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If you use social media regularly, chances are you have probably seen pictures of delicious food all around your social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Or you may be the one posting those pictures online. Today, after pornography, food has been the second most search-for content on the internet. It is understandable since the sight of food automatically affects our ‘visual hunger’ or the natural desire to fulfill the sufficient nutrients for survival. Therefore, people feel comfortable viewing pictures of food. The thing is, most people are not aware of what’s following when they see lots of food photos in digital media.


According to Jason Thomas’ study on social influences on eating, our dietary behaviour is strongly influenced by social context. In this manner, food network creates the cultural expectations and environmental cues that make people more likely to follow the eating norm they saw on social media sites. In the modern days, many food networks have become more
dominant in people’s appetite. A popular media platform like BuzzFeed’s Tasty, for instance, focussing on the video series of worldwide instructional recipes play an important role in our eating choices. Tasty itself has more than ninety-five million likes on Facebook. Evidentially, its videos acquired over 2.2 billion views in March 2017. A research “Brain and Cognition” explains that more than 70 percent of food Americans eat is influenced by digital media.

https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/vl.1307011139415082/1774752866110688/?type=1

The research shows that our brain responses to images of desirable food, or in another word, food porn or gastro-porn. Food porn is a new concept of glamorized photos and videos of palatable food on the internet. Although pictures of food are nothing new. We have always seen them on commercials and magazine ads for years, but in this case, the nature and types of pictures are more sophisticated and photographed from the different vantage point. They are magnified and often the center of the media. The drawbacks came when we are exposed to the more appetizing images of food which are often high calories. Apparently, food networks like Tasty likely propose the basic American dishes that contain high calories and can be considered not a healthy food.

Seeing the photos, our physiological responses get to prepare our body to receive that food. As a result, the virtual food exposure psychologically stimulates hunger and induces the viewers to eat more frequently, disrupting the usual dietary routines. Moreover, in 2015, a survey of nutritional gatekeepers proved the correlation between viewing cooking shows, food in social and printed media, and having a higher BMI (Body Mass Index). People tend to eat regardless of the satiety but the desire to consume whatever they found appetizing on social media. After all, our eating intakes are changed. The growing obesity crisis proves that we failed our eating behaviour. But not all to blame food porn, many factors have led us to worse dietary habits. Still, we could deny that the excessive sight of desirable food on social media is triggering our hunger to consume over the appropriate amount.

Reference:
Suzanne Higgs and Jason Thomas (2016), Social influences on eating, Diet, behaviour and brain function, Current Opinion in Behavioral Science, 9:1-6, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.10.005
Susan Albers, Psy.D. (2012), “Food Porn?” The Hidden Risks, Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food with Intention and Joy, Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201208/food-porn-the-hidden-risks
Charles Spence, Katsunori Okajima, Adrain David Cheok, Olivia Petit and Charles Michel (2016), Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation, Brain and Cognition, 110:53-63 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.08.006
Lizzy Pope, Lara Latimer and Brian Wansink (2015), Viewers vs. doers. The relationship between watching food television and BMI., Appetite, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.02.035

Social Media has been a big influence to everyone’s life now. The activity or action to update one’s life has become a necessity. This platform maybe stated as a boon or bane. With the recent controversies social media has taken a new turnover and a new platform to represent. One of the recents is the #MeToo movement, which is still ongoing and perhaps one of the biggest controversy on the social platform.

It all formerly began as an effort by activist Tarana Burke more than ten ago, and set aflame after a tweet by actress Alyssa Milano. Currently the movement is being followed up in India. Everyday a new revelation is shared through the medium of social media. A huge number of celebrities and other survivors are coming forward to share their terrifying stories which have given the hashtag suction. The controversy has become a huge shock and realization that woman are still taken for granted.

Via my research I found an article stating according to a recent study #MeToo hashtag was used more than 19 million times on twitter which is more that 55,000 uses of that hashtag per day. Social Media has definitely contributed its best in spreading this movement and making every person aware about their story. Social media has given its best to convey the unity and courage to the victims. The exploitation of woman had generally been a conversation but with the proper usage of social media the message has magnifically shared to another level. Social media has over 71% (approx) users globally hence the news takes on and becomes viral helping the information to spread out and help other victims to share their stories too or maybe someone might realize his mistake and stop this act. The hashtag has an exceptional influence because it showed the ability of woman and survivors of sexual harassment and violence.

