Social Media Reality

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, said in the Social Network movie something like:

"People are not interested in looking at famous people anymore. They are tired of seeing the same perfect faces. People want to see people they know, people like them."

Based on that idea, Zuckerberg eventually came to create Facebook.

With the boosting popularity of social media such as Facebook, combined with the growth in reality shows and their populatiry, it is safe to assume Zuckerberg's intuition was right.

People are desperate to connect to each other. People want to see people with their same issues, limitations, personalities to reassure themselves.

But what happens when even those people are playing into the impression management expectations?

If people relate to social media and reality shows to find real people but in fact find tailored versions of people and take those as true, their sense of self becomes even more threatened.

So the social media, which was supposed to serve the purpose of connecting real people to other similar real people, no longer fulfil the needs of individuals who seek out to each other because people will never find those behind the images being portrayed.

But can you blame them?

How can people be theirselves if they are constantly being judged by the image they show?

Maybe if social media was truly anonymous, we could expose the truest versions of ourselves and feed off of each other in a more genuine and meaningful manner.

As it is, Zuckerberg and reality shows are not putting real people out there, but more illusions of what it means to be real.

American Dream

The American Dream paradigm is a modern approach to success.

It is based on the premises that if people work hard engough, if people are good enough and if people's ideas are strong enough, people will be successful.


Well, the whole culture behind social media in terms of things going viral (or people succeeding) conforms to the American Dream as it suggests that if enough people can relate to something, then that thing become valuable.


In that way, if something is important enough, or enough people believe in it, or enough people want it, the paradigm leads us to think that it will go viral, that we will all hear about it.

But the American Dream ignores the fact that some people just cannot or do not know how to participate.

Maybe their cultures will not allow (like in China), or they do not belong to a Western culture and value social media types of communication (like in Tibet), or they simply do not have the means to be involved (like the indigenous people of Canada).

But nonetheless are these different cultures less significant, less insightful or less successful.

Maybe people should stop relying on the things the media, whether from their friends or national broadcasts, tell them to talk and think about.


Instead, we should be reaching out to different ideas through other media rather than sustaining our one culture alone by only regurgitating what we recieve from other people which, if you read my previous posts, I believe are just reinforcing the status-quo, not giving people a voice.

It is not because it is viral that it is important, or that it is not viral that it should be ignored.

There are various reasons why some things recieve more attention than others, and those reasons are not necessarily based on what society needs.

Success and progress comes from looking at multiple pespectives. We must not rely on social media to tell us something is important. We must be proactive and find different ways to listen to everyone.

Everyone CAN, but who DOES?

Henry Jenkins inspired me to talk about the collective intelligence of media, especially social media.

He suggests that the developing technologies allow people to put together materials faster and easier creating a collaborative pool of ideas and possibilities of which each and every participant takes advantage and controls.

And I agree that there is potential for anyone to get involved, to share ideas and to be heard. It is important that people feel that significant in building the world around them.

However, the idea that all voices are heard online is merely a romantic illusion.

How many of us really take the time to contribute to anything other than our own lives and support the status-quo?

How many of us even have the time or access to this opportunity all the time?

Yes, the technology and the potential exists, but this social activism does not belong to everyone's world.

I mentioned in a previous blog that we rely on each other to keep us in check, exposing anything detrimental to our society, and that the power pertains to the majority.

But the majority who is online
is not representing the real majority.

If you go to Brazil, for example, the majority does not have personal computers at home with internet access, let alone smart phones to photograph and post their realities.

In Venezuela, Chavez passed a law that gives him more control over the internet. He watches over every move and is able to stop rebellions before anything goes viral.

The same is true with the Chinese whose media are constantly under surveillance and blocked from certain content.

And didn't Microsoft pay someone to manipulate Wikipedia entries and affect public opinion?

The majority in this sense becomes the minority.

Not everyone has the technology, the time, the money, the knowledge of issues, or education to make a point and have their voices heard.

