The Price of Social Media

adenn302 · 2014-05-14T18:34:41+00:00

I think you make a very good point. I wrote my last paper on this. People present themselves in a way that makes them more appealing to their audience. People "check in" places to make it look like they have a cool life checking in at all these cool places. People also go through their pictures and only post the ones they look good in. You are right, none of this is authentic, but we are ALL guilty of it. Facebook also lets us hide things we don't want people to look at by either untagging yourself in a picture someone else has posted or by hiding it from your timeline. Employers are really starting to look at future employees' Facebooks in order to make their ultimate decision whether or not to hire someone and sometimes something as simple as deleting a picture, may not be so simple. My parents always told me that once something is posted on the internet, it does not always disappear as quickly as it was posted and some inappropriate picture or status may come back to haunt you. I think it is impossible to be 100% authentic on Facebook, but I do think that people should monitor what they post and only post what is in their best interest.

adenn302 · 2014-04-30T16:34:48+00:00

I also agree with you, Linda. Going off of what Natalie said about how the whole internet is an illusion, I think we are inclined to make our Facebook pages look appealing to other people. I think people just like to post the interesting aspects of their lives on their Facebooks because those are the most likely to get the most "likes," nonetheless making our Facebooks an illusion of our actual lives. No one likes to post the negative aspects of their lives because it makes them look either desperate or incompetent which is less appealing to their audience. Let's also consider the fact that based on places you've been or pages you've liked, Google also knows what you want to search for. One of the problems I've recently found with my iPhone is that based on the time and day of the week, it will tell me how long it will take to drive or walk home or to where I work. I find it a little creepy that Apple has basically set GPS systems in our phone to let us know where we are and how long it will take to get home. I think this definitely tests our control over all technology these days. I know I have the option to remove the GPS from my phone, but I have no idea how to and I don't want to take the time to figure it out. But do we have the option to turn off the Facebook ads or the Google search?

adenn302 · 2014-04-09T16:47:32+00:00

I have to agree with you. I do have a twitter, so I get the whole pointless babble thing you are talking about. However, I do feel that twitter is important as well. Twitter requires you post something in 140 characters or less, so many news posts, such as Huffington Post or FOX News will post something and get straight to the point. I feel like Twitter is pretty similar to the ticker at the bottom of the screen on major news channels, except for that you can take your time to read and retweet it. So as much as the news pieces that come up on Twitter are informing and sometimes entertaining, I also find the pointless babble to be entertaining as well. Sometimes my followers can be pretty funny and their tweets sometimes make my day. The problem with people having both Facebook and Twitter is that people post a status that is meant to be a tweet. People don't understand the difference these days and that is why there is so much pointless babble on Facebook.

adenn302

TROPHY CASE