Through the #MeToo movement in twitter the Indian film industry is collectively taking a decision to walk out from the accused people’s project or keeping it on hold waiting for the final verdict of the accusation. But the use of the phrase stormed on twitter after the events like Golden Globe Awards and also when Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testified before a Senate committee. The movement reached its peak point after Time magazine name #MeToo activities as person of the year and the day after International Women’s Day.

There is definitely no calm to this storm until the accused pay for their shameful act.

References:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/13/metoo-impact-hashtag-made-online/1633570002/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-metoo-sexual-harassment-tech-mobile-phones-social-media-a8606756.html

So, I’m sure everyone has heard of the opinion-expressing media-breaking friendship-ruining Yanny/Laurel debate of 2018 by now. This interesting phenomenon split the social media literally in half where 47% of listeners insisted that the recording was saying “Yanny” while the remaining 53% believed that the voice clearly said “Laurel”. But before all of this mess and online warfare, there was only a dictionary.

The Yanny/Laurel debate firstly began on May 11, Katie Hetzel, a freshman at Flowery Branch High School in Georgia, was studying for her world literature class, where “laurel” was one of her vocabulary words. She looked it up on Vocabulary.com and played the audio. Instead of the word in front of her, she heard “yanny.” She then proceeded to put the audio recording on her Instagram story. Soon, a senior at the same school, Fernando Castro, republished the same audio clip on his own story where one of his buddies, Roland Camry, saw it and posted it on reddit under the title r/blackmagicfuckery where people of all sorts publish unusual nature-related events.

But most importantly, other than causing a massive cyber battle, this small audio clip debate between a kid’s high school class resulted in a massive media outburst where people from all countries, ethnicities and religions could experience this event. However unimportant and unnecessary this particular audio clip may seem, it undeniably sparked a massive wave of spreading throughout many media platforms such as newspapers, Facebook , Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, 9GAG and many more. This is a very clear example of how impressive the internet and the web has become in distributing information.

Social media, I believe, although having a great part in popularity, just reveals and magnifies an already existing topic and social dynamic such as it was in the Laurel/Yanny case. The controversy was definitely affected greatly by the influence of social media to help it spread and grow. But social media itself did not create the argument and controversy in the first place. Social media in general merely took part in the distribution of the news, not create them

Works Cited:

Matsakis, Louise. “The True History of ‘Yanny’ and ‘Laurel’.” Wired, Conde Nast, 18 May 2018, www.wired.com/story/yanny-and-laurel-true-history/.

“Laurel – Dictionary Definition.” Vocabulary.com, www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel.

The internet has long been a dark and mysterious entity, hosting a platform for anonymous interaction often accompanied by very little repercussions. One site made possible by this unique platform is 4chan, a purely anonymous imageboard in which posts are sorted in chronological order. This foundation of anonymity, when mixed with its light treatment of moderation, only further drives the controversy often invoked by this infamous site. Controversy such as that which broke out August of 2014, the beginning of Gamergate. 4chan played an instrumental role in this controversial pseudo-movement that snowballed from a blog post written by the ex-boyfriend of the game developer Zoë Quinn (1). This pseudo-movement fabricated an issue of unethical relations between game developers, like Zoë, and game journalists. However, it was later found out that Gamergate was almost entirely orchestrated by 4chan users who went as far as to use “sockpuppet accounts” on social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit to artificially push Gamergate into the mainstream media’s attention (1).

This situation of Gamergate created a social dynamic which has never existed before 4chan’s internet influence. Although sensationalized media has been around much longer, the degree at which such a small number of internet users were able to turn a small hoax into a global controversy was never seen before. If anything, this signified the evolution of a preexisting social dynamic seen on social media, the ‘internet troll’, someone who uses provocation to incite emotional reactions while maintaining anonymity (2). While previously ‘internet trolls’ tended to work alone, or at least with little organization, what Gamergate showed was the extreme power ‘internet trolls’ were capable of, given the chance to use platforms such as 4chan to organize themselves while maintaining anonymity.

