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Challenge #1:How long can you go without using ANY form of online media? (excluding what you need to participate in school, work and family logistics).

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Challenge #1:How long can you go without using ANY form of online media? (excluding what you need to participate in school, work and family logistics).

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For me, this challenge started off super easy because I chose to start the challenge on Monday when Facebook was down and all apps associated with Facebook were also down (Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.).  I lasted about 6 hours for this challenge thanks to the fact that I had class and work on the same day. The very first thing I noticed was how automatic my reflex was when it came to pulling out my phone to use social media. Due to the Facebook outage, I could not stimulate my brain with news feeds from Facebook, Instagram. I was able to spend more time being present in my surroundings. There were moments during work where I would spend my breaks on my phone but I choose to take naps during those 15 minute windows. During my lunch break I was able to have a decent conversation with 2 of my coworkers without the need to constantly check my phone. I paid more attention to the things that were being said in that conversation that I had while also being able to respond in a way that showed I was actively listening. The main obstacle I faced was not defaulting to my phone when it was slow at work and there was not really anything to do. I felt a sort of itch to grab my phone out of my pocket and just "check" what was on my feed for Instagram or to browse their explore page. When my phone started vibrating for notifications, I had the slight advantage of having an apple watch so I could see what type of notification I was receiving without needing to fully open my phone. As the notifications started to pile up, I noticed I was getting more and more anxious. While not on my phone, I was more aware of the sounds and events happening around me while I was at work but I also took note of how often my mind would wander because I was not stimulating my mind with my usual social media consumption.  I finally gave in to the challenge when Facebook started to work again because I wanted to see all the memes and reaction posts on my feed related to the Facebook outage. In hindsight, I think that if the Facebook outage did not happen that day, I would last less than 4 hours without using social media.

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Challenge #2 :Use video, audio, photos, and/or writing to paint a picture of things you have done online during Covid that you wouldn't necessarily have in meatspace (aka, offline). 

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Challenge #2 :Use video, audio, photos, and/or writing to paint a picture of things you have done online during Covid that you wouldn't necessarily have in meatspace (aka, offline). 

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I was admitted to the University of Washington Bothell campus at the height of the pandemic and the lockdowns that were enforced in almost every state. A lot of my activities moved to the virtual landscape which included things like school and spending time with friends of mine. I typically tried to avoid online classes because I am the type of student that learns better in person and having face-to-face interactions meant a lot to me. With school moving to exclusively being online, there was a entire culture shock that I went through that definitely affected my mental health and the way I approached academics as a whole. Being a young adult, I fell into this new way of life that many others in my age range also went through that is described by an article that was posted by the Pew Research Center from the author Emily A. Vogels titled "From virtual parties to ordering food, how Americans are using the internet during COVID-19". In the article, Emily talks about how there was a drastic lifestyle change for people during the height of the Pandemic. This change was mainly noticeable in younger adults in the form of ordering food delivery, hosting virtual parties, or streaming music/videos. While reading this article, it made me reflect on the different behaviors that I developed while the lockdown was in place and I was able to draw a good amount of similarities between those behaviors and the ones mentioned in the article. For starters, when it came to attending classes online via Zoom, I remember always squeezing every last second of sleep I could before I had to log on. Pre-Covid, I would always wake up and get ready for school at least 1 hour beforehand to wake up, shower, eat breakfast and commute to campus. For online classes, I would literally wake up mere minutes before class was about to start and sit and my desk, with my blanket fully wrapped around me, and leave the camera off on purpose while unmuting my microphone to occasionally participate in class. Another thing I would find myself doing while in class in engaging in other forms of online content. There would be multiple occasions where during a lecture I was listening to, I would have other tabs on my computer open to things like online shopping, YouTube, Anime watching sites, and sometimes food delivery websites. Normally, in a in-person class environment, I would be taking notes in a notebook or on my laptop but I would rarely be distracted by other things. A common theme that was mentioned in almost every quarter online so far that I had last year was that everyone felt super burnt out and unmotivated when it came to 100% virtual learning. Not having the routine of going to campus and directly interacting with other human beings face-to-face was super taxing especially on people who thrived from other people's energy.
The other thing that I did a bit different last year was how I digested my news and from what sources I got them from. The article written by Paris Marx "Don’t Blame Social Media. Blame Capitalism."   touches upon a thesis that was also touched upon by the Documentary "The Social Dilemma" which is that the negative effects in society should only be emerging from platforms that use the model of data-capture and algorithmic curation but the Marx argues that is not correct. He mentions the outrage against the popular app, WhatsApp, from Brazil and India in regards to all the "fake news" and "spreading of right-wing narratives". Later on in the article it is noted that these outcomes are not at fault by the app itself, but more so from the agendas spreading from lesser known platforms such as 4chan. As for myself, this made me think of the time during the Black Lives Matter protest and the various media coverage that I saw. At the core, there was plenty of media coverage that did a great job covering all the reactions and emotions from that time. However, there were also instances of stories and pictures being heavily staged. It made me hyper-critical of every article and new story that I saw/read which was uncharacteristic of me pre-covid.

