Procrasti---I'll Come Back to This...

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” -Spanish Proverb

Tips and tricks across the web to battle procrastination!

According to Psychology Today:

"Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but 20 percent of people chronically avoid difficult tasks and deliberately look for distractions—which, unfortunately, are increasingly available. Procrastination in large part reflects our perennial struggle with self-control as well as our inability to accurately predict how we'll feel tomorrow, or the next day.

Procrastinators may say they perform better under pressure, but more often than not that's their way of justifying putting things off."

We live in a culture of multi-tasking. We listen to music while watching TV while doing homework while on Facebook while having a conversation with a friend in person and online. And then we procrastinate. How can we battle it? Googling procrastination will bring up all sorts of "tips and tricks" but I think it just comes down to one thing (and in the words of Nike): JUST DO IT!

We can also cite South Park's ADHD cure (sorry for the link, it's the only one I could find) for a procrastination cure:

http://www.telly.com/HUKCH?fromtwitvid=1

We just need to SIT DOWN AND STUDY. Also, lists. Lots and lots of lists. 

Post-Feminists or Just Ignorant?

In Palfrey and Gasser's "Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives," the discussion of Digital Natives goes in depth about what identity means. Their focus particularly on the female Digital Native coincides with both Banet-Weiser article "Branding the Post-Feminism Self: Girls' Video Production and YouTube" and Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Social Feminism in the 1980s." This focus on females and their public identities may be because females are fairly new to the public sphere. And by fairly new, I mean the past 50 years or so if we are thinking in terms of waves on feminism. 

These three articles intersect at the discussion of women taking and using something that they previously didn't typically have access to: a public forum for expressing themselves within the context of their current culture. This can be conceived as both a good and bad thing for women. The good part is that women are free to express themselves but the bad may be what they choose to express and how they express it. All of this is relative and it is where feminist issues come in. 

I argue that digital identities (Palfrey and Gasser), cyborgs (Haraway) and self-branding online (Banet-Weiser) are all basically the same concept. It's an extension of yourself in an online medium, basically. Adding post-feminism to this creates the aspect of women all authors are discussing.

In Banet-Weiser's article, she discusses girls navigating their online identities through the use of YouTube and how it may be a form of post-feminism and self-branding (who knows what her actual thoughts were since she had no closing thoughts). My question asks: Do these girls and young women know that they are post-feminists and does it matter if they know or not?

According to Wikipedia's definition of post-feminism it is: 

"...ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways. However, it generally connotes the belief that feminism has succeeded in its goal of ameliorating sexism, making it fundamentally opposed to the third-wave intention of broadening feminist struggle."

So, are we in an era where women are struggling less? Did the second-wave succeed in liberating women? I don't think so but do the female Digital Natives believe this?  Or do they just not care? I think they don't care, personally, because they do not realize the consequences involved with sharing all they do online. I do not think teenagers are socially aware to the extent that they would understand a post-feminist stance.

What are your thoughts? Are they post-feminists or just ignorant?

Mermaids and Media Control

OK folks, so last week, I mentioned how the government has control of the media--news, internet, radio, etc. Andrew suggested I post about this. 

First, here is the link to Animal Planet (AP). This is a trailer for Mermaids: The Body Found. As you can see, this is a snippet from the two hour show. In a nutshell, this follows the story of scientists who identified a unique sound (The Bloop) that was a new species (of dolphin, so they thought). They also heard sonar tests by the Military, to which they attributed mass Whale beachings/deaths. Eventually, a body was found in a shark that did not match any known species. After putting all the pieces together, the consensus was something they avoided saying: it was a mermaid. Enter the government, who confiscated all the info. 

Now, these scientists, who ostensibly worked for NOAA, eventually left NOAA. Some of them have tried to put out their own sites. Yet look what happens when you type in one of the two names: Dr. Paul Robertson. This domain has been seized by the department of homeland security!? You get the same thing when you search for Mermaids are Alive, which was another attempt at creating a website. Here is a16th century rendering of what was thought was genetic anomaly--and what the scientists claimed they found:

Of course, there is a disclaimer at the end of the AP 'documentary':  "Though certain events in this film are fictional navy sonar tests have been directly implicated in whale beachings. “The Bloop” is a real phenomenon; there is still debate about what it may be. None of the institutions or agencies that
appear in the film are affiliated or associated with it in any way, nor have they approved its contents.
Any similarities in the film to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental."

So, we are left to wonder: what is the veracity of the information? Are mermaids real? I really don't care one way or the other, and that is not the question I am pursuing here. But why did the Department of Homeland Security get involved? If it is because of the sonar testing, what is the government doing behind closed doors that could so terribly affect the planet/humanity? How bad are the sonar tests? I would assume pretty bad, if they want to cover up the information on it. 