After 4chan established this pseudo-movement, they were able to continue their harassment now further protected by a falsified notion of social justice. Under this flag of social justice they gained supporters from vast isolated like-minded groups that had formed over the years on different social media platforms (3). A level of recruitment on this scale was made possible only through social media, as social media tends to create a mob mentality rather than a collaborative community of different ideas. Fueled by this mob mentality, 4chan users, along with their pseudo-movement’s supporters, went as far as to hack Zoë’s computer and leak nude images of herself to her father (3). They also similarly targeted her sympathisers including Anita Sarkeesian (1) and Phil Fish; Phil later left the gaming industry as a result (4).

In the end, what 4chan set out to do was accomplished. They hoped to cause chaos for chaos’ sake, rather than any genuine social agenda. 4chan, organized by their anomalous social media platform, were able to abuse the naive mob mentality of social media communities.  Therefore, we can conclude that the ‘newness’ of this abusive dynamic lead directly to 4chan’s success as no one knew how to deal with the situation.

Works Cited:

(1) Johnston, Casey. “Chat Logs Show How 4chan Users Created #GamerGate Controversy.” Ars Technica, Condé Nast, 9 Sept. 2014, arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how-4chan-users-pushed-gamergate-into-the-national-spotlight/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(2) Moreau, Elise. “Here’s What You Need to Know About Internet Trolling.” Lifewire, Dotdash, 5 Oct. 2018, www.lifewire.com/what-is-internet-trolling-3485891. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(3) McKeon, Lauren. “How Gamergate Pioneered the Backlash Against Diversity.” The Walrus, The Walrus Foundation, 11 Sept. 2017, thewalrus.ca/how-gamergate-pioneered-the-backlash-against-diversity-in-technology/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(4) Johnston, Casey. “The Death of the ‘Gamers’ and the Women Who ‘Killed’ Them.” Ars Technica, Condé Nast, 29 Aug. 2014, arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/the-death-of-the-gamers-and-the-women-who-killed-them/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

#GamerGate was a harassment campaign organized on Twitter, 4chan, IRC and Reddit. It was an attack on women, feminism and diversity in video games under the guise of ethics in game journalism. #GamerGate initially started as an attack on game developer Zoë Quinn, who was trying to publish Depression Quest, a text-based game based on her struggles with depression. Many male gamers in the community discredited her work saying it was not “a real game”, but much of the subtext of the criticisms surrounding Quinn’s game was more to do with her being a woman. #GamerGate really exploded when Quinn’s ex-boyfriend published a blog post accusing her of cheating on him with men working in games journalism. Much of the gaming community accused her of having “unethical” relations with games journalists. The harassment also included other targets like game developer Brianna Wu and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. These women were doxxed (had their personal information, including home address, phone number, personal email, etc, hunted down and published publicly on the internet) and received rape & death threats.

With the role social media played in this controversy, it revealed already existing social dynamics in the gaming community. The gaming community is a subsection of the geek/nerd community which includes computer programming nerds, comic geeks, etc. These communities are rife with misogyny and prejudice. They were historically male-dominated spaces. Any women gamer had to face men discrediting their interest in games, with many accusing them of being “fake gamer girls”, which was something I saw a lot personally as a young girl gamer. Female gamers also had to deal with harassment from male gamers on multiplayer games. The role social media played was publishing these misogynist behaviours. It allowed for people to organize themselves to conduct harassment campaigns, that’s not really all that different from witch hunts of the past. Social media essentially provided new tools for misogynists of the world to harass women and commit violence against them. It was only natural that misogynists find each other on social media, as social media was only a means of communication and publication, what people do with it is up to them.

If you haven’t heard of Kim Kardashian, you’ve probably been living under a rock for the last 11 years. You read that right: 11 years. It’s been over a decade since her fateful sex tape with then-boyfriend Ray J was leaked onto the internet. Since then, there has been much debate over whether she is a beautiful woman comfortable in her own skin and sexuality, or if she is indecent and a terrible role model. Regardless of your stance on that, there’s no denying her fame and influence. What really interests me about Kim K’s social media presence isn’t even Kim herself – it’s her followers.

On October 31st, 2018, Kardashian posted a picture on Instagram with her four sisters, Khloe, Kourtney, Kylie, and Kendall, all wearing lingerie and authentic Victoria’s Secret Angel wings.

