Week 10 - Essential Questