(Belated) Week 6 Presentation

(Again, posted it in the wrong place...sorry it's late!)

Breaking the ice:
• Who is a member of a social networking site?
• Which one? More than one?
• How did you choose? Why did you switch?
• Why did you join one to begin with?
• How often do you check your site? How do think it impacts your (social) life?

Why?
• To be “social” – irony of being by yourself considered being social
• “That’s where my friends are” – yet it’s not a physical place (they are at their homes, which IS a physical place, but they don’t go there)
• Issue of immobility: can’t get to their friends? (public transport, parents, people who have licenses etc.)
• Issue of convenience (don’t have to leave home, increasingly lazy/technologically advanced society, all about convenience – e.g. like fast food)

How?
• All about convenience:
• Computer  laptops (portable computers)  phones (smaller)
• If it’s only when you’re bored, then why do people do it whilst they’re ‘out and about’.
• There is a need to tell people hoe much fun you’re having – “I’m so drunk”, “going to the movies”, “hanging out with……”

Culture of Social Networking Sites: Private Space with No Privacy
• Ourselves: define our popularity, prove ourselves, create who we want to be, change certain things about ourselves, leave out the “bad bits”,
• Friends: how many are our actual friends, neglect real friends (time with them) to be on Facebook and that social life, accept people we don’t even really like, birthday messages
• Relationships: something intimate becomes public, public love + public heartbreak (god vs. bad), not official until it’s on Facebook, complicate complicated things (“it’s complicated with….”), defied by who you’re dating
• Language/jargon creates: LOL, ily
• “MySpace Photos”
• Facebook/MySpace Stalking

From the Readings:
• We want a space without rules (no govt., parents etc.) – yet there are so many “cultural rules” surrounding these sites.
• Have to go so often, can’t go on too much – much have certain amount of friends, not too many – photos –
• Music is cultural glue among youth – these sites can exploit/spread this fact.
• Power-play with Top Friends – too much drama, taken to be reality.

Also, I had 2 videos to show in my presentation:
1. Clip from Gossip Girl (Last Episode of Season 2: The Goodbye), where "gossip girl" asks everyone to meet at a bar where she will reveal herself, she then reveals that they are her - they send in the secrests that she posts - they create the drama they 'hate'.
2. Clip for Law And Order: SVU (Season 1, Episode 18: Chatroom) where Detective Stabler explain to his daughter that he is so protective about her using the computer because "Sometimes I bring my work home with me. I'm trying to catch a guy who goes after young girls. You know how I lock up the doors and windows?
[Maureen nods]Now they're coming in through here.[points to the computer]"