Pretty great photo, right? Five women comfortable in their sexuality, going out as sisters. I was feeling empowered and good about the world – until I read the comment section. Mingled among the very positive comments from awed fans were several hateful and judgemental comments. One user wrote, “I look forward to the day that you will be without butt implants”, clearly referencing the various amounts of surgical enhancements the sisters have had done. Another quipped, “Can we just take a minute and realize there is no way in hell any of them would actually be in a Victoria secret show if they [weren’t] popular”. Some trolls also attacked Kim and her sisters for the revealing nature of the photo. Kim herself has been criticized for posting revealing photos while being a mother.

Kim Kardashian, as I mentioned before, is well known for posting sensational (and often revealing) photos. This kind of celebrity, who prompts both very positive and very negative responses, is always at risk from critics. By giving critics online access to celebrities, social media has magnified this risk. Not many people would go up to the Kardashians and tell them, “Talk about blown up egos. Kendall is the only one who should be in this picture,” but one person had no qualms about leaving this exact sentence in Kim’s comment section.

The problem is, social media has a dehumanizing effect. You wouldn’t go up to a stranger and offer them your negative opinion on their weight or outfit; there is a certain level of basic respect that most people try to give to other humans. That doesn’t stop us from having opinions and biases about other people that we disagree with. It simply stops us from acting on these negative opinions. But through a screen, and across a country, connected by wires and wireless, strangers seem less human. This respect isn’t a requirement anymore. And, because you can hide behind anonymity, there are minimal consequences.

The idea of “trolling” isn’t new. The word itself is associated with the internet and social media, but social media hasn’t created a new type of person; it has simply given unsavoury people a way to communicate their opinions without the risk of being immediately punched in the face.

WeChat is one of the most popular ways to communicate with others and one of the most popular social media in China. Phone numbers are the only thing you need to set up a WeChat account. Not only sending messages, but you can also share pictures on Moments, which is one section of WeChat, and comment or like the pictures posted by your WeChat friends. You can add others as friends just by their phone numbers, their WeChat names or if you are in the same group, you can add each other as friends.

Recently, WeChat has become one of the most popular platforms for selling goods. We even create WeChat Business to describe the WeChat accounts, no matter individuals’ or official, that use the massive market of WeChat and sell goods by sending information to individuals or showing items on Moments. Tmtpost points out that WeChat becomes popular for business for its large business scale, low set-up cost, convenient business model and high revenue potential.

But actually, the massive amount of business account has changed the WeChat I enjoy using. As Shuai Yang, Sixing Chen and Bin Li claim on Journal of Global Marketing, WeChat “can be considered as a marriage between traditional e-business and social networking communications”. We used to use WeChat as a way to communicate and show our daily life to others and see others’ lives. But now, we use it as a way to make benefits. It has changed the relationships between users and their WeChat friends. For example, I used to communicate for sharing thoughts, but now, I communicate for my own benefits—buying cheap goods or selling goods for money. The relationships are now being tied by self-interests. In the Moments, sellers like and comment their buyers’ pictures. It seems like a win-win choice, but the intrinsic quality has changed. Furthermore, according to Shuai Yang, Sixing Chen and Bin Li, there are results suggesting that development of friendships with new customers can help the strategy of developing business relationships; but developing friendships and business relationships with experienced customers negates each other. This has proved the opinion that WeChat Business actually has changed the human relationships on WeChat.

From my perspective, WeChat Business has revealed a social dynamic that people are willing to make money through the internet using relationships with others but not as in the past—learn a skill and work hard. People are adjusting to the internet era, struggling to make money, even inventing many kinds of jobs we could not imagine in the past. It is undeniable that using social media such as WeChat to make money is a good choice, but we cannot forget the original purpose of this kind of social media—communicating. With more and more beneficial friends on WeChat, whether the future of WeChat is a marketing platform?

References
http://www.tmtpost.com/233233.html

What is WeChat? Intro to WeChat Marketing for Business

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08911762.2016.1184363

The Momo challenge started in the summer of this year, and grew to feverish proportions in July and August. Feverish in the sense that videos of the topic were being spit out by the dozen on YouTube and gaining good traction, as can be seen from the photo below.

