Internet culture does not include ingesting laundry detergent (most of the time)
1- How would you improve the world?
I would like for my kids to be able to be patriotic without doing mental gymnastics. I want them to be able to look at the flag and feel like they are a part of something good that's greater than themselves instead of being reminded of intractable division, hatred, infighting, government failures, and conspiracy theorists.
2- You Are Here:
Syracuse University Assistant Professor Whitney Phillips and College of Charleston Associate Professor Ryan M. Milner's 2020 book, “You Are Here”, aims to provide a modern framework for understanding the nuanced and deteriorating contemporary online information landscape. The text is organized around a central metaphorical throughline: pollution. The authors analogize the deterioration of the modern information landscape to the degradation of our planet's natural landscapes. The metaphor, according to the authors, is especially useful because it helps us “sidestep” the “tricky to parse” questions of motive inherent to the online environment, instead referring to all harmful information as “pollution.” (4) They also comment on the metaphors acknowledgment of the social justice issues caused by information pollution. Marginalized groups are hurt most by environmental pollution, and the same is true for information pollution. This book provides a framework for understanding an issue that, like pollution, we can no longer ignore. Anyone who uses social media, which includes me and I have to assume all of my classmates has to, as Philips and Milner “invi[te]” us to on page 11, become active participants in our information environment. We have to be good digital citizens making sure to use “best practices” when online. Personally, I’m a little unsure of what the authors recommendations would be, I plan to continue to engage with online information through the lens of utmost skepticism and to report any misinformation I come across.
3 - The most dangerous memes on the internet, from roofing to the shiggy challenge
I chose to read iNews journalist Rhodri Marsden’s 2018 article, The most dangerous memes on the internet, from roofing to the shiggy challenge because I thought it might be relevant to my research topic: how we fail to talk about memes. This article’s central this is that “clicks, views and likes” manipulate impressionable youth and young adults into participating in dangerous online challenges like “Roofing,” a trend that involves climbing to the top of a skyscraper or the familiar “Tide Pod Challenge” in which the participant eats a tide pod. (Marsden) The claim that the internet is manipulating our children to climb on top of skyscrapers and dissolve their organs with laundry detergent is simply a rehash of the same moral panic that has always been associated with the internet. The reality is that almost nobody ate Tide Pods because of the “Tide Pod Challenge.” This article is a perfect example of exactly the problem that I want to better understand in my project. It is clearly written by someone looking in from the outside. The internet has a culture and it should be studied like any other culture, namely not using the methodology of racist british anthropologists from the 1800’s: sitting on the sidelines and taking notes.