I fall into this camp. To me, hashtags are clunky, and are a tertiary feature of Twitter. When I use social media in general, I want it to be an enjoyable, hassle free experience; hashtags make me want to draft what I am posting.

This reminds my how people can figure out your location based on what hashtags you use. I remember seeing a video online of a guy who would go to, say, Santa Monica Pier and, based on that hashtag, would find other people there, look up their profile, and then go meet them and pretend they knew each other. Of course, he came clean to the other person, and used their exchange as a teaching moment; nevertheless, it was creepy, and made me instantly aware just how public the twitter-sphere is.

It is interesting how, in this way, casual users made a space for informational users. Now, casual users come to twitter looking for information. It is like these two populations grew together to build twitter what it is today.

I have often pondered why the hashtag was chosen to be used in the manner it is today. I had assumed it it was one of the view shift-"number key" symbols without an associated meaning (e.g. the dollar sign on the "4" key). I did not realize it was already being used by those technologically inclined.

I believe I had a Last.fm account.

This is such a cool name; considering how often it is used, I am especially surprised this is not more commonly known!

It is interesting how the "@" feature has become part of one's online identity too. I am definitely more likely to follow someone if someone they have a witty "@username".

I was just starting to think Twitter has grown out of its "connecting with friends" phase, but then I remembered: Twitter was how I found out about the Boston bombing. Twitter is still very much a tool used to connect people, not just strangers meeting strangers - and celebrities.

This has been my use of twitter. Though I know my tweets will be seen my friends, my goal is to get "liked" or retweeted by a stranger.

This passage provided the "a-ha" moment for me; I had never considered why the "@" came to refer to people - or rather their handles.

This brings ot light the profitability of ad revenue and user traffic. Facebook, for example, uses the guise of connectivity to attract users. While these users do connect, their presence translates into profits for the company; the ethics of which have recently been called into question by Congress.

I would not have guess Grindr was owned by a Chinese parent company. From what I have heard, China has been less-than-accommodating to those who are part of the LGBTQ community.

I had to look this term up too. According to wikipedia (I hesitated using it as a soruce, but it was the only one I could find that was not a full thesis), Technoliberalism is the idea that technology (e.g. the internet) should be accessible to all, regardless of wealth or social standing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technoliberalism

I had never heard the term "chemsex" before, so I looked it up. According to changegrowlive.org, chemsex is a term used primarily by gay or bi men to refer to an intimate encounter experienced while under the influence of drugs, usually methamphetamine, mephedrone, gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB), or gammabutyrolactone (GBL). Knowing this, I find it interesting the author specified "non-sexual chemsex sessions"; what does that mean? Would that not just be doing drugs with someone of the same sexual orientation?

This sentence helped me understand how influencers can be considered products. Toward the beginning of this paper, it mentioned how difficult maintaining consistency is for brands, I did not see how this could directly relate to people. Of course, maintaining an image and keeping it interesting for the audience is a huge undertaking. I see this as the product, the micro-celebrity's image, and the consumption as the viewing of it.

Justin Bieber is one such example of someone who bypassed the traditional route to fame; he was discovered on YouTube.

Just like with virals, being ordinary is beneficial to the individual.

While chasing fame has certainly become more accessible, there is also much more noise than there has been in the past. This has to be one of the biggest hurdles facing those trying to garner micro-celebrity status.

The term "neoliberal individualism" is striking. Social media has given everyone a venue to share who they are, and an expectation to participate and cultivate an image of oneself has come with it. It is passages like this that remind me how important it is to have an image in our culture.

These sound simple, but, as I see it, it would be hard to manufacture media with these traits. This underscores the success user-created media experiences.

This stood out to me. While it makes sense, this statement is seemingly a counter-argument to the success of platforms like instagram, where, in my experience, the content is doctored and edited to look professional. This passage, and the logic leading up to it, tells me that if I were to start generating content for profit, I should put effort into making it look unprofessional.

This explains, to a degree, the success of platforms like Vine and Tik-Tok. When I think of viral videos, the ones that come to mind are mostly, if not all, user-created. I think the success of these videos is due, in part, to the public's ability to relate to them.

This is not the first time class content has used cringe-worthy viral media as an example. Though I sometimes find them distracting, I cannot argue with how effective these examples are.

This best fits my understanding of memes prior to this class. This article in particular showed me the depth of communication involved with memes; I know view them almost as their own language.

It was this passage that helped me see virals as forms of communication. Though it is not as apparent as it is with memes, I can see how the sharing of a viral video makes its own statement.

Similar to how a virus, after it propagates and spreads, will mutate. Perhaps I am taking the metaphor too far, but I appreciate how accurately it fits the subject.