The Momo challenge is a successor to self-harm “challenges” like Blue Whale, wherein the goal is to drive the participants to self-harm, and eventually death. The Momo challenge differentiates itself in two distinct ways: regionally and visually. Blue Whale was situated in Russia and Europe, in terms of origin and where it was reported the most. The Momo challenge is more widespread, having been reported nearly worldwide and generally getting more coverage. Visually speaking, Blue Whale has nothing besides its title animal. The Momo Challenge has a visual marker in the form of its title character, which is actually a sculpture created by Link Factory, a Japanese special effects firm. Below is an Instagram post that gives a full view of the sculpture, as the body is usually obstructed in thumbnails.

This visual marker gives an edge over all the other harm “challenges”, as the creepy image of the sculpture’s face gives news outlets and youtubers a clear picture to use for articles and videos. The sculpture is based on Japanese folklore, and is meant to be a depiction of a malicious spirit. As such, the intimidating visage of the creature has done wonders for clickbait. In terms of social dynamics, the Momo challenge is a form of cyberbullying wherein the perpetrators pretend to be “Momo”, and the victims are those who are messaged. Allegedly, the challenge originated on WhatsApp, but any messaging platform would hold the same effect. This cyberbullying was a “flavor of the month”, videos and reports were dedicated to it during the summer, and the trend died off in September. That in itself is both disappointing and troubling. Cyberbullying is now glorified if it’s “dolled up” enough; if there’s a spooky story behind it, it can be publicized in this manner. Most media outlets luckily condemned it, but the opposite can be seen on YouTube, as evidenced by the first image. It’s being lifted up from an unacceptable act to something trendy and exciting, which is appalling enough. As disgusting as it is, this sort of change is desirable for the internet, as can be seen by the sheer popularity of it. It reflects the desires of many, and is simply another chapter in the history of the internet. Perhaps the next cyberbullying incident will follow in Momo’s footsteps, with a stage name and mask.

Several weeks ago, a piece of news went viral. A school girl killed her friend and mutilated her body because of jealousy. The reason was simple, the poor victim had a gorgeous appearance and she was more popular among peers, especially on social media. The murderer, her friend, couldn’t take it anymore, and not only killed her, but went out of her way to make sure nobody would mistake her for “beautiful” anymore.

Jealousy exists everywhere, and has so for as long as humanity has existed… it’s on the list of “seven deadly sins” for a reason!

Regarding social media, the comparison phenomenon caused by jealousy is ubiquitous as well. People tend to show their best moments on social media, they update their posts in order to collect likes and comments which can be seen as a way of craving attention. It’s undeniable that you are proud to get praised or comments from online friends. Then it turns out that the collection of likes and comments is more like a competition, which can be seen as a new social dynamic, a new form of social power. Let me give you some examples for the new dynamic. Have you ever glanced over your home page of social media software repetitively to see how many likes and comments you’ve got? It might be too exaggerating to compare this mundane phenomenon with returning to the crime scene, but you will feel a similar sense of satisfaction if you got a mountain of likes and comments. Have you ever felt jealous…even for a moment, of those who get more likes than you?  Are they better than you? I’m sure that everyone has experienced this feeling, it’s natural. It totally can be understood that everyone gets jealous sometimes and our access to social media has allowed this jealous seed to grow into a full on tree. If the victim of this terrible murder didn’t cast such a powerful shadow with her social media, would she have even been targeted in the first place? I think not.

Can you remember what we were before? Decades ago, there was no social media software like Facebook or Instagram. Instead of over-indulging ourselves for empty fame, people were down-to-earth, which meant there was less comparison and jealousy. It’s not that it didn’t happen; we just weren’t presented with as many opportunities for it to happen. This “newness” can be proof that the generation gap is like an impassible barrier, the last generation are confused with the new phenomenon caused by advanced technology, while the new generation has never known life without it. On one hand it bridges the distance of the world, but it alienates people as well. When you go to a fancy restaurant, what would you do? You care less about the taste and pay more attention on how it looks like. You want everyone to know you are having dinner at a fashionable place. You’re engaged with social media and post photos online, and then you talk less to people around you. You become less connected with people you are supposed to be experiencing the dinner with.

Wake up, people! I appeal to everyone, put down your phones just for a while and talk with others. Don’t disguise yourselves with the mask of social media. Don’t make comparisons with fake information. Don’t leave the best moments on Facebook and Instagram, while hiding a darker reality.

ASTU 1OO Blog post 2 assignment