Up in the Stacks

Hello, I think my name is Alice! At least, social media based brand communities cause me to feel as if I should wear a black headband while sporting a blue dress with white apron and black Mary Janes. Too often I find myself curious about a book I find on one social media app and hopping over to another app to read more about it. Eventually, I'm seeking out more photos and even fanart for that book or more books on yet a third app. I could continue my journey by chatting about these books on a variety of social media apps. All thanks to brands working hard on their social media marketing and engagement. What does a cross-platform brand rabbit hole look like? Jump down with me... Scrolling on TikTok leads to me randomly watching a post from Owlcrate about backlist spooky season reads . A featured book in the post piques my curiosity. Next, I venture over to Pinterest to see what else Owlcrate posted about spooky books and find a pin for spooky season book recommendations . Then, I n...

I have not escaped influencer culture. For a week, I logged my social media use, and at the end of that week, I concluded that my social media use was quite dull. I have occasionally caught myself scrolling on TikTok. Once or Twice. But my most used platform would have to be YouTube. The first could be attributed to ASMR rooms where I let some instrumental music play in the background when I am doing coursework and when I read for pleasure. My other social media activity is watching book-related videos, which include lengthy book reviews. This process reminded me of the five steps of Social Commerce. I discover many books by browsing through the stacks either online or in person, but the majority of my book recommendations are influenced by BookTube channels and websites like Goodreads or Storygraph. My Problem Recognition is usually me telling myself, “Hey, there’s a problem. You don’t have anything to read,” and that will commence a deep BookTube dive until I’ve come away with a hand...

 Hey everyone! With the evergrowing popularity of virtual reality games, there is always that increased risk of having your data and other personal information stolen. This can range from simple cybersecurity attacks to full-on grooming or abuse given the intimate setting some of these games take place in. Some VR headsets are even capable of capturing your biometric data. All of this paired with an AI could make for a dangerous combination. A great article I recently read describes a hypothetical (but let's be honest not that far off) situation in which AI and virtual reality could be used to analyze you through your headset, and collect things such as weight, height, age, and even marital status. In fact, human researchers have already proven that they are capable of doing this all within a decent amount of accuracy. It's amazing that we are all able to be as connected as we are thanks to modern-day technology, but as we are sadly finding out there are some not so geat people...

Social media tracking and the algorithms that keep people spinning in their own information and thought patterns are creepy enough, but questions about who keeps and distributes the data being collected in the process and what might be done with it are also disturbing. A recent profile about a man who “figured out how to turn American’s private information into big business” is a cautionary tale of a person who worked outside of many systems and eventually had mass amounts of stored data. While his information was gathered from all sorts of public sources, such information pertaining to all the drivers’ licenses in Florida, the overarching concern is that a person moved about freely collecting peoples’ data, amassed it, and sold it: The Man Who Trapped Us in Databases  .  As we are studying social media tracking, and the massive amounts of data being collected in the process, I can only think of what could be done with everything that has been aggregated by the many social med...

Social media is filled with echo chambers created by us, the users. Technically, we have help from the social media platforms, but our online behavior feeds into their algorithms to build the echo chambers. Without our likes, retweets/reposts, shares, comments, views, etc., the algorithms would have no insight into what content interests us and, thus, no idea what to feed us while we scroll. The very act of participating in social media facilitates echo chambers old and new. Some echo chambers focus on opinions about issues, while others center on interests in certain topics. Echo chambers exist for politics, social issues, education topics, and even entertainment such as books. Being stuck in a virtual world where everyone agrees with you is not healthy for society. Only being surrounded by similar thinkers is not how to foster positive discourse that will help our world grow but steadily divides us. With polarizing issues, though, we are seeking out "safe" space...

  I don’t play a lot of video games.   I can count on one hand the number of games I have played and truly loved.   Beginning with arcade games and moving on to the MMORPG that my friends were playing was the way things progressed, but it was never something that took over all my spare time.   Immersing myself in a video game to relax for a while was fun, and a way to still spend time with my friends. This week’s lecture touched on ads in video games and really made me think about if I had encountered any.   The games I played on my phone may have included ads, but I can't remember what they were for.   I read a bit further about ads in video games, and found Kevuru Games article about it here: https://kevurugames.com/blog/advertising-in-video-games-how-to-use-it/ It felt strange to think about ads in video games at first.   They seem like they would be out of place because video games are an entirely separate universe filled with new characters...

While there are some upsides to games (working the brain is always a good thing!), there is also an invisible box that they can put us in.   I recall my first experience with internet games - Angry Birds.  This was not set up to be quite a social game but it certainly got a lot of people talking about it, in turn becoming a social game.  Next came Candy Crush, a little more social because you could see where your friends were and share lives with them.  I was so consumed by these games I am most certainly sure that I missed out on things going on around me.  I realized one day that my daughter, who was much younger at the time, was talking to me and I did not hear a word she said.  It took some bravery but I decided these apps needed to go.  I did delete them, but then came Scrabble and Words with Friends.  There is a constant barrage of games and apps coming at us and it can be difficult to back away.  But how is this really effecting o...