And then, why get rid of "Mermaids Are Alive" website? If the evidence is weak or potentially a hoax, why not just let that site stand? There are plenty of others claiming the same thing that have not been censored. People will believe what they want to when it comes to a topic like this.

The question is: who controls the information, to what degree, to what purpose, and why? We heard a ton of info on the Sept. 11 attack of 2001. I mean, you can't hide that (duh). Yet the reports of potential Chinese Satellite Hacking were hardly heard of--and hacking into our satellite system could cause a whole lot of havoc; it could be considered its own act of war. Without 100% proof, retaliatory action can't be taken, of course. But would the U.S. want to, given the global economy and who produces a lot of the crap we buy? So...how free are we, really, to use the internet to share information? Sounds to me like "The Man" still has a pretty strong hand in media control.

I Wanna Be a Cyborg (?)

If "the cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled postmodern collective self" (205), then I want to be a cyborg. Then again, perhaps if gender is a set of behaviors, I already am a cyborg. Why? At least 50% of my attitudes and actions have male traits; "a cyborg is...a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as of fiction" (191). So, I am creating myself with these male-esque traits (hyper atheticism, lack of maternal instinct, propensity to cuss like a sailor, etc.) as a fictional creature; I can't begin to tell you how many people find it odd I don't want children. I am a fictitious female. Yet I am a "social reality," with my long hair, proclivity to wear tank tops, and the occasional purse usage. I am a collective of learned gender traits and a protest against them, of which some of this can be found online.

This leads to the question: can I be branded? Sadly, I would say yes. We all can be branded. The girls on YouTube are "crafting gender identity through particular performances" (282). Could I not, then, be said to be doing the same with my assimilation of different gender traits? Just because I am not broadcasting everything about who I am all over the internet does not mean branding is not happening. My resistance against the stereotypical female has itself already been co-opted by "the man." And, to my horror, it has been turned into the thing I hate.

The concept of strong women has become "Grrrl Power," and attached to things like little pink tank tops. When I went to Hot Topic when it first came out, black, dark, and what is now called emo was all the "fashion" you could find. Yet now there are hot pink and electric blue fishnets etc. that these neo-goths can wear "ironically." Gag. I always just wore plain black clothes--yet even THAT was "branded" by my mom. I was a "long hair"--the second-generation pre-hippie Beatnik. Even what I still like has a brand: Steampunk. And let's not even get into what has happened in the athletic world with the whole "shrink it and pink it" attitude, which includes "women's specific bikes,"  girly-girl clothing in "fashionable" colors, and stickers that say "(insert sport here) Like a Girl." GAG.

We simply can't avoid the branding. Whatever we try to "become"--be it from a place of protest, uniqueness, or outright oddity--someone will latch onto it and turn it into a fad; sure, it may be a counter-culture fad, but it is a culture--a sub culture; it is a way for us to identify with others. We are social creatures. We really can't avoid it.

And, we can't really escape ourselves. Palfrey and Gasser (P&G) make this clear with their example of the 16 year-old agrarian girl who could move to a new town and start a new life for herself. But we are now "plugged in"--cyborgs, really. Our social lives take place in the real and digital world. The more of a "native" we are, the worse it is--and the more we immerse ourselves in the digital world, the harder it is to "hide" ourselves. Computers leave records the way paper never could. As P&G say, "If the Digital Native has created multiple identities, those identities might be connected to create a much fuller picture of the individual than was possible before, spanning a greater period of time" (35). Google searching can dig up god knows what.

So, here many of the younger people are: branded cyborgs trying to control their identities. The control may or may not be possible; the avoidance of branding very much seems out of our hands. Maybe I don't wanna be a cyborg after all...

Online Identity Creation: It's Heathers & Mean Girls, Folks, Forever.

What the assigned readings for this week show us is that the matter of identity is not one with clear boundaries that are easily marked and monitored. Identity creation comes from the liminal spaces where the individual (internal) and the community (external) meet, because neither party has total control over how identity gets constructed. The commonality of these three assigned articles concerns how the forces in play in this space interact.

Online identity construction is, essentially, the same as offline identity construction with the sole difference being that it is far easier to see how this process operates in an online context because--as of this post--the technology used makes it transparent to a savvy observer. We see this most obviously in the identity construction processes at YouTube, where the efforts of the young women and girls we've read about to construct an identity that they control run straight into the counter-effort by others to control the identities of these same female users through the use of Comments, Upvotes/Likes and the View Counter.

