lonelygirl15. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186146298. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lonelygirl15&oldid=1186146298 (visited on 2023-11-24).
I find it interesting how once the authenticity of the stories were called into question, people started to care less and got upset at the creator. If a story is entertaining, why should it matter that it's fictional?
How do you think about the authenticity of the Tweets that come from Trump himself? Do you think it matters which human typed the Tweet? Does the emotional expression (e.g., anger) of the Tweet change your view of authenticity?
I think it's interesting how normalized it is for a popular figure like the president to have their own social media manager. To me, it feels less personal knowing that every tweet a celebrity tweets is not actually their own thoughts and opinions.
4chan. November 2023. Page Version ID: 1186572457. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4chan&oldid=1186572457 (visited on 2023-11-24).
While I have never used 4chan before or even been on the website, I have always known it as a social media platform with very little moderation where anything goes. I find it interesting how, despite how long it's been since its inception and the reputation it has gotten for being a website that breeds toxicity and hate, it is still very active. I also find it interesting how active it is considering how aged the site looks and how much friction it has.
The book Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years [e1] by Tom Standage outlines some of the history of social media before internet-based social media platforms such as in times before the printing press: Graffiti and other notes left on walls were used for sharing updates, spreading rumors, and tracking accounts Books and news write-ups had to be copied by hand, so that only the most desired books went “viral” and spread
I found this interesting because I have never considered how graffiti and books would be social media, but it makes sense. In the world of the internet, so much more media types can be spread and go "viral," so it's interesting to think about how much more work it was for a piece of media to go viral before the internet was created.
Shannon Bond. Elon Musk wants out of the Twitter deal. It could end up costing at least $1 billion. NPR, July 2022. URL: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110539504/twitter-elon-musk-deal-jeopardy (visited on 2023-11-24).
I find this article interesting because while Elon Musk claimed he wanted to back out of the Twitter deal because of the plethora of bots, it seems to be an excuse to allow him to back out. Additionally, while this seems to be an excuse to allow him to back out of the deal, legal experts determined it would be an "uphill battle," and may not be grounds to back out of the deal.
So all data that you might find is a simplification. There are many seemingly simple questions that in some situations or for some people, have no simple answers, questions like: What country are you from? What if you were born in one country, but moved to another shortly after? What if you are from a country that no longer exists like Czechoslovakia? Or from an occupied territory? How many people live in this house? Does a college student returning home for the summer count as living in that house? How many words are in this chapter? Different programs use different rules for what counts as a “word” [d19] E.g., this page has “2 + 2 = 4”, which Microsoft Word counts as 5 words, and Google Docs counts as 3 words.
I find the simplification of data very interesting, because that is an aspect of coding that I have never really considered before. Even in our everyday lives, information is being simplified in a way that is easy for people to process and digest, so why should coding be any different? In particular, the examples of the complexity of even simple questions like "what country are you from" was interesting because I had never really considered the complexities behind questions like that.