I so miss the era of social media when viewers were not forced to sit through an advertisement just to watch a vlog, funny video, or even a tutorial for furniture assembly. It began as a minor inconvenience in the earlier days of YouTube, but now the abundance of advertisements on every social media platform has ruined the experience. From apps to news websites to streaming services, there are opportunities for content creators to gain ad revenue. If you don’t want to see ads, you sometimes have the option to pay for a subscription. Just recently, my month-long free trial for YouTube Premium ended, and I went from watching a video with a click of a button to having my peaceful ASMR room interrupted by an advertisement for deodorant. Some stores have even replaced freezer glass with screens. Walgreens replaced some fridge doors with screens. And some shoppers absolutely hate it . I mean, what episode of Black Mirror are we in? Some apps and services are available free to users if they ...

 In my personal experience with ads and social media, I do feel a bit conflicted. While I do understand that for some things to be "free" they must have some form of revenue to keep them running, I also do feel as though we are getting more and more baraged by advertisements on a daily basis. In the column for supporting ads, I think that things such as a creator's right to be able to make additional money off of ad revenue, a platform getting support that they may not otherwise get by promoting interesting materials, or even just companies feeling the need to show us a product we may not otherwise know about are all completely valid things. However, as with most things that have ever been created, I think that advertising can fall into the column against them. Some of these are because ads have been corrupted in my eyes past their intended use. Things such as platforms stripping creators of their rights to collect ad revenue if they don't like what their content is, ...

Today my husband was texting with our daughter as she prepared her first college lab report. Because the project calls for the use of Excel, he sent her a link to a YouTube video about how to use it for calculating standard deviation. Shortly thereafter, we received the following text: “I will watch that video once my attention span circles back TYSM!!!” She soon rallied to watch the video; however, it was a stark reminder of what eMarketer reported about the demographic last December, “Attention must be earned in an instant” because  GenZ has a 1-second attention span  For decades I’ve had a similar feeling that attention of other age groups can be short when it comes to climate change.   Pew Research Center  recently described the tendency in a nuanced report about peoples’ climate change perceptions that, while based on a smaller group of participants than they usually work with for environmental issues, is a problem whereby people get turned off or suspiciou...

  Advertising has changed tremendously  in a short amount of time.  I grew up with Saturday morning cartoons and the ads that were shown throughout them.  Now, I get texts directly from advertisers.  I certainly appreciate a texted coupon for a product I have looked at online . A l ot of the time, these are useful and lead me to buy the item .  I will admit that five year old me was in awe of the ads for new toys and yummy snacks , so it was easy to capture my attention. It's been a while since my days of cereal and cartoons.  So what does it take today to make an ad that people will watch when their attention is already divided between so many different things? Here are some of the most popular social media ads   What are some of your favorite ads from social media ?  Which ones did you like the least?   Everyone is so busy these days.  The question of what leads people to spend their time on one social media platform versus ...

More options for social media companies exist for the various types of platforms out there than most of us realize. When I think of social media, popular platforms that come to my mind in 2023 consist of: Facebook; X, the platform formerly known as Twitter ( this feels very 90s ); YouTube; Instagram; Pinterest; Snapchat; TikTok; Reddit; Discord; Twitch; and Goodreads. However, many users are tired of supporting huge corporations and the ultra wealthy people who own or run those companies. What if we don't want to tweet , anymore? (Wait, is it still called tweeting? The New York Times begged the question - So What Do We Call Twitter Now Anyway? ) Ideologies can clash against those of major social media platforms with restrictions on what can be posted or shared, leading to users feeling frustrated and possibly questioning their continued participation of that platform. Platforms might change core components of how they operate or add paid tiers for features that were once free, muc...

I spend way too much time scrolling through social media.  Not only because I can't pull myself away but also because I have to get past all the ads and garbage to get to the people I care about.  Those of us who like to keep connected to our friends and loved ones will not be willing to give up our social networking, even though we are tired of the constant badgering by companies, ads, and reels.  I am rather excited to see that there may be something new to try that will help alleviate some of this frustration and help me pull myself away from the neverending newsfeed! It looks like I might be checking out favs sometime in January of 2024.  This article in TechCrunch explains how favs will allow limited posts, which helps to avoid too much content, and also encourage users to back away from their devices and do other things!  This actually sounds perfect for me and I hope my friends and family will try it along with me.  I am willing to admit I ...

In her talk about her book, “It’s Complicated”, danah boyd mentions her introduction to the internet. https://youtu.be/9QKq15WyGkA?si=SN3bbZd82uqucVdH When she described the “hideous sound” her brother’s computer made when it connected to the phone line, I thought, Oh! I know that sound!   In my case, it was my Dad who worked with computers, so I watched with fascination as we connected to the internet.   For my family, the internet and social media meant being able to connect to family in other parts of the world.   It removed the waiting for the landline to ring so we could chat, and (thankfully) took away that same landline ringing at 2 A.M. (That’s time differences for you!) At this point, we have social media apps on our phones, and it makes connecting almost an instant process.   In fact, I was messaging with my cousin just this morning.   It’s pretty remarkable how much this technology has changed since I was sitting with my Dad, learning to use t...