Everyone CAN go out there post things and spread opinions, but who really DOES?

YouTube Trend Research

By studying the given behaviors and ideas of college students in America by conducting interviews, I identified the reasons why people are attracted to YouTube, under what circumstances people log on to YouTube, and what motivates people to engage in posting, watching and sharing experiences through YouTube videos.

I found that this trend is growing tremendously and it is already becoming part of people’s everyday lives. YouTube serves many different purposes for people in terms of entertainment and education, but, in my opinion,

YouTube serves especially as an attempt to rescue human relationships and connections by opening up barriers of communication.

By sharing experiences in such a vivid manner, people are able to feel comforted, accepted and supported as their lives and thoughts become open to the world.

People are inclined to access information on this website at any given time of the day depending on their goals.

There seems to be a place for everyone on yet this other social trend, a place from which people cannot get away as it becomes each day more emerged in their realities and daily routines.

If you would like the full detailed analysis of my findings,

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE!

A Social Panopticon

Foucault is a famous theorist who used the prison design by Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon, to illustrate his views of the increased insidious surveillance in our lives.

The Panopticon was build so that prisoners would each take up one cell. The cells would be aligned creating a circle around a tower from which the guards observed and controlled those incarcerated. This allowed for a broadened view of the entire prison for the guards without letting the prisoners know whether or not they were being watched.

This system, according to Foucault, would reduce individuality and deindividualize power. The prisoners would slowly lose their identities as they would become alienated by the lack of true social relationships and power would transcend to those in the central tower.

And I could not help but to notice a similarity between a Panopticon and social media.

The insidious influence from our culture has convinced us that we must engage in all these virtual social worlds and present our best versions of ourselves through those media. But is that really liberating us and giving us the power?

Based on the conceptualizations by Foucault, I would argue that the social media is structured to increase surveillance over our lives and to ensure that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing.

I believe that we are consciously imprisoning ourselves into Panopticons by participating in things such as Facebook and Twitter where we register our moves.

We become individualized as all our records are structured and tailored to fit the requirements of the virtual versions of ourselves. And we deliberately give power to the watchers to judge and control our lives to the point where people can no longer freely express themselves and post versions of their characters without getting shun from society and fired from their jobs.

The euphoria behind all the advantages of the social media may help people if they can pretend to meet every social expectation, but it blinds them from engaging in real relationships and dealing with who they really are.

Why So Fast?

Information spreads incredibly fast, not only by new media broadcasts but also through the new new interactive media. Something happens and the next second it is already going around.

Accessibility is an obvious reason why information gets out there so fast. Everybody is able to just pull out their portable devices and text, email, tweet or facebook anyone in the world in a matter of seconds. Pictures, videos and recordings are a click away with the new technologies people carry around, which can also be shared across the world almost instantly.

But technology being more accessible is not the only reason why information goes around and around so fast. Jenkins offers a very important explanation: He says it depends on people having the right tools (such as cel phones and iPads) but also on their knowledge of what to do with them.

It is important to recognize the cultural dimensions behind spreading so much news. Yes, it matters to live in a society in which these tools are accessible, but we cannot forget that people do not necessarily use the same tools for the same purposes.

There might be some standard behaviors that technology brings. The fact that people can communicate things in different media at any given time is brought upon the culture by the media, but there are things and behaviors that are characteristic of certain communities.

For instance, Brazilians on social media websites, such as Orkut or Facebook, will delete their history and tend to have much fewer photos uploaded than Americans. Brazilians will often block their conversations and consequently opt for more privacy, but will generally make more plans for going out though these media than an American.

This reflects the cultural background of the two different ethnicities. Brazilians have a more conservative and protective sense of their individuality and identity. That may be because of the history of violence in the country and their fear of exposing themselves, or a simple question of keeping their profiles mysterious leaving room for questions as is the Brazilian cultural preference.

The tools may allow for common ground between nations and cultures. Everyone does in fact have a central point in which the information is focused, but it depends on their culture to assess the purpose of each media and to use them accordingly in the way they believe they should be represented.