These same contentions of identity control exist when one posts on Reddit, Facebook, Google Plus, etc. despite the lack of visceral experience that video provides. The push of a given conception of myself--who I want, and intend, for you the reader to see me as, to identify me as--gets contested by those that respond by voting/Liking the post, commenting on that post, and linking (or not) to that post. Manipulating the technical system to promote or denigrate the original poster is quite effective in seizing control of an online identity and shaping it to one's desire; this is not because you're taking control of the original poster, but rather that you're making the poster a pariah to the observers watching the interaction- this makes identity creation an inherently political act. This is the sort of thing that public relations professionals, and their fellows in marketing and advertising, find fertile ground for their skills and expertise.

The result, therefore, is that the rise of YouTube and similar Internet phenomenon such as Felicia Day's Geek and Sundry as well as FPSRussia--there's your segway for next week--where individuals that understand how to create and control popular perception of your persona become able to exploit this online identity creation process for their own ends, and thus remove some of the amateurism that's commonplace in the social media space. This is not a place where intellect rules--my fellow geeks and nerds, I am sorry to tell you so--but (as with offline identity matters) a realm where, once again, it's charisma that matters most.

What is Cyborg Feminism?

As I read the "Manifesto for Cyborgs" article by Donna Haraway I found myself writing things in the margins like, "What?!" "Really?!" and "It is?!"

A few pages in, I felt myself frustrated and annoyed. Not only was the language in the piece full of unnecessary jargon, it was also obviously relying heavily on an audience that had a significant education in postmodern theory, Marxism and feminism. Dripping with irony and "insider" witticisms, I felt as if I were peaking at something not really intended for my uninitiated eyes. 

And it wasn't just that the language and structure were difficult. I am OK with difficult text as long as I am eventually getting the gist of a piece. The problem that sent me searching for information about this article on the internet rather than continue to read this article was the sweeping statements that seemed utterly wrong. I searched for Donna Haraway and Cyborgs on Google. I found this Wikipedia article about Haraway that includes a section on this very piece.

Apparently this is a classic piece, and one that I hadn't encountered before. So, I tried to figure out what I should glean from Haraway's point of view that relates to the theme of this week's reading - Online Identity and Presentation. So, I focused on the section "Fractured Identities." There I found a clue to what might be the relevance of Haraway's manifesto to the other readings this week.

To summarize, Haraway seems to be pointing out that women are not necessarily aligned (and should not necessarily be aligned) with each other on important issues simply on the basis of their gender. Some takes of others from the Wikipedia article are:

the cyborg is a hybrid being.
According to Krista Scott:

Haraway feels that the cyborg myth has the potential for radical political action as it frees feminists from a desperate search for similarity with one another, since physical/epistemological boundary breaks can be extrapolated to political boundary crossings.^[11]

According to Marisa Olson:

Our life force flows through us and out into the objects we make, she reasoned; thus there ought to be no distinction between the so-called real or natural organisms that nature produces and the artificial machines that humans make. Her conclusion: We are all cyborgs.^[12]

 Whether or not I understand all of the nuance or particular references in this piece, the part that seems to be pushing us into the current discussion is the idea of creating affinity groups rather than gender groups. I think the current social media environment allows us to do that.

I gotta see it to believe it!

You Tube is a place where digital natives can practice self-expression while working on their identities through brand development.  The articles we have read this week discuss how these ideas interplay with one another.  The development of ones identity at times through branding is done through interaction with viewers that provide feedback.

Performances on You Tube videos are validated by the number of views and comments the videos receive, which is in turn crucially significant to self-branding. (Branding the Post-Feminist Self: Girls' Video Production and YouTube p. 288)

I see problems arising with the constant necessary validation of self-identity as explored particularly by the young.  Identity by the young is basically the same in both physical and online spaces.  Adolescents more than any other time in their lives explore different aspects of identity and shifts occur regularly.  The comments, and views that come via YouTube are a recognition of one's self.  Being seen and believed makes ones identity real; real for the individual creating the content and real for the viewer receiving the content.

This reminded me of a post I saw on YouTube last year.  It received many hits and touched many of those who saw it.  It was a post of a boy discussing the effects of bullying for him personally.  He reached many people who saw his video.  A while later, he posted a video of him and a friend smiling, goofing and speaking of his popularity with others.  (This post was later taken down).  This led many to call into question the validity of this post.

This controversy was over the believability of ones identity.  And as digital natives seem to share identity between  physical and online spaces easily, the 'proof' required to show a believable shift may not always come through in online settings.  This missing component could be damaging to ones identity as it relies on others recognition.