This is very thought provoking. This gives a fingerprint-like quality to remixed and mimicked media.

Similar to how letters are used to communicate words, memes communicate messages beyond their face value (e.g. the Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump "Who Wore It Better" meme seen in class"). This sentence helped me realize how complex memes are, and explains why we feel so satisfied when all the references in a meme are recognized. I see memes operating similarly to how letters with accent marks operate.

I would have never considered this type of phenomenon as a meme. It makes sense, of course, but this was a valuable point brought out in this reading.

When I was a kid, I saw a Kilroy on a wall and asked my dad about it. After his explanation, I remember wondering how many Kilroy's exist, and for how long they have been around (the WWII context was not mentioned in that conversation). Thinking of Kilroy as a meme was jarring, but helped me view memes as a concept, something beyond a viral, online image.

This brings to mind the memes seen on TV; they are unexpected for sure, but just as effective.

It is interesting to see memes described in a similar fashion to how living things are described. I have thought of memes as reflections of society, but this biological view gives new meaning to the term viral; now I see how memes even change and grow - similarly to pathogens.

This resonated in my mind when I read it. The internet is an inherently interactive place, something which memes embody. Even memes using the same image can be for many different messages.

It seems as if some of the most effective marketing campaigns to come out of the last decade come from consumers playing with new technology and concepts.

In the case of videos to stream, there are so many available that it is possible for a consumer to find a niche of entertainment, rather than have to settle to watch something like, for example, The Brady Bunch. While this is great for the consumer, this underscores how hard marketers have to work to be heard.

This is also the case for regional programming. Clips or episodes can be shared online, often escaping licensing issues, and can be viewed in regions too far away for that program to be featured in regular TV broadcasting. I wonder if businesses test markets this way. It is essentially free marketing.

Considering the influence the audience has (as this book suggests), this kind of practice seems dangerous. I say that because sites that disable the back button drive me crazy - to the point where I avoid future interaction with that site entirely. While I could see this practice as having a time and place, I am surprised at its prevalence.

This shows how media is essentially more valuable the more it has been spread, or viewed and shared. This makes sense, as there seem to be more and more "professional YouTubers" every year.

in the last year or so, the number of ads I have seen for new, small businesses has seemingly increased. This is probably due to the pandemic, as many businesses have been forced to amp up their digital presence. When considering the spreadability of media (e.g. Facebook post shares), one of the first things that comes to mind is how small businesses depend on the person-to-person proliferation of branded media online.

This explains, in part, the heavy presence of online cookies, does it not?

After "menu-based interactivity" and "hypermedia", this section on updates was refreshingly familiarly. There was a lot of new information here. While I am going to have to re-read the section on hypermedia again, a software update is a graspable example of the changeability of new media; though the versions of the software are different before and after the update, the media is still identifiable.

I had to read this section several times before I began to grasp how variability differs from modularity. Modularity is a new media object's ability to remain identifiable in different sequences and variability is a new media object's ability to be changed. Is this right?

Similar to Jacquelyn's annotation about the early history of TV technology, I was surprised to read that AI's technology dates back to the 1950's. Reading this reminded me of the tic-tac-toe computer in the Boston Museum of Science. It is made of tinkertoys, and though it looks archaic, the contraption, in concept alone, is really impressive. I am wondering now how humble AI's beginnings are.

When I think of media, the first things that come to mind are videos, pictures, and posts - all of which are online. Admittedly, I do not know much about coding or digitizing, but this historical context of the "discrete" nature of media has help me understand why the formats of media I see on a daily basis tend to be standardized.

It is particularly fascinating how the use of GIFs has morphed over time.

I would not have considered Facebook's or Twitter's aversion to GIFs as a creative choice. I have always wondered why these platforms eclipsed MySpace. Though in my mind the ability to use GIFs would be a benefit to the user, this apparently is not the case.

I was so hoping that this article would provide a definitive pronunciation! I have been in heated debates over the pronunciation of "GIF" (I pronounce it with the hard 'G'). Being able to prove my rightness would have been sweet. It is particularly interesting how deep this argument runs within the tech community.

"CompuServe Monthly Status Reports suggest the first implementation was a time-lapse weather map." I highlighted this for two reasons. Firstly, it is so interesting to see a technology's first application be so practical. Secondly, being familiar with today's use of GIFs (many of which are essentially moving memes), I had almost overlooked the role they can play in passing important information - such as the weather.

I have never considered how zoetropes are essentially analog GIFs (or, inversely, how GIFs are digital zoetropes). I had a zoetrope maker as a kid; this comparison helped me better grasp the effectiveness of GIFs.