging from relationships and sexual abuse to abortion and pregnancy. From just the home page, it looked to me like it was about sexual health and issues relating to it. It did not seem to be taking a Pro-Life stance whatsoever, nor did it seem to be promoting absitence. However, one of the links was named "sex is awesome" and when you click on it, the word UNLESS is the first bolded image on the page, followed by a list of reasons why you should wait to have sex. The website also has pregnancy and abortion links. In the pregnancy link, there is useful information, advice and self-help numbers to call, while in the abortion section, there are a number of cons against abortion as well as long-term effects and hardly any information. There are hundreds of success stories from girls who decided to keep their children while the stories of girls who had abortions are all filled with regret. Although I did not recognize it at the time, this was clearly a cloaked website, and was very heavily pro-life. At the outset, one might not see that this website has a hidden agenda, but as you browse the links, it is clear. Before realizing this website was cloaked, I thought I would have an easy time at recognizing a cloaked website when I saw one. However, teenbreaks.com prooved that its not as easy as it looks.

CyberBullies

In class this week, we watched numerous videos on Cyber-Bullying. Teens and Tweens today have so much access to technology, it becomes something that they can abuse. It has become part of their social norm, and they use it to interact with each other in any way that they can, whether it be to talk online, post pictures of one another or publicly humiliate each other. Bullying is something that has gone on forever, but now that it has expanded onto the internet, it has become dangerous. Kids are being tortured online, and this torture has led to horrible tragedies such as suicides. One ad that we watched in class that stood out to me was the ad about the girl who got up on stage and started to bad-mouth another girl in the audience. The premise was that if you wouldn't say something to someone's face, then do not say it about them online. This ad reminded me of a website that my 14 year old cousin first turned me on too. One day, on her facebook page, my cousin Nicole posted a website called www.formspring.com onto her status. I clicked on it and was amazed by what I saw. You can anonymously post whatever you want about this person, any kind of statement, question, fact, dirty joke, and the person whose formspring it is can answer. Although I wasn't impressed by this website, Nicole's formspring wasn't horrible. It was mostly posts by her friends with inside jokes or "your so pretty, where do you get your makeup" etc. But occasionally there would be the post "You and your friends are stuck up b*****s" or something of the sort, in which she responded with "Who is this?". This kind of website opens up a whole new realm of cyber-bullying. The fact that kids are willingly creating an open forum for their peers to bash them is scary. Nicole told me that she has seen worse on formspring than her own; kids writing terrible things about each other which spark rumors etc, and lead to even more bullying. According to Conway, I think that this kind of "terrorism" wouldn't be classified as use rather than misuse. It is not causing any kind of real disturbance besides the fact that it has left multiple teenage girls distraught about their social status's. However, it could lead to worse, which makes it a threat. These are the kinds of websites that should be more regulated. Cyber-bullying is worse enough as it is, and websites such as formspring only feed into it.