an algorithm to rate individual’s influence within social media

If you post that you’re out of town on vacation, you’ve opened yourself up for burglary.

and a lack of standards or policing of these standards

engagement

authenticity

"We can appreciate their culture without having to do or wear their hairstyles, or trying to act or be a certain way that we're not."

"So it makes sense why it's happening - because I guess some people who are white-presenting feel like they're not the standard anymore. So now they're trying to do things to stay relevant and keep their popularity."

"We're coming into a time where you see a lot of black women really expressing themselves and stepping into their blackness, and owning it, and not being ashamed of it anymore.

The "Kardashian effect" has also been blamed for an apparent rise in young people seeking cosmetic surgeries.

accused of appropriating black culture

"fine line between appreciation and appropriation".

Like Alicja, she says she understands some of the backlash against her, but denies pretending to be a different race to her own.

She says she's not suggesting "white privilege is not a thing" - but wants to tell her critics "the assumptions you're making are wrong".

etishistic in that they want to achieve this ‘exotic’ look in order to attract black men. It seems like it’s all it is".

Emma was white, revealing she believes the model "fooled everyone".

"It matters because it makes people in our community feel as though we’re not the best representation of our everyday selves. "They’re gaining success by appearing to look like me while I work 10 times as hard to get where I really want to be. It’s unfair."

because people love black culture but not black ppl."

Emma claimed that she does not understand why black women are upset with her appearance.

My intentions have never been to look like a black woman."

"imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."

se I have some acne and scar issues so I use a lot of face scrubs, toners and peeling products.”

To further back her claim, the influencer also shared a photo of her brother and father, which shows them with deep skin tones as well. “As you can see they also tan very easily,” Hallberg wrote. As for her hair texture, Hallberg says that also runs in her family.

“This Swedish White girl is guilty of ‘blackfishing,’ a term used to describe someone who masquerades as a Blk person to deceive others. By extreme tanning, dark makeup & braids, this fraud is exposed!”

Brushing off blackfishing as “not that deep” is a fallacy because blackfishing really is that (skin) deep.

“bigger fish to fry” are wrong.

Rachel Doleza

N—–fishing,”

Everyone wants to be black, until it is time to be black.”

Chime Edwards or Patrica Bright.

The online culture and influencer had not yet come to the surface.

Gabrielle Union, Kyla Pratt, Rihanna, Monique Coleman, Brandy

phy: The Office (U.S.)

Who am I hurting?:

Stop and think:

Research

Becoming aware:

Letting people know this is a thing:

We haven’t even fixed racism yet, how could even tackle as something “smaller” as blackfishing.

“where do we go from here?”

Many young black women and men who followed the blackfishing influencers believed that they were black and now feel deceived (and rightfully so) because they innocently supported a caricature of themselves

this image

For the people defending it saying, “it’s just makeup and beauty” or “these women are not harming anyone,” then they do not understand the full idea of what they (blackfishers) are doing.

Blackfishing on social media is humanizing the blackface our ancestors had to deal with, and that is a difficult concept to grasp and accept.

Safe Online Spaces Become Unsafe

Instagram is like a breeding ground for white women who can cosplay blackness while receiving attention from the very people who kind of hate black women.

racial ambiguity

Cultural appropriation is at the heart of this because it isn’t solely about culture; it’s about power

“Appropriation happens when you have a position of power…to take the parts of a culture that you enjoy, divorce them from their original meaning, and use them for entertainment value without considering their original context or having to deal with the negative ramifications that someone from that culture would have to deal with if they were to do the same thing.”

Having that safe online space is how black women have been able to even come this far by letting the internet know that black is beautiful.

“Even now in certain workspaces, black women can’t wear their natural hair out

then it becomes a trend or “cool.”

they not only understand, but they are aware of the importance of culture or religion. They know that there are traditions and meanings behind what they are doing or what they like. Not only that, that person is aware that the marginalized group has a history of oppression and by no means does this act reflect that.

culture appreciation.

“the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.”

Culture appropriation

These women need to be careful about how they are deceiving people.

eople were telling Alicja to kill herself after posting those pictures online.

I am so sorry to those who may have been offended, and for perpetuating a culture of appropriate. I recognize that I have a responsibility to understand the intentional and unintentional impacts of my actions and platform.”

“We’re coming into a time where you see a lot of black women really expressing themselves and stepping into their blackness, and owning it, and not being ashamed of it anymore. So it makes sense why it’s happening. Because I guess some people, who are white-presenting feel like they’re not the standard anymore. So now they’re trying to do things to stay relevant and keep their popularity.” (Thompson)

tread on Twitter,

I think they are liars, but not racists.

Deception

he Office (U.S.)

“Kardashian Effect”

: A Different World 

There is even a video of her applying brown makeup to her skin.

