I think Yik Yak isn’t meant to be an agent of change. I think it’s supposed to be a fun, entertaining medium and a good place to get a simple question answered but I think the reasons you supplied signify that it isn’t something that is necessarily meant to be taken totally seriously. Whether or not that is a good idea is another question entirely, and I don’t have any idea there, except that what they’re doing so far seems to be working well for them.

I think there’s some truth to what you said, but I also think that crowdfunded projects are an example of the public sphere, a battle for ideas where people vote with their voices. People who contribute to kickstarters or indiegogos or, especially change.org. Are just using words behind a keyboard, but those words have a tremendous capacity for quantitative change.

I think the part of his article I had the hardest time with was reconcilling my concern that these one-to-many networks work hard to target specific demographics and try to pinpoint areas of agreement and push content to those people and interests. Specifically, Fox News works hard to demonstrate its agenda and, if you watch the Daily Show at all, you know they are willing to sacrifice a lot of the facts in order to make their demographic more polarized and consequently, more reliant on Fox.

Piggybacking off of what Betty said, the only competition I feel on Instagram is with myself, trying to take the best photo I can. I do think it’s the most basic medium however because it’s so conducive to snap-judgements based on “do i like this photo? yes/no.”

I think in general though platforms are making a bigger deal of the quantitative number of likes and shares for two reasons.

1. Everyone wants feedback. People want to know how good they are at social media or how popular they are, I think it appeals to our competitiveness as you were saying. Companies want data on engagement to drive sales and marketing pitches and make content that will spread better.

2. With news feeds curating everything for us, we spend less and less time writing on other people’s profiles, especially with texting, snapchat, messenger, and email. What’s the point of writing on someone’s wall if not just to get likes?

To me, the whole point of seeing things as a commons is to avoid barriers like governments. If there are too many children, we have to look at all the places that countries are developing too quickly and convince many governments to do implement programs to curb their growth.

Facebook news feeds are becoming a tragedy of the commons with many people (myself included) doing far too much self-promotion and posting far too little thought-provoking content such that I am no longer interested in something that was once valuable to me and it has almost reached the level of a barren wasteland analogous to the Aral Sea (though not as important of course).

I’m pretty into fantasy football myself, I’ve only played for two years but I think it’s really interesting from a competition with friends standpoint and from a cultural one. I’m not sure if you’ve read any of Matthew Berry’s blog posts or his book, but he discusses how fantasy impacts real life, from forming bonds across social and cultural barriers among strangers, to creating cohesion and friendships in the workplace, to bridging otherwise difficult relationships with friends or family/community members. I think the league-based format of the game establishes norms of trust and reciprocity among league mates and the game provides a common ground for people everywhere. League members are also somewhat civically engaged, discussing rule changes and other issues among themselves and with an elected commissioner…

What a wonderful video. I think these kinds of acts are representative of why Coke is so good at branding themselves. This is really how the internet should and could be used. I think we need more service that encourage positive connection and collaboration between strangers working to accomplish tasks. With the exception of the “Be My Eyes” app I wrote about earlier in this course, I’m struggling to come up with examples I’m having trouble finding any examples that both encourage communication between strangers and involve collaborating to solve problems. Any ideas?

I like the video and definitely appreciate that President Obama’s staff is so well-connected in the internet world (especially when he was on Between Two Ferns) but I wonder if the messages could get a little more subtle or even insidious with future presidents. With so much control of the internet, and so many powerful connections, will future politicians’ messages become harder to distinguish from the content itself, much like native advertising?

Your comment about online etiquette gets me thinking about followers and friend requests. There’s a weird art to a well-timed friend request/follow. I mean we know each other’s social media strategies fairly intimately and listen to each other talk in class and on blogs yet none of us seem to have friended each other online, and that seemed normal to me, until I’m thinking about it now. It makes me kind of wonder what that means.

Just to play devil’s advocate here, I think that there are specific and relatively universal standards of “cool” that people look for in others’ identities. I think it’s more difficult to give these off in person than it is to portray these online. So for people who are worried about how they might come off in social situations and the over-thinkers, this is a huge blessing because they can carefully manage others’ impressions of them if they know what they’re doing. Which, like it or not, is an incredibly valuable skill to have these days.