We must not make assumptions as to where this technology may lead us or as to what implementing these media in different communities may bring because each society can and will respond differently.

The Sense of Being Human

Last Monday, a comedian performed on the Connan Show. His humor was interesting but he stood out to me for his last extremely thought provoking joke - which was actually so shocking and deep that in fact lost its humor, in my opinion.

He said something like this:

"Today, with so much technology and such ease in getting online to find information, the time between not knowing and knowing has become so short that it removes the excitement and value in actually learning something new."

I am not sure if he realizes how many theorists have written about this exact concept of losing the sense of being human, or alienation (Marx), or anomie (Durkheim), etc, but his example is the perfect description of how technology has contributed to removing people from feeling alive.

To use a more specific example, and to explain some of the rest of his joke which he used to build up to the moment of that truly fascinating comment, I will use my own personal experience of just over a week ago:

I was hanging out outside with a friend when a moth flew by and landed on the wall right beside us. My friend blew the smoke from his cigarette on the moth in the hopes of somehow killing it or scaring it away.

I said: "If you are trying to kill it by giving it cancer, you might need to blow a lot more smoke on it."

We laughed and then wondered: "Do moths have lungs? How do their respiratory systems work?"

My friend pulls out his iPhone and in a matter of seconds we discover that moths breathe by absorbing oxygen from the air through their bodies.

We then move on to talking about something else.

The comedian on the show told a similar story to show the ease in learning brought to us by technology. But then he countered that by imagining how it used to be before the internet.

People used to ask these random questions like the one about the moth and spend days wondering about how they breathe. People walked around asking others, hoping that someone would know the answer. Some time later, they would finally come across someone who happened to put them out of their misery with a suitable explanation.

The people asking the question would feel so reinvigorated and so special because now they knew something they did not know before! They would value that knowledge so much more because the quest for the answer has brought meaning to that information!

And isn't that what it means to be human? To long for things and then conquer them?

Is it better to assign some shallow meaning

to millions of little things?

Or to deepy relate to just a few important experiences?

Could technology be dehumanizing society?

Ignorance or Strategy?

The same people who say that social media will free the world from the controlling systems of information spread, that social media will open doors for the people to rise and break away from the dominant powers of contemporary journalism, are saying that when someone gets fired for voicing their opinions:

"that's just the way it is"

It seems to me that social media is being used as personal profiling solely. It has become a pit of the most obvious forms of impression management in which people tirelessly administrate their image.

Yes, there are interesting debates going on online and people share their thoughts about the latest things on the news by posting videos, links...

But how is that contributing to the liberation of thought that everyone believes these social media can bring

if people have to constantly consider how these posts may reflect on their person?

Gilbert Gottfried was recently fired from Afflac for using a considerably tasteless statement about the Japanese crisis to explain a personal feeling.  Even though he made a comment under his personal name, he still represents the company for which he works. Afflac did not want to be associated with such an offensive comment, especially since the company has business in Japan. As a statement, Afflack deemed the comment unacceptable and terminated their contract with Gilbert Gottfried.

Afflac's extremely predictable and justifiable reaction received applauses for standing up for what so many people judged wrong: a great move in terms of impression management on the behalf of their PR department.

This only illustrates the point I made previously:

social media really is not helping people challenge the information brought to them, but actually helping reinforce the status-quo.

The boundaries between people's professional and private lives no longer exist. They are each day more blurred when so many portals for sharing lives emerge each day.

If those media were to just expose the truth about how people feel and think, then assess each comment or behavior by discussing and debating alternatives, then analyzing the causes to each problem or praise, and then developed new ways to encourage the positives and transform the negatives, these social media really would bring freedom of thought to people.

People could have a chance to change the world together with the things in which they really believe and admire. And if any of those would fail, these same people could find new solutions together, by sharing and working together. A true democracy.

But we all know this is way too romantic and utopic. It is based on the idealistic modern hopes that people will act rationally rather than emotionally.

Even though the modern theorists have interesting approaches in terms of the enlightment philosophies which believe that everyone has the potential to do anything as long as they are taught to do so, it still remains unrealistic that people could own up to so much responsibility and use the social media in such a democratic fashion in our society.

If our society continues to use these tools to punish certain behaviors without addressing the causes and understanding the circumstances, people will continue to reinforce the status-quo

by playing into what is acceptable and what will make them

look good.

How many times do we hear to make sure we don not have anything that could compromise our image on our profile pages? There are even classes, conferences, and books that teach people how to act and how to manage these information portals.

The most that people are willing to push against the existing realities can be explained using Simmel's theories of fashion: people will deviate enough to stand out, but not enough to where they no longer fit in the group.

Maybe these slight deviations will be enough to eventually reorder society through the media, but

as long as people are afraid to expose their true selves

and, by that, potentially exposing societal trends of values and thoughts, people will just carry on ignoring the fact that there are still people who thing about tragedies in the way that Gilbert Gottfried does.

Those issues will keep getting swept under a carpet as people hide behind their personal online profiles publishing only what people want to hear, and therefore, reinforcing the status-quo.

Whether people act that way because of a false consciousness at to what I am so humbly trying to explain, or whether they deliberately choose to keep ascting that way as a strategy to protect themselves, I cannot say.

Maybe it is a little bit of both, like in my case.

But history has taught us that big changes take big risks, and maybe that is for what we should be using these media, rather than simply managing impressions: for our long term goals as a society.

Ministry of Truth

Wikipedia today represents a lot of what social media stands for:

The collaborative building on of ideas.

Wikis are the perfect examples to illustrate this concept of sharing info and constructing knowledge collaboratively. Using this medium, people may edit each other's work to create (ideally) a more objective and accurate source of information.

We all can already imagine this does not exactly work as expected because people will edit things to promote their own opinions, to change compromising information, to manipulate the public.

On a video showed in class recently, the speaker said that reality becomes a commodity when reality is what the majority agrees upon and when who or what controls the majority's thoughts is money.

This reminded me of George Orwell's book, 1984, again. In the book, Orwell created a department called Ministry of Truth in which the government had the workers select, alter and create historical data to promote the totalitarian regime.

If what the speaker suggested about Wikipedia being one of the sources that reflect this entire social media movement of creating knowledge together and editing truth accordingly, and if we take his premise of people being mainly motivated by money, then

We already live in a world somewhat like Orwell invisioned.

The idealistic version of shared information ignores the fact that so many of these media are being used to advertise and propagate existing realities.

Should we rely just on what the majority has to say?

The Big Brother Watch

The control and responsibility of promoting ethical and decent values has shifted.

In this video, Henry Jenkins suggests that the developing technologies allow people to monitor the government and true events, exposing and eventually finalizing famine, torture, and others. He says:

"George Orwell imagined a world where Big Brother was watching us, when we instead, with little cell phone cameras, are watching Big Brother every moment of the day."

It is true that individuals now have more power to create and change things they see. But it is also true that some people take advantage of the ease to form groups and attract selective people to very abusive practices such as prostitution, trafficing of drungs and people, among others.

CNN recently exposed Craigslist as a commonly used tool of underage prostitution.

These media have facilitated and sustained this behavior for years. Many other websites also exist to promote similar horrifying practices.

The potential of the media is overwhelming in possibilities.
After the owner of Craigslist denies knowing anything about the issue, the CNN reporter asks:

“Why should I be showing you this if it is your website?”

Today, people must take responsiblity for what is out there. Now that Big Brother is no longer watching for everything and everyone, others become crucial players to ensure that only  ethical and decent values spread.

Freedom of Expression

A high school teacher, Natalie Munroe, got suspended for ranting about her students in her blog. Munroe expressed her discontempt with the school system, parental guidance and student attitude in considerably harsh and offensive terms.

Despite the hurtfulness of her words on an online medium, those on her side argue that she is free to express herself. Shouldn't social media allow people to voice their thoughts and opinions? Well, not everyone agrees that people should.

One of the girls interviewed by NBC said that what the teacher described was most likely true, but said that she should not have put that up online where everyone could see it.

Thus, how far do social media really allow people to be free to express themselves?

The first amendment protects Americans only so far as it lays several limitations. People are already not allowed to share certain ideas, but without the internet, people get away with venting their concerns as those around do not usually act upon penalizing them for saying something inappropriate.

Online, these words are documented and can be traced back to the author. Posts on Twitter, Facebook and obviously Blogs are monitored and hold people accountable for their opinions.

Only because Munroe shed the school, parents and students in an unflattering light, does not necessarily mean she should be punished. She used an external medium to express herself and, to my knowledge, did not infringe any of the limitations in the first amendment. Yet, she was suspended and responded to her actions on national television.

Do the media really give people more freedom? Or do they just control better what people are saying?

Whether Munroe was right or wrong to publish such comments, I believe stories like hers make people fearful of sharing their true feelings and therefore limits or tailors their true opinions. This defeats the purpose of having social media give voice to small individuals as these become silenced by fear.

Ode To Our Technocratic System

People today seem so concerned with getting more for less that they forget about what really matters.

We constantly pursue more money for less effort, more things for less money, more distance for less time, and so forth.

But are we forgetting to live through these experiences?

I recently asked a basketball player who was working next to me during an event what he valued most.

He answered: money. And the conversation continued as follows:

Me: "Why money?"
Him: "Because the more the merrier!" (laughs)
Me: "Well, what if I offered you 500 dollars for nothing and 500 dollars for a couple of chores?"
Him: "I would take the 500 dollars for nothing, of course."
Me: "And what would you do with that money?"
Him: "Turn it into 1000."

I thought that was such a interesting conversation that was soon interrupted by our jobs, but it sill made me think that he was missing out on the opportunities which that whole process could bring him.

He was more concerned with making money rapidly and easily than with the experiences he could have when earning that money or spending that money.

Our technocratic system is no different.

Technology has provided us with the ability to be more efficient.

People see the media available today as tools to make money, to learn a million things simultaneously, and to be efficient but they forget about the whole experience and the things that will bring them a more real and lasting sense of happiness.

The Frankfurt School would classify this paradigm under their theories of Irrationality of Rationality.

We believe it is rational to embrace the efficiency of technology but it may as well be irrational depending on our goals.

It seems so obvious to us that we should do and get as much as possible for as little as possible (probably because of our capitalistic mentality) that we might be missing out on more meaningful areas of our lives.

What we believe are our ultimate goals might not include the elements that will bring us happiness.

We are so often living with the anxiety of what comes next that we forget to take advantage of where we are now and immediately escape into the virtual worlds of social media.

Yes, we can talk to more people, follow more ideas and connect to more things through social media,

but does more for less, in this case, override the significance of face-to-face and hands-on interactions?

Or are we forgetting about what makes us human?

New New Media Empowerment

There has been a shift in the way that people see, share and create the world through media. Henry Jenkins argues that the technological advances have made the media incredibly accessible, but that the major impact has come from the new new media, or social networking websites.


The distinction between the producers and the distributers of information fades as people choose to get more involved. The model for communication has shifted and therefore has become more dynamic and less forced top-down by a superstructure or by those in power.


The readings suggest that the new affordances and capacities available to everyday people have triggered the change, but most importantly, Jenkins says these empowering "technologies are deployed reflects of emerging social logics and cultural practices.”


This provoked me to think what in this new reality created by the new new media is really new. I started to look at the traits behind each one of these media and could not help but to think that, although a new universe of tools and accessibility came from these advances, the behavior and social structure of these media are yet just another manifestation of our already existing culture.


People have certainly become more involved. They have been able to get more things out there for others to see and that unquestionably gives them a sense of power. I guess the powerfulness comes from the idea that through these media, we are al free to engage and learn about more things than without these media, as well as being free to share and teach.


With more freedom, people should be able to carry forth new ideas that would add new layers to our general culture through the new new media dynamics. More issues, certain truths and different concepts would emerge from the deepest corners of society and settle along these websites. But that does not seem to be the case.


According to Jenkins, people make a series of socially embedded decisions when they choose to share something in the media. He says that “all people who create new content from existing material want to communicate something about themselves. When people receive spreadable media content from a discerning friend, they often welcome it as reflecting their shared interests.” This means that people will mot likely post thinks that will represent them in what they deem is the best light than what might be necessary for society to know.


Granted that people have been able to spread important issues over these media. The Egyptian rebels were only able to share their concerns and act because of the ease in communicating through social media. However, too few of these large movements challenge the existing powers. Most of those who participate in these websites are more interested in managing their self images than risking their reputation, or sometimes even safety, than taking advantage of these tools to empower themselves.


Being involved with new new media is not enough. By conforming to the social standards in each website, people are conforming to the existing culture and status quo. People get a false sense of power and freedom as they believe that everything and anything they do and say can be heard. But their actions still only reinforce instead of question the already existing values. People will sustain popularity contests, relationship games and try to look cool rather than create truly new things.


If we take Simmel's theories of fashion, we can see how even the reinvention of certain aspects of culture still help maintain a cultural system. Even though fashion, or personal ideas on new new media, may seem innovating, they still participate in a broader picture that might not necessarily be contributing to social advancements as expected.


Like Jenkins said, these thechnologies reflect our social and cultural practices, but, I believe they do not necessarily create new practices, or at least not more than would already be carried just through a different means given the technological advancements.

The Role of Media

In order to determine the role of “new new media”, we must look at the role of media altogether. In an utopist model, media is created by the people to provide one another with objective and factual information about the world around them. Within this model, media is a tool for democracy and education as it makes information more accessible.


With the growth of media systems and the development of new technologies, information became much more attainable and immediate. We are able to share by the second endless amounts of information.

However, is the accessibility and integration of each of those media compromising the quality of information?

Is it contributing to the manipulation of facts to help sustain certain cultural and societal values? (such as the nationalistic sense of being American by harshly recriminating wikileaks)

Or is this integration of media generating more truthful insights and facts?

While so much integration may create a deeper sense of communication in which people can interact and instantly express their thoughts and feelings towards certain issues, this also causes an information overload.

People are forced to make decisions between the different media and the information provided and end up focusing more on entertainment or on shows that support their current points of view, for, with so much thrown out into the world and so much interaction, information loses objectivity.


In a sense, the role of media then becomes to integrate people and share experiences, thoughts and feelings. The media and technology make it easier for people to find others similar to them and live among that reality.

From these social gatherings, often facilitated through new new media, especially social networks, cases of political and public activism spread out vigorously. The media makes it easier to target and connect those who desire to join certain groups.


Although the media still provides access to information and helps connect ideas, the role of media in a society seems to shift. At the same time that media allows for greater interaction, it still remains controlled and tailored to the streams in which information exists.


Not every website can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Google and Yahoo, huge search engine websites, block some of the information depending on the internet code of someone’s computer, according to their physical location. Those in China have limited access, and, depending on what they type in the search box, the search engine website will report them to Chinese authorities which will then arrest those who deviated from Chinese expectations.


The media, based on its unquestionable power to spread knowledge, gains the benefit of people’s naive assumption that they can learn about anything they desire at any given time.

However, people seem to ignore the fact that the information on the media, especially after going through so much interaction, is bound to subjectivity. The information overload also makes it harder and more time-consuming to select more objective sources.


This whole idea brings back the thought of the true role of media in a society. Clearly, there are many different forms of media.

Potentially, each form could serve a different purpose. As long as the new new media provides the subjectivity and the general opinion and the general media the objective information, there would not be a conflict of interests and the media could still serve to promote democracy and education.