Ambient Awareness_ 11.27

 Reading about “ambient awareness”- or ‘online ESP’ or whatever- was very interesting. I was aware that social media is a way of keeping tabs on people (for me it’s my family and friends,  and sometimes school friends from when I lived in California) but before reading this, I had never thought about the aftermath, or the consequences or the what happens after your eyes leave the screen  🖥 or you put down your phone. 📱

More specifically, I guess I was thinking “what has changed in our social behavior once we put away the screen” and have to socialize in person since Twitter and Facebook? The studies and narrations explained early in the chapter made me realize- or at least consider that there has been somewhat of a decline in socializing. It was really neat to consider how “close” we can feel to people when they are so physically far away or if they are literally right next to you and you don’t want your parents to read what you’re writing to your sister, so instead of whispering, you text each other. (I’m specifically referring to Mizuko Ito’s study about text messaging and describing them as “mutterings”.)

…. I totally agree that communicating online is faster and in some ways more beneficial, but there is something that is telling me that it stunts us as social beings too. So that I don’t step on anyone’s toes here I will use myself as an example: there are times when I can be very social and chatty in person, but I think for the most part that I’m not all that chatty or extroverted….. But when I am online and say, working on a group project, I am more vocal in a group chat than I am in person- most of the time. To flatter myself, I am more confident to shout out my ideas and initiate a game plan, or take charge of organizing the project than I would be in person. When I write emails, my thoughts are more put together than if I were to physically talk to someone. It sometimes is easier for me to invite someone to something if I text it to someone than if I were trying to ask someone in person. Is that just me or has social media and texting turned into my crutch?

There is also a part of me that wants everyone to know what's going on, so I try to post often but I also try not to because that might start looking annoying.... but I can't always help it. ....Guess that's the world we live in?

Shifting gears though and referring to page 214, I realized that I may contribute to “social proprioception” (making a group’s sense of itself and making a bubble for itself (maybe?)): Thompson uses professional conferences as the example and explains that the people running it will share things about the event on their social media accounts in order to keep everyone in the loop...

I just considered that this as I was typing these words that this might not apply, but as I read that, I thought of my own blog- not this one, but The Tiny Twenty-Something. To keep people in the loop, I share/forward everything to my other media accounts, I have a Facebook page for my writing named Kat Champion, and then I also share those posts to my regular FB account and the Kat Champion forwards to my writer’s Twitter account so that I can get as many people reading my blog as possible. 

I want to keep people in the loop and I don’t know how many different ways a reader  (or potentially future readers) is being notified about my new posts. I make the FB posts quick and try to make them attractive, but my point is that that’s what I do in order to keep Followers in the loop…. Except now I feel like that doesn’t actually parallel with Thompson’s quote on page 214….

But that’s what I got for tonight! 

🤔