Week Four.

We’ve known for a long time the world can be a nasty place at times. Hamelink explains “All the immoralities of physical life occur in virtual reality: censorship, lust for power, treason, stalking, lying, gossiping, peeping, stealing, cheating, seducing, breaking promises, insulting, and being unfaithful, unreliable, uncivilized, or abusive.”  As a result of this those who were naive and sheltered before are being exposed to society’s grimy underbelly earlier and more often. Prior to the internet and its subsequent misuse one could live in ignorant bliss, ignore badness on the news and simply avoid the dark alleyways of Fortitude Valley.  

Does this make online immorality acceptable? Not in the slightest, though short of absolute censorship there is next to nothing that it can be policed and controlled. As has been seen in Libya, Egypt and now China, even totalitarian government regimes can’t control what is aid over the internet. Online gate keeping is being left to the content creator, therefore it is up to us to choose what we consume and then believe online. At the risk of sounding crude and unsympathetic, the only remedy to poor online ethics is to wise up, and when that doesn’t work harden up. It’s the information era, being oblivious is no longer a feasible lifestyle choice.

Reference List

• Hamelink, C. (2006). The Ethics of the Internet: Can we cope with Lies and Deceit on the Net? In Ideologies of the Internet, K. Sarikakis & Daya Thussu, pp. 115-130. New Jersey: Hampton Press. Available on CMD.

Week 3.

I am somebody who would most certainly lose an L-Train battle.  My playlist^th Floor Elevator and Serge Gainsberg to Guns n Roses and Kanye West. If my playlist was spied on by a complete stranger they would probably conclude that I had a personality disorder.

 However, I I’m a serial offender when it comes to judging people based on their music tastes. Not quite to the extent it seems of those on the L-train. I don’t share the opinion that if a band is hard to find they must be good; quite the opposite. It seems common sense to me that if a band is at least half decent their music would be in a record store or at least on iTunes. Yes, a record store.

So if what this week’s reading by Levy and our lecture content is true, does this mean my personal and social capital would take a beating? With a somewhat hypocritical view of music snobbery I must say it most certainly would. The reading by Levy linked Goffman’s theories of impression management to deliberately making playlists "trendy". I dont see this happening to my admittedly terrible iTunes account. I dont listen to the music I do to be cool, I listen to it because I like it. Sometimes that means Beck is playing, and sometimes it's Meat Loaf.

Reference List

Levy, S. (2006). The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 21-41. Available on Course Materials Database (CMD) via QUT Library website.

Week 2.

Pearson explains a theory known as identity- performance and compares the modern process of self-presentation to that of an actor superficially constructing the personality of a character (Pearson, 2009). People are living their lives simultaneously through Facebook, in what is known as glass bedrooms. We are now at a stage of digitalisation that our identities are pre-meditated and deliberately constructed. On Facebook we don’t need to be ourselves, we can be who and whatever we want to be.  We can be cooler, funnier, and wittier online.

 However, how is this any different, or worse than school yard conforming? Long before the internet children have changed their self presentation to fit a mould and therefore be socially accepted. A pop culture reference, Sandy and Danny in Grease both deliberately re-create their identities. I see few differences between this and saying your favourite film is kill bill instead of the little mermaid.

 My only criticism, as discussed in week 2’s lecture is the notion of friends as a commodity (Leong, 2011). The obvious motive behind creating a more desirable online persona is unquestionably to accumulate more friends. Quantity over quality has become the opinion of a generation. It is this element of online identity-performance that causes concern and gives credence to agreements against the use of SNS.

Reference List

• Pearson, E. (2009).  All the World Wide Web’s a stage: the Performance of Identity in Online Social Networks. First Monday, volume 14, Number 3. Available online at: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2162/2127
• Leong, Dr. Susan. (2011). Week 2: Performing me: Maintaining visibility on the Social stage. Available online at: http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=/webapps/blackboard/execute/launcher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_74007_1%26url%3D.