Ch. 6 Reed

In chapter six of Reed’s book Digitized Lives, he asks the question of whether the ease of information sharing and increased amount of political information available via the Internet is resulting in a deeper understanding across political differences and producing more broad-minded and smarter citizens, or if the Internet is just a place where people can amplify their pre-existing rigid political biases. In Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, he discusses the change in political activism as a result of this mass information sharing on the Internet. He says that opportunity costs of finding fellow activists and communicating on a large scale have been decreased almost to the point of nonexistence. I agree with Shirky that because of the Internet, it is much easier to hop on the bandwagon and support a cause. An example I have personally witnessed was the KONY 2012 campaign. Because of the viral video, tons of people from my high school changed their profile pictures to the KONY graphic and bought the t-shirts to support the child soldiers. However, as we discussed in class, we are no longer in the Information Age, we are in the Attention Age. So much is being shared and self-published that what gets read is what catches a reader’s eye. I think the cool red t-shirts were half the reason so many people I knew supported KONY, especially because the Invisible Children charity turned out to be a shady organization that spent a majority of their donations on overpaid management. Nobody bothered to do any research on whether the money they were spending really benefitted child soldiers.

So in a way I can affirm that information sharing on the Internet does not necessarily create a more politically educated and active citizen. However, I do think that social media provides us with a platform to change this. By posting about controversies in the media and having intelligent and fact-based conversations, people can educate their friends whose biases come from having been misinformed. Also, people that may be too afraid to speak out can learn something and build confidence in their own opinions just by reading these conversations, even if they don’t participate. A lot of the time, people that do have an opinion they want to share need someone to go first. Social media provides a way of offering ‘cover’ for others and encourages participation in political discussions. I have witnessed some pretty tasteless Facebook fights where someone posts about a controversial topic like gay marriage or race and people who oppose the opinion say nasty things about how stupid the other is and it goes back and forth. However, I have also witnessed some very heated, but intellectual and respectful conversations. One of my African American Facebook friends posted about the Ferguson riots and a Caucasian girl he knew commented on it saying she didn’t think it was a racial issue. He politely replied that he respected her opinion and her contributions to the discussion and then went on to say “the people at the bottom are just trying to tell you guys we’re struggling down here and all you guys have to say is you’re not working hard enough.” I think his respectful sharing of his perspective could have a huge impact on his Facebook friends that just don’t understand the complexities of racial issues. His perspective really impacted me because I had no idea how much he struggled with race. He provided a space where his white friends who may have wanted to discuss Ferguson but felt it was not their place could comment and support him. I think social media provides a platform where people can speak out and educate each other. Not everyone’s views will change, but providing legitimate facts rather than senseless arguing pushes political understanding and sharing in a better direction.

Gender, technology, and sexual discrimination on the Internet

I’ve never been a big gamer so my experience with sexism on the Internet mostly comes through my observances of social media. One thing I’ve noticed about social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the clichés specific to each site that girls slip into when posting. The term ‘basic bitch’ has been thrown around the Internet lately and it describes a legging and UGG wearing Selfie Queen who posts daily photos of Taylor Swift lyrics, Sex and the City memes, and her Starbucks caramel frap. She never misses a #MancrushMonday post or a #nofilter sunset opportunity and shares inspirational quotes from her Pinterest board on Instagram. Although this girl may be an extremely complex individual, she doesn’t post her opinions on political ideologies or controversial news in the media– she sticks to the flow of traffic and reuses commonplace hashtags because the popularity of her online identity is always on her mind.

Something I find very fascinating that I talked about in my Book Review revision is our online persona that we build for ourselves on social media sites. My generation has become obsessed with our online identities and how funny, cute, interesting, unique, and well liked we appear to be and we measure this based on number of likes or favorites. The ‘basic bitch’ is relentlessly made fun of on the Internet, not only by boys, but also by girls who seek to reinforce the idea that they are ‘unique’ and ‘not like other girls.’ This is just another way that girls seek approval in their online identity. Some think they have to be special, others think they have to fit in. By bashing each other’s personal preferences for femininity we are reinforcing stereotypes that have been created for us by men and we just make it okay for the world to keep simplifying, generalizing, and categorizing women based on something as menial as an Instagram photo.

Online slut shaming is another way of reinforcing stereotypes. Women are constantly being assessed and shoved into two categories: the Madonna and the whore. The Madonna is virtuous, innocent, submissive, and the type of girl a boy wants to marry. The whore is the bad girl who is in charge of her sexuality, more like a man is supposed to be. When a woman is aggressive and in charge, the construction of gender roles in our society and the transfer of power begin to blur. Shaming the whore is a way for men to regulate female sexuality and provide the illusion that they are still in control. But other women also partake in slut shaming because of their own fear of female sexuality. When a girl posts a sexy picture on a social media account and is shamed for it by other girls, it’s just another way of reinforcing the categorization of women into this dichotomy. These are my most prominent observations of sexual discrimination on the Internet.

Reed Ch. 1,3,5

In Chapter 1 Reed says that when dealing with digitizing cultures we are actually dealing with two processes, “the human development of digitizing technologies, and the human use of those technologies.” He discusses how these are not the same thing because humans will use a tool intended for one purpose for another very different purpose. I think this is completely relevant to his discussion of the Internet’s effect on human sexuality in Chapter 5. The website Second Life is a 3D virtual world created by its users where you create an avatar and operate inside the world as that avatar. You can also buy a viewing device for the program called the ‘Oculus Rift’ that functions like a pair of goggles and lets you virtually exist inside Second Life. My expert group is virtual reality so Reed’s mention of this program in Chapter 5 caught my attention.  

He talks about how 1 in 10 users of Second Life engage in virtual sex. This is an example of using a digital tool for a purpose that it was not originally intended. Human nature and desire drives our use of technology. Although we create the technology, our use of that technology shapes our culture. And by culture I mean the values and dogmas we attach to certain behaviors or actions, such as sex. Before the Internet, sex was considered a personal interaction, and by personal I don’t necessarily mean the moral idea of the word where two people are in love and have discussed their physical connection and are ready to take the next emotional and physical step in their relationship. I use ‘personal’ in the physical sense of the word. Sex was between one or two or more human beings in the flesh all in the same room. With virtual realities like Second Life, teledildonics (digitally controlled sex toys), and digital diddling (I could not stop laughing when I read that term), people can have sexual experiences with anonymous users on the Internet.

This goes back to Clay Shirky’s claim in “Here Comes Everybody” that when you change the way we communicate, you change society. Now when we think about sex we have a whole other realm of sexual mediums to consider which impacts the cultural definitions and emotions that surround the idea of sex.