Blog post #3

Something that has peaked my interest in the subject of communications, and in social media and & social life in general, is the concerning thought that through the oversharing of content in this day and age, an unflattering picture of a regular person can be taken, manipulated and recirculated in the form of a meme which is used as a joke and for laughter. The fact of the matter is that social media is an integral part of our life, intertwined in our daily practices rituals. With social media, comes the general practice of sharing. As we have discussed, sharing is not inherently bad. Sharing is caring, sharing is helpful, sharing is kind, and sharing makes communication with our friends and family easy and accessible from anywhere at any time possible, with the click of a button. The underlying problem with the concept of sharing is that we lose the ability to track who or what is looking or taking our information, and similarly are unable to be sure of what this information is being used for. Because we interact with social media via an interface which only allows us to theorize the possibilities of what happens with our shared data, we forget that surveillance happens at the underneath layer of the internet and we become careless with our pictures and information. In this sense, we lose control over what is done with our personal information and the context in which it can be used - and this is how people can become a meme without knowing it. For example, the meme formally known as "scumbag Steve", depicts a teen boy wearing a backwards hat and a fur coat, looking, well, relatively like "scumbag". This meme has been circulated and it always is taunting males in this age range for having scumbag like characteristics. The way this picture got to be a meme, was because his mom took a picture of him that he wasn't impressed to be a part of - she subsequently ended up with one that she posted online and it was unpredictable what happened next. Memes are a crazy phenomenon that came hand in hand with the phenomenon of oversharing which came hand in hand with the phenomenon of social media. The way information can be used is out of users control at this point in time where there is surveillance over every digital media platform. While memes are funny, they do come at a consequence of someone privacy. Whether or not they stay around will be up for debate but the fact remains that if they do not stay, a new fad that is potentially just as intrusive could come about - we will have to wait and see.

An article about how regular people became memes:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/memes-story-of-five-real-people-a6698076.html


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