I wish they could see that.

But there is a price to being a person of color.

All of these innocents happened to me because I AM black.

Everyone wants to be black until it is time to be black.”

She said, “Everybody wants our rhythm, but nobody wants our blues.”

Jeanie seemed as if she didn’t see a real issue with this like it was just beauty and makeup.

Basically, I caught her in a lie.

Loni made a lot of great points, but something she said that stood out to me was, “She’s not making money off her white skin. She’s making money and gaining followers by her tan skin. There are no pictures of her on Instagram in her white skin during any time of the year. Each picture is in tan skin.”

The first one was taken on August 21, 2016, and the second one was taken on January 1, 2016. Although her skin appears lighter in January, she still looks like she is mixed or a person of color. Hallberg has also denied tanning her skin. However, she posted this picture

The angry and hurt tone of voice seen in these tweets are just a few examples from every day black men and women who are fully aware of the history behind one changing their skin tone to appear black.

It seems as if there’s pressure to compete with women of color.

Scrolling through a feed has caused so much low self-esteem, lack of self-care, lack of motivation, and identity confusion.

blackness is viewed as a commodity.”

There is a black aesthetic

it will also hurt the person who is deceiving people.

something that has a racist history behind it

When a young girl scrolls through their Instagram feed, what would they think or how would they feel when they discover that who they saw on Instagram is fake?

An African American, such as myself, can’t switch off and on skin color or facial features.

If Hough simply put her hair in the same style as Susanne, who is the only one in the show with Bantu Knots, people would have known she was that character.

There are many ways a person can appreciate a character or person without pointing out their skin color.

ill Smith

performances

new ‘blackface.’

disturbing.)

Blackfishing.’

‘Blackfishing’,

Research and be who you are. 

iphy: The Office (U.S.)

We may think we’re just trying to adopt a culture because we fell in love with it

How do they feel?

Now, with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, marginalized groups finally found a place where they can educate, explain, and voice their concerns.

Stop and think:

Drake Clapping 

I’m sure not many people know that this is even happening.

top-selling.

misrepresent,

the financial well-being of black women:

White actors in Hollywood would wear brown and black makeup and exaggerated the expressions and behavior of black people, which we described earlier.

There’s a saying that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” But what happens when imitation appears to cross over into cultural appropriation and exploitation?”.

“It matters because it makes people in our community feel as though we’re not the best representation of our normal selves.

Zuhaa Isaacs

culture appreciation. When someone appreciates the culture, they not only understand, but they are aware of the importance of culture or religion

does not give credit to that culture, religion, ethnicity, or race.

Culture appropriation according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture.”

Culture Appropriation vs. Culture Appreciation

wearing cornrows or braids and giving credit to someone else instead of the culture it came from.

lip injections to make their lips bigger

Was she ever called the N-word to her face in fear while driving through her parents’ neighborhood?

“at body_blendz keeps my TAN fresh and even.

Clearly, that is not true because there’s no way that one can become that dark in the summer and their skin turns white in the winter.

article, “White Influencer Denies She Pretended to Be Black to Get Followers: Let Me Explain” written by Robyn Merret from People,

“There is a black aesthetic that many are attempting to capitalize. An aesthetic which many dark-skinned people are still shunned for having all on their own.”

by YouTuber Annie Nova, and she

Julianne Hough, a professional dancer, and actress was in deep trouble in 2013 fo

Wow GIF

“Catfishing’ refers to a scam where someone, the ‘catfish,’ creates a fictitious online identity and seeks out online relationships. These are frequently romantic relationships, and online dating websites and cell phone dating apps are fertile hunting ground for catfish. However, there are also catfish who seek out friendships and other forms of social contact. Catfishing involves significant deception

There’s not necessarily a catch to catfishing. A catfish is often just someone pretending to be someone they’re not using the anonymity of the Internet. He or she might may have low self-esteem and build a fictitious online persona to interact with people. Or a catfish might simply find their deception amusing. More malicious motives can exist as well. Some catfish seek money, and build a fake relationship with their victims to get it

The growing popularity of online dating has made catfishing more and more common. Estimates for catfishing victims are in the thousands, and that number is probably under representative. Catfishing victims can be deeply embarrassed and many don’t talk share or talk about it.

On April 23, 2017, their story became a tabloid sensation in England. “My catfish became cupid,” Emma told the Daily Mirror, “And now we’re living happily ever after.”

On March 31, 2017, Emma sent her catfish a goodbye text message:“Alan I wanted to tell you that tomorrow I’m going to pick up Adem at the airport. And I still don’t know if it’s good or bad but I’m going to meet ‘my Ronnie.’ You built up all this shit, I’m not sure if I should thank you or detest you for that. But this is happening.”

They stopped talking about Alan’s scam, and very slowly the conversation between the shy model and Emma, who had so recently been burned, became emotionally charged.

Alan “needed to apologize to her face-to-face,” he said.His face was red with shame. “The hug went on for about a minute,” he told me, “I was just, like, quite tearful.” Emma pulled up an armchair and they sat uneasily side-by-side, making small talk. Then, Alan said he was sorry.He said he did it to escape the agony of loneliness. When Emma studied him, she saw a man just two years younger than her own father.

“I knew,” Emma told me. She typed Alan’s email address into Google.I asked what she found.“Everything, everything,” she sighed. “His Twitter accounts. Where I’ve seen his face.”“It was devastating and I felt sick,” she said. “You have no idea how much I’ve been hurt inside.”Alan was in early-morning traffic when his cellphone rang.“Is your real name Alan?” Emma asked.

Alan elected to bypass the company’s selfie-based verification system, a spokesperson for Zoosk told me, following an internal investigation. He admitted using photographs of a random male model from Google that he had stolen. “I’m always nervous about posting personal images of myself,” he explained.

Ronaldo Scicluna was a fictional character created by Alan Stanley, a short, balding, 53-year-old shop fitter—a decorator of retail stores. Alan lived alone in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Like one of the Bard’s shape-shifting characters, Alan used a disguise to fool women into romance, and to prevent himself from getting hurt. His alter ego “Ronnie” was a ladies’ man, charming, and attractive—everything Alan was not.

Job posting scammers often ask a victim to cash a check for something, sometimes an amount in excess of a payment, then send a check to cover the difference. The victim attempts to deposit the scammer’s phony check, and it bounces, usually after the scammer has already cashed the victim’s valid check.

You know you need to do your research on an employer to wow them in the interview. But if you can’t find any online information about the company or your point of contact—if the company doesn’t have a website or mentions on Glassdoor, or your contact isn’t on LinkedIn—that’s an indicator things might not be on the up and up.

The ad scammer’s job is not to formulate a believable job description, but to persuade as many suckers as possible to take the bait. If you can’t tell what you’d be doing, or what you need to be considered qualified, that’s a telltale sign that the ad is a fake.

After you have registered, you can then choose your desired profile portrait and five other additional pictures

link up your Facebook account with the app. Confirm the company’s terms of service and access to your phone.

As soon as they make contact, they quickly try to move the conversation to another platform, like text messaging, or email. Sometimes they’ll claim they’re leaving the site, or that their subscription is about to expire.

According to the online dating site Zoosk.com, 25% of the scams reported on their platform involved people impersonating members of the military. Zoosk shares an example of what these attempts look like:

No longer do we need to leave our home and join an angry mob to get angry about something together.

when there’s a group of people, responsibility and accountability are diffused therefore people are less likely to act

it also causes us to not act when we should.

There’s something about being part of a collective that dissolves personal accountability and causes people to behave in strange ways.

Hiding behind keyboards and touch-screens, their anonymity inflates their egos and any sense of self or accountability slips away between ones and zeros.

Many cannot access to the internet.

There are still things which are only analogue – a flower, a death, a book, a night with a friend are analogue by themselves.

In general, it’s crucial to understand that “digital” – and “online” as well – are not opposed to “real” in an ontological sense, and not opposed either to “real” in an axiological sense – “digital/online relationships are less real” – that is, less authentic.

Is he speaking from an ontological point of view or a sociological one?

an outdated perspective as Facebook is increasingly real and our physical world increasingly digital.

what we do offline

They Want to Get Serious Too Soon

Not everyone has a degree in English Lit, however many scammers will consistently use incorrect grammar and spelling because they’re from a foreign country and are portraying themselves as locals

They Will Be Otherworldly Attractive

Many victims report that the person said all the right things, they tapped into their deepest needs and said only positive things. 

Don’t be too quick to believe everything you read. If they claim to be a brain surgeon and part time pilot,

You can empower yourself by starting to listen to your rational voice, and you’ll soon be separating the princes from the frogs like a pro. Here are some tips for spotting a Catfish:

When he first asked for money to help finish a construction job, she said, “I prayed about it. I’ve always been a very giving person, and I figured if I had money … I could send him some.” That’s how she came to lose the first $30,000.

Reported losses exceeded $230 million

In the U.S., romance scams account for the highest financial losses of all internet-facilitated crimes

“It’s about having the relative privilege and access to selectively engage with parts of a culture that you find interesting or appealing, without having to think or engage with the broader experiences of people from that culture.

aiden Gumbayan

“Most of the people who are accused of ‘blackfishing’ don’t directly state on their profiles that they are black, but rather insinuate it through their new appearances, the way they dress, and the products they’re selling or endorsing,” Danielle Bainbridge, a postdoctoral fellow in African-American Studies at Northwestern University, told InsideEdition.com.

“Blackfishing” is defined as when a person, usually social media influencers or personalities, passes as black by altering their appearance – often their hair and skin tone. The practice is problematic, experts say, because it’s a deception by omission.

“blackfishing”

“For instance, a preppy teen posting pictures of himself wearing goth clothes, posing in front of a wall with painted wings is totally normal and healthy. A teen who is struggling with self-image issues, posting pictures of her body and seeking comments to define her self esteem is unhealthy.”

So, even that idea that they have to be 13 to have it, it's, you know, not reality. And it's so blatantly not reality that they don't even feel any fear to admit that they have an account.

So, you're either going to teach them to swim, or you're going to watch them drown

critically

VR goggles

he “really” feels about himself

expression of underlying needs

“online disinhibition effect

people are always constructing their identities, with their ever-changing, always-performed selves being both digital and embodied

often labeling the online self as somehow false, contrived, constructed, or performed, while the in-person self is more spontaneous, real, and genuine.

are actually highly intermeshed, especially given how people in social media often connect with each other in-person,

anti-digital-dualists ignore the reality that experiences in virtual reality can be very different than in our everyday reality.

supposed digital dualists were saying that what happens in cyberspace can be different than what happens in the face-to-face world.

Is a reality augmented by digitality a good thing? My job with this post is not to answer that question, but to help make it possible.

comprised of a physical body as well as our digital Profile, acting in constant dialogue

The critique stems from the systematic bias to see the digital and physical as separate; often as a zero-sum tradeoff where time and energy spent on one subtracts from the other

augmented reality

Whether real or fake accounts, the message to teens about social media should consistently focus on always being in control of your own reputation, sharing things online that reflect the real you, and thinking of the long-term implications of posts. Real or fake accounts – the rules stay the same.

perspective on what their friends are doing

Their use of these accounts can potentially give teens more control over their digital identity, protecting themselves from users viewing and possibly misinterpreting their posts.

With this purpose, teens can feel free to enjoy their interest, or try new ones, without being worried that someone will mock them.

present a rawer, “this-is-the-real-me” personality to a smaller group of closer friends.

Finstas are often strategically used by teens to relieve this pressure.

multiple devices that usually include a mobile phone and a laptop

shifting in new ways in response to changes to social media platforms, the teen’s age and social context

“other ways of showing appreciation”.

“We can appreciate their culture without having to do or wear their hairstyles, or trying to act or be a certain way that we’re not,” Gumbayan said.

Parallels have also been drawn to the Kardashians because “Kim, in particular, has been accused of appropriating black culture on several occasions down the years”, the BBC notes.

“With things like tanning, I don’t think I’ve done anything in a malicious way. So I don’t feel like I need to stop doing something because... why would I stop doing something that’s benefitting me or that I enjoy doing?” she said.

“It takes away from actual black creators on Instagram and YouTube whose job it is to promote things,” says Nova, using the example of brands who send natural curly hair products to white influencers.

One tweeter summed up this view with a post that said: “These blackfishing threads just remind me how blackness is viewed as a commodity.”

Perhaps this augured the era of the sasaeng fan, a recently coined term that might as well be Korean for “stan”: “Sa” means private and “saeng” means life, in reference to fans’ all-encompassing obsessions with their preferred artists.

The cultish devotion to pop stars isn’t geographically or culturally restricted; “stans” is the nifty neologism for crazed fans that’s both a portmanteau of “stalker” and “fan” and an homage to the 2002 Eminem single, whose eponymous antihero’s obsession with the rapper drove him to suicide.

Most chillingly, though, there was a deluge of death threats from crazed fans who, whether they perceived me as an actual threat to the imagined romance between Yunho and Jaejoong or merely an annoyance who should to be silenced, gave me pause in an online game that had become addictively pleasurable. “Let me show you how you shall die,” one began. “@mjjeje has only a 100+ stalkers. One order from his lush lips … and your throat shall be slit!” There were many others, but that one stuck with me — mostly because it was retweeted so many times.

Fanaticism appears to also have addictive and obsessive-compulsive aspects, but evidence suggests that this can be con-trolled by the individual to avoid any severely negative conse-quences, and thus, unlike many existing portrayals, fanaticism donot usually cause harm to the consumer and to others.

It also showed that fanaticism involves managing the fine line between extreme levels of enthusiasm that is positive and fulfilling, versus non-sustainable borderline-dysfunctional levels of enthusiasm that may turn into something darker or problematic.

“(I) will stop at nothing to get it... I would eatcheap food. Or, not eat. I just find ways to save money. So thatI can (make these purchases)... even essential stuff, like fixingmy car, my contact lenses, I would go without...