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Challenge #3:What is an example of online manipulation that you’ve used before to help you get “likes” and “shares” on a social media platform?

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Challenge #3:What is an example of online manipulation that you’ve used before to help you get “likes” and “shares” on a social media platform?

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Challenge #8:. Discuss what forms of participation have been key to that fan community. What ways do people demonstrate their fandom? How have social issues or politics been infused in this fan community?

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Challenge #8:. Discuss what forms of participation have been key to that fan community. What ways do people demonstrate their fandom? How have social issues or politics been infused in this fan community?

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The fandom I am choosing to focus on for this challenge is the K-pop fanatics. While I do enjoy listening to various K-pop artists (both old and new), I never really considered myself a part of the overall “fandom”. The main form of participation that I’ve seen that has been integral to this fandom is the platform Twitter. The people who are active in this fandom use Twitter as the driving force for making songs/artists become viral and share this passion and desire for this fandom. People that are part of the K-pop fandom participate in a multitude of ways that start at one end of the spectrum with modest acts like retweeting posts and giving the music videos on YouTube hundreds to thousands of continuous views to extremes like sharing fan-cams at concerts and even posting videos of themselves recreating or mirroring the complex choreography that these K-pop artists’ display. Politics were infused with this fandom as mentioned in the reading from Beningfield that talks about the major activism moves that happened during the Trump presidency. The fandom has this sense of unity that is so powerful that they were able to organize sabotaging one of Trump’s rallies while somehow keeping the details and the whole action on the down low until it was time to make their move.  There is also the not-so positive light that comes with being a part of this fandom. There is a household name among K-pop groups known as Big Bang. One of their members, Seungri, was found guilty of arranging prostitution and gambling for foreign businessmen. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail and was publicly shamed by the whole sub fandom of Big Bang for his actions. His career was ruined, and the fandom is not quick to forget monumental things such as this.  This also brought his retirement from the K-pop industry in 2019.  Another concept that the article from Beningfield touched upon that I resonated with was that K-pop fans originally flocked to the fandom because of the apolitical and fantastical nature of the genre. Many K-pop songs are light-hearted and fun little adventures with unique stories in every single different song. While listening to these songs it’s easy to lose yourself in these experiences of emotion and rhythm and forget about the various aspects of daily life that cause distress. It truly does create this safe space where other members of the fandom embrace each other and brings a welcoming feeling to anyone looking to dip their toes into this world.

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Challenge #10:Interview a Gen-Xer or a Boomer (or, if you ARE a Gen-Xer or Boomer, interview a Gen-Z person!). Choose at least five online activities that are central to your life (it can range from essentials like paying bills, to fun things like Instagram following).

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Challenge #10:Interview a Gen-Xer or a Boomer (or, if you ARE a Gen-Xer or Boomer, interview a Gen-Z person!). Choose at least five online activities that are central to your life (it can range from essentials like paying bills, to fun things like Instagram following).

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For this final challenge I will be basing my interview on two specific readings from the quarter: Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday life and Tristram’s My name, My Age, My Favorite Colour... and I choose to interview my boss at work, Ron, who is in his early 50’s. When it comes to my five things that are central to my life, those things are Instagram following, video games with my friends, Facetiming with loved ones, watching Tiktoks and school. As for Ron, his list included paying bills, Facebook, reading news articles, video conferences and cat videos. The first similarity I see in our lists comes in the form of using the internet for school and my case and using video conferences at work for Ron’s list. During these activities we change our self-image to match the situation we are in and people we are interacting with. Whenever I use the internet for school, I am playing the part of a “student” who listens to the professor and my peers. I aim to have good grades and punctuality when it comes to turning in my assignments/exams over canvas. I do not act exactly the same way I would if I was at work in front of customers instead of classmates. For Ron, during the conference calls that he partakes in he assumes the role of his work title which is a retail supervisor. He acts and talks with a authoritative tone and set boundaries between his coworkers and himself. He uses specific language that relates to all the higher ups that he is in charge of communicating with. These roles that Ron and I take relate to the idea from Goffman of how we show this aspect of the “Performed Self” and how we “display a series of masks” and “enact roles” to fit the situations we find ourselves in. Another similarity that I found in our lists was that we both like consuming some form of videos. Mine relates to various types of content that has been shown to me on my For you page (FYP) on Tiktok while Ron mainly watches random videos of Cats that he finds on his Facebook feed. Given the different types of tiktok trends there are today, I introduced Ron to the Tiktok trend that was mentioned in the reading from Tristram My Name, My Age, My Favorite Colour… and educated him on the details of the trend and the origin of the song lyrics used for the trend. His initial reaction was “wow, you young people love to tell the world every little detail about yourselves!” which made me reflect on what was said in the reading. Tiktok creators are willing to follow every trend they can to gain time in the spotlight and be viral for a little bit without thinking of the possible implications from trends like the one mentioned in the reading. The reading talked about how a bunch of the info being given in any tiktok following this trend can be also answers used for security questions and can lead to hacking of accounts if one isn’t too careful.  For Ron, I don’t think he’ll have to worry much about his accounts being hijacked due to his “lack” of social media presence on tiktok and only focusing his time on social media looking at videos of cats.

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Challenge #3:What is an example of online manipulation that you’ve used before to help you get “likes” and “shares” on a social media platform?

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Challenge #3:What is an example of online manipulation that you’ve used before to help you get “likes” and “shares” on a social media platform?

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One of the ideas I would start sharing from this quarter to the general public is the importance of staying connected and having access to the internet as much as possible. With the pandemic that we’ve had to live with (and still are), school and work almost entirely transitioned to virtual means during the lockdowns. Classes and meetings were held online, and it became glaringly obvious how much of our country was not prepared for this sudden shift in their daily lives. In the reading by Olga Khazan titled “America’s Terrible Internet is Making Quarantine Worse”, she mentions that “As many districts start virtually this fall, some teachers say they’re fighting to ensure that all of their students can log into class each day”.  The families and students that were at the biggest disadvantage were those in areas of low income and areas where broadband connection was not made accessible. Lacking the ability to attend school or maintain a job that has moved virtually will only create more problems which is why there is a need to address the public and how accessible internet is for any given community. The second idea I would pass on to the general public would be the concept of impression management from Erving Goffman. We live in a day and age where there has been a big surge in the online dating community, and it is very prevalent when it comes to adolescents and even young adults. Tinder, the popular dating app, would be a great example to look at. There is a plethora of users on that app that are looking for genuine connections and, on the flip side, there are a good number of users who use that app to deceive or even trick people into scams. The impression that users give off can tell a lot about their intentions from matching with other users at a surface level. Those who are using the app to scam other users will give off an impression that is a big “turn off” as users might say. The bios that users write is another way that given impressions can be used to great effect or it might backfire if not given careful consideration and attention to detail. The final ideas I want to present to the general public relate to two readings: “My Name, My Age, My Favorite Colour..” by Edward Tristham and “How K-Pop Stans Became an Activist Force to Be Reckoned With” by Will Beningfield. In the reading about Tiktok, Tristam talks about the dangers of mindlessly following popular Tiktok trends and how they could lead to giving away information that in super sensitive and could lead to hijacking of accounts. I would tell the public the same warnings that Tristam stated and educate people on how simple details about themselves could be details that they use for their security questions to their personal accounts. For the reading from Beningfield, I would tell the general public about how the K-pop fandom rose to prominence and the impact they had on Trump’s infamous rally that he held.