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Week 3 - Social Media Messages

 First Level of Reading

1.     Social messages are “constructed.” People feel the need to “showcase” themselves in a positive light to flaunt and show-off to others. Whether it be to your family, friends, and in some cases, even random strangers. This is why there are more pictures of people posing and smiling for the camera, as opposed to candid pictures where the pictures are certainly more “realistic” but sometimes do not make the best pictures to show off to others.

2.     Social media messages shape our perceptions of reality. In today’s age of technology, it has become easier for people to only focus on the stories and articles that they feel comfortable reading/watching. However, the media itself is not as reliable as some might think. Putting a spotlight on certain stories because it follows your narrative, creates an echo chamber of similar beliefs and leaves little to no room for people to think for themselves/come to their own conclusions.

3.     Social media messages have different audiences and “different understandings of the same message.” The worst part of social media today, is that no matter what kind of message you post, no matter how meaningful or heart-felt, someone’s bound to take some form of offence. I guess when it’s said like that, we as a society have always had that problem, but with social media you are susceptible to a wider audience. Sometimes people take offence as a joke or to be sarcastic and to be funny, but others are actually really genuine. The trouble is that, because you are communicating through a screen, i.e. not face-to-face, it is hard to tell the difference between who is joking and who is genuine.  

4.     Social media messages embed points of view. Nowadays, in this day of social justice and being politically correct, people have begun to have very strict standards for society in general, not necessarily for the better. If you do not agree to the general consensus you are labeled as enemies and are against them. It’s really a “with us or against us” or even an “all or nothing” mentality.



Second Level of Reading

The main point of this article is to help better understand how people utilizes the platform that is social media. How people gravitate to social media as an escape from reality. 

In other words, how people who use social media use it as a way of expression and to gain attention on a wider scale. How people can create a “perfect” life to show off to others, thus creating a “false perspective” of their daily life. 

For example, I remember reading an article, back in 2013-14, about a Dutch graphic design student, named Zilla van den Born. She fooled her friends and family by telling them about her amazing vacation to South East Asia. However, in reality, she hardly ever left her apartment, let alone her home country. She used her skills as a graphic designer to masterfully Photoshop pictures that she “took” on her “trip” and posted it on her Facebook to show her family and friends. 

She then reveled her deception was to “show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media to create an "ideal" image that, in most cases, is drastically different from reality .” Which, still resonates in my mind to this day, because of how true her words are. While this may be an old story, I believe that this story perfectly exemplifies of the "social media message" and how Zilla used it to her advantage to shed some light on this phenomenon. 


The purpose of this assignment is to better understand why social media has become the platform that it has become, as well as how we abuse it to our advantage in that we use it to create an ideal life for themselves and as a way to escape reality. 

The key question that lies at the center of this assignment is, why do you think people on social media fall victim to the "social media message?" Do you notice this type of behavior in your own social media life (i.e. friends, family, content creators/influencers?)

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