Down To a Sentence

Credit: http://www.freeimages.com/

“If he knows one thing, it’s that we don’t know much of anything…” (speaking of myself in the third person)

Forcing oneself to distill their essence down to one phrase, one sentence, one thing…that can be a tough thing for any one of us to do. Despite this sentiment being fairly universal we actually practice it every single day, only in this scenario, we have no qualms with doing so. Wondering why this might be true despite my previous assertion? Well, in short, here’s the answer: we do it to others all the time.

Whether in person, through a third person behind another’s back, or, most commonly, over social media, we make judgements and distillations about other beings constantly. This isn’t necessarily bad or malicious (my goal in this post is to literally do the same to myself), but as more of a natural function of social interaction; however, this can be easily informed by our personal biases and anecdotal experience above all else.

What I’m getting at via my basic understanding of the nature of reducing people to a particular sentence is that I didn’t personally acknowledge it until recently. Probably up until Senior year of high school, I have (admittedly, naively) assumed that others around me must certainly appreciate the amount of stock I have in considering my whole, complex identity. As I became an increasingly bigger fish in a slowly shrinking social pond (i.e. becoming an upperclassmen, fighting to hold onto the familiarity of high school, etc), I would come to realize that without my physical presence holding my complexity and entirety behind, I wouldn’t have the chance for others to truly understand me. Somewhat begrudgingly, I would shift my focus more towards creating a personal legacy for myself in society, almost as though I expect death to come knocking and wish to live on via lineage and story. I would realize, more concretely as part of this blog additionally, that this personal sentence would be the next best thing.

All throughout my high school journey, one term that has stuck out and continues to resonate with me is the Jesuit concept of “radical equality,” which speaks to the universal equality we share with every person irrespective of any number of the socio-economic, race/ethnic, and cultural borders that seemingly “divide” us. While most times this concept is attributed to more pressing contexts regarding widespread societal issues, I believe it can also be applied to this more microcosmic issue of distilling oneself down to a sentence.

I have concluded that each of us faces this paradox of wishing for others to see the complexity in those things we hold personal while at the same time seeing no reason to do the same for others. And therein I found it, my sentence! We are truly equal in our laziness to reduce others to some specific notion. My sentence encapsulates my realization of this, and I work every day to not make these preconceived judgements, these reductions in identity of others, especially when I can’t seem to do the same to myself. I guess I live my own rendition of the “Golden Rule” in this sense. We all deserve more, but it’s a fact in my book that we more often than not choose simplification over complexity.

You’re Being Audited…

Credit: http://www.freeimages.com/

Normally, I associate being audited with being someone who has their hands stuck in the “proverbial cookie jar” in areas of business or politics. However, in this case, I must put these thoughts aside and take a critical look at my own social media habits with the same unbending scrutiny as an IRS investigator would with a person of interest.

In terms of social media use, I tend to spend most of my time either on Instagram or Reddit, the former being for personal interactions and keeping up with friends, and the latter mainly as a time waster in some personal subreddits that I feel community with as well as those I find amusing or intriguing.

Although I do utilize these apps and social media platforms the most, I use others as well, namely Snapchat, Twitter, and least of all, Facebook. Snapchat I again use to keep in touch with friends via daily streaks and direct messages/snaps, and Twitter is sort of an in-between for using Reddit to find news, fun facts, and usually keep up with my favorite online content creators on YouTube and Twitch (mainly for gaming content). Facebook on the other hand is a platform I’ve almost stopped using entirely, mainly because my family’s posts are so awkward and politically charged that I hardly browse my feed for the most part, not to mention my general disgust for the UI of both the app and the desktop version.

Social media has definitely made most of my communication change to become far more instant, and has caused me to be constantly vigilant and looking for people to respond back sometimes to a fault. This can be both a blessing and a curse, as it’s great to not have to wait for an entire phone call or email for a response, but a detriment in that I’m sometimes anxious about checking my phone without paying attention to what’s happening right in front of me.

In terms of what I hope to get out of social media as a class, I hope to see if I can build my own “brand” of sorts by getting experience through outreach for our non-profit group.

Let’s “Not” Fake it ’til We Make it This Time

Oftentimes nowadays it feels that more and more we have to actively refute lies and untruths more-so than fairly evident truths and facts. Sure, there have been centuries of recorded falsehoods and sensationalized media created in order to attempt to further or demean a particular cause or group of people (think of examples like Yellow Journalism by William Hearst, state sponsored media in dictatorships like Nazi Germany and North Korea, and Russian propaganda trying to lessen nature of Russia’s involvement in the Crimean invasion and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17), but it also appears that the digital age has exasperated the issue of fake news and misinformation.

With the advent of social media, the floodgates have truly been opened in this regard. Despite the various types of content supposedly being offered on differing sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, fake news and misinformation runs rampant seemingly regardless of which company or organization owns it. Specifically on Twitter, as this article by The Atlantic references, studies have shown that “…falsehood consistently dominates the truth…Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories” (Meyer, The Atlantic). And it’s easy to see why this might be true from the outside looking in. As just an immediate, anecdotal example, I had to fight the urge to simply copy and paste this quote for the purposes of this post, and rather have chosen to dive deeper, now seeing the source of Science, a publication of credibly sourced scientific studies and articles, aggregating an MIT based study. Knowing the extra amount of effort this takes, despite my feeling fairly confident in my discernment of accurate news and reporting, is even more troubling when I extend this extra time to literally any number of people online.

With this in mind, the next step should be to illuminate others as to the importance of always keeping news discernment a priority when reading stories online, rather than just regurgitating, reposting, or retweeting whatever story they have time to read and respond to emotionally during their most likely busy day. But if we want this problem to stop, we have to confront it. Not in the sense that we always try and directly confront those that don’t respond well to being told they’re spreading fake news (because Lord know’s I’ve tried and failed miserably in similar choice situations), but instead by offering steps to become healthy skeptics. This approach allows for both a heightened detection of outright falsity as well as an increased acumen for spotting highly biased or decontextualized information. Even NPR, a news organization is willing to put itself under scrutiny saying “traditional news organizations are more reliable because their business model is to paint the clearest picture of the world that they can manage. But in the post-trust era, we know that any news source can steer you wrong at times, and they’re likely all jumbled together in your news feed anyway” (Steve Inskeep, NPR).

At the basest level, while it’s easy to posture about how simple it can be to educate others about being more discerning, it’s still important regardless. I believe that going forward, there should be an element of computer and media courses during elementary and high school at least that go over discerning sources online, and of different forms of verification on social media. While this issue equally affects almost all age groups online, quelling the problem for future generations is a great way to cut off the head of this demon in the form misinformation, which leaves the bulk of the issue in a more manageable, stable position to be dealt with.

Credits:

W. Clement Stone quote – BrainyQuote

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News – The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer

A Finder’s Guide to Facts – NPR, Steve Inskeep

“Free” Press

The free press, often lauded as a bastion of maintaining an informed public in both our American democracy as well as those around the world, is under attack from myriad sources nowadays. Not a day goes by where a politician or government official finds themselves above criticism or mere observation by the general public, instead undermining democracy rather than face their critics. By trashing unfavorable journalism and media, often equating reputable organizations to suppliers of fake or extremely biased news, as a standard instead of as an exception to the rule, these “officials” have reduced the public’s receptiveness to supporting reporting and ethical journalism.

Hand in hand with this disruption of quite a bit of the public’s trust of journalism is another massive attack that comes in the form of lack of monetization for smaller news organizations as well as those that don’t subscribe to wholeheartedly prioritizing salacious or “clickbait” content. In today’s highly sensationalized, extremely fast-moving world, more traditional reporting has fallen by the waysides as it’s not immediately appealing to the widest demographics of both consumers and advertisers. In the past 15 years or so alone, almost 1800 local newspapers have closed (BBC article) as a result of these issues of subscriber retention and advertising troubles, which is just a sad correlation to see represented in data. Not only is this reality troubling on the basis of many journalists, writers, and editors losing their jobs in a highly competitive industry, but also because this loss of informative reporting will be incredibly detrimental to the overall health of our democracy. We’ll start seeing less society-changing exposes, each of which likely being replaced with celebrity lifestyle tips or “You Won’t Believe What Just Happened” titles followed by relatively inconsequential substance. Nowadays, only 24 hour news media has the resources to maintain their current business models.

One of the biggest hurdles that news organizations must leap over now that they face such overwhelming opposition is transitioning their forms of monetization and company values to keep up with the times (and the Times). In terms of finding payment for their companies, news orgs should look towards digital subscriptions with incentives, such as faster story output for subscribers and increased sale of products and services in addition to actual reporting, all the while never downplaying the importance of journalism and news reports (10 Ways News Media Companies Can Move Into a Profitable Future). Additionally, there needs to be an industry-wide conversation in which news orgs clearly state their personal values for reporting. Sure, there’s plenty of space in the world for breaking news reports, entertainment tabloids, and more opinion-based pundits, but if these companies want to be credible media sources they need to value the morality of watch-dogs and journalism above that of only producing the most “gotcha” news possible.

The podcast conversation with Nicco Mele did address some of these issues. He believed that peak advertising took place a few years back, and that the amount of content available has stretched ad dollars too thin. He suggested that two revenue changes for news orgs would remedy some of these issues, specifically requesting subscription models and switching paywalls out with incentives to promote subscriptions instead of walling off content. He also stressed the importance of keeping advertisers and marketing separated from the journalism and reporting teams, while at the same time meeting halfway to actually fulfill a surviving business with employees and expenses.

People need to realize in the age of quick consumption and heightened advertisement that there should be a free press, but that we must also support the press through direct subscription and paying opportunities if we don’t wish to see important journalism fall to the wayside.

Credits:

10 Ways News Media Companies Can Move Into a Profitable Future – Editor and Publisher

Why Local US Newspapers are Sounding the Alarm – BBC

A Digital Rorschach

Just as the internet has seemingly changed every aspect of modern life, journalism included, so too has it provided corporations and organizations with plenty of inventive, engaging, and in some cases deceptive forms of public relations and advertising to interface with their intended internet consumers.

Picture the “outward face” of a company, their public relations arm to be more precise, and think of the statements that a given PR or advertising department releases as a Rorschach blotch, holding several unique meanings to each and every consumer. In the digital age, these intended meanings are being constantly thrown aside and changed for new ones in order to appear increasingly trendy and personalized, leaving consumers and the public in disarray as to their discernment of corporate and organizational messaging.

In this emotionally heightened, lightning-fast period of public relations with consumers of content, those wishing to enter the industry of PR have to be just as quick on their feet to adapt to what’s expected as an employee. Public relations is no longer just about keeping the public informed of a company or organizations’ actions as the Forbes reading states, but rather a greater commitment to align “public relations and marketing” alongside a shift “from journalist/writer-based public relations to a customer-focused approach.” In a sense, this change is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s great for PR employees and customers to have a more personal, custom-tailored relationship in order to push products, ideologies, and intended responses in a more direct way. On the other hand, it makes it continually more difficult for consumers to discern when they are solely being “marketed to” versus when marketing is merely used as a tool to get a PR point across in such a saturated online world. Ultimately, and definitely to a worrying extent, this discernment is solely left to consumers and journalistic watchdogs to hold companies and other organizations accountable for their honesty. All of this follows how I perceived PR works from a consumer’s perspective, with the caveat that I am increasingly worried about the honesty of morally-gray companies and organizations in their public outreach and discourse (i.e. how much of their language is truthful concern/marketing and how much is face-saving).

In addition to the new faces of public relations today, advertising has taken on an entirely new, increasingly intrusive nature online and beyond. In all sorts of media today, even trusted news sources, advertising and product placement is running rampant. In class, we’ve discussed the blurring of lines between advertising and journalism specifically, with sponsored articles and how they are framed as being as credible as editorials despite being created to advertise a product or company. The inherent dishonesty in coming close to deceiving less discerning consumers is quite evident, and seemingly won’t change to fit Rushkoff’s insistence that the internet should not operate with the goal of advertising over communication unless regulation on advertising is allowed.

I consider myself quite discerning in terms of seeing through the intent of advertisements, and generally regard most ads with disdain and a block from my mind, although I understand that companies need to get word out on their products as a necessity. The most an ad can do for me is perhaps elicit a laugh or smile for the marketing team’s self-awareness or witty writing, but I see through how I’m being targeted for such ads more often than not. I value a company taking the risk for an honest review of their products than jamming product placement down my proverbial throat (these examples of fairly shameless product placement from this week’s reading in entertainment media like movies are extremely transparent to me, and make me detest how much the product makes me cringe instead of makes me want to make purchase). I also have a decent amount of respect for cause-related marketing, as at the very least it makes a visible impact on communities of people and shows a certain level of commitment, even if the intent behind it is merely to save face and improve public outlook.

Credits:

Rorschach Gif – From the Film Watchmen, Property of Warner Bros.

What You Can Expect From the Future of Public Relations – Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/07/12/what-you-can-expect-from-the-future-of-public-relations/#3cb57a97710a

The Delicate Art of Product Placement Advertising – https://www.thebalancecareers.com/the-delicate-art-of-product-placement-advertising-38454

The Man Behind the Curtain

While examining the Frontline documentary Generation Like, I found myself wincing both at how outdated the user interfaces and internet lingo already is after only 4 years of progress online, as well as at how obviously geared towards making consumers market and promote company’s products for them the internet and especially social media were, even back in 2014. This second point actually hits home especially hard in our present day, as recent examples of internet influence by foreign actors like Russia or data collection by companies like Cambridge Analytica shine as clear examples of how highly manufactured and artificial interactions on the internet can be, whereas in 2014 the relative freshness of social media left only social influencers and content creators in the loop as to the behind the scenes work for various actions like ad campaigns. In much of the documentary, “transparency” in marketing is highlighted as a “profound” change in the age of internet marketing, but in recent years “transparency” often only acts as a PR facade to engender trust in a given brand.

Rushkoff, as the writer, director, and producer of this documentary, follows similar assertions to those he’s made previously in his books and presentations, and chief among these assertions is articulating the danger in supporting an internet based on advertising alone, as it hinges almost entirely upon the emotional manipulation of its user base for marketing purposes accomplished at varying levels of moral integrity. Many users don’t mind data collection and targeted advertising as long as it furthers ease of use when shopping or utilizing a given service (Transparency In Online Advertising), but most will also agree that this willing release of information for a product deserves actual transparency in terms of what and when exactly we’re trading our privacy. Personally, I share this worry similarly to Rushkoff, that the corporate ideology that the internet is merely an outlet for advertising first and foremost is dangerous, and that without proper investigation and regulation the internet and social media will remain a faux-transparent, manipulative landscape we’re constantly conditioned to take at face value.

As the video reaches its end, it addresses that we, the generation “like” that can be so easily manipulated, actually has the opportunity to jump on the marketing train and be our own brands. While this was just a burgeoning idea in 2014, the proof most certainly is in the pudding nowadays, with the myriad Soundcloud rappers, YouTube personalities, and meme pages gaining traction and revenue through smart promotion, branding, and monetization. Still, it’s easier for existing mega-corporations to hire extremely talented marketing teams and artists to find what sorts of online interactions sell, or in this case, generate the most traffic and likes. While the barrier for entry into online spaces like YouTube is quite low, the amount of competition as a result is overwhelming. Without being an established content creator with a few years under their belt, it can be almost impossible to compete with more advertiser-friendly or corporate-backed channels (Why ‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty) without resorting to secondary monetization like Patreon or paid subscriptions. While this reality is annoying and quite costly for creators in the short run, the extra true “transparency” offered under specific, paid subscriptions creates a stronger, more real social bond between two different parties on the internet, which is something that nebulous ad-placements will never truly capture.

The Man Behind the Curtain is visible online now, it’s just up to us to find if what he says at the end of the day is genuine with all pretense stripped away.

Credits:

The Wizard of Oz – Warner Bros.

It’s Time to Increase Transparency in Online Advertising – Forbes, Timothy Nichols

Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty – Fortune, Bloomberg

Wide As an Ocean, Deep As a Puddle

“Watch that first step, it’s a Doozy”

In certain video games with an advertised length of around 20+ hours of gameplay, especially those that contain freely open game worlds with hundreds of quests and items to collect, many gamers attempt to gauge the level and quality of the content included within this game of choice. With almost 8,000 games released this past year on Steam, the biggest online PC games store (Report: 7,672 games were released on Steam in 2017/Polygon), publishers are constantly under pressure to advertise the most hours of gameplay possible in order to gain any leg up on their massive market competition, and so game devs are often forced to throw in content of variable fun and quality to pad whatever hour mark is deemed necessary. The growing ubiquity of these sorts of game worlds and experiences in modern gaming has many calling these massive, yet barren open worlds as “wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle.”

I feel that this phrase can be applied quite aptly to the nature of communication over the internet, although with recognition for the heavy dose of hyperbole present in such an absolute statement. While we can communicate with more people than ever before at any time in human history in an instant, we also have begun to miss out more and more on the important social interactions that most human psychologies necessitate. We have an entire ocean of people to connect with on an equal level, which in and of itself is a  stellar achievement, but the sad reality is that a majority of those interactions only have the capacity to affect us on a surface level, a mere passable splash in the proverbial puddle.

In my own anecdotal experience, the biggest issues that I find both myself and my friends facing when only having social media communication is a lack of ability to confide or have intimate conversations. The only times I tend to have these moments is when myself or someone else is on the verge of tears, or have/had to build up an immense amount of courage to come forward looking for help or guidance. This comes down to both a need to self-improve in willingness to be open about emotional distress as well as an all too often forced detachment from socialization via the context of the internet. As Rushkoff puts it, social media is “terrifically suitable for long distance communication…but rather awful for engaging with what – or who – is right in front of us” (p.40).

As with most activities, the internet dictates we value moderation over saturation, because if we deprive ourselves of richer, personal social interactions for extended periods of time we can become socially, emotionally, and psychologically inhibited. Several studies conclude that “social interactions can enhance good health through a positive influence on people’s living habits…emotional support…and can foster ‘a sense of meaning and purpose'” (NYT article on Social Interaction). While there are social interactions that can and do take place on the internet, they are of an entirely different variety from the usual interactions we have and often need to embrace in real life outside of the digital world.

Credits:

Groundhog’s Day GIF – Credit to Movieclips.com, Columbia Pictures

Steam Games in 2017 article – Ben Kuchera, Polygon

Social Interaction – Jane E. Brody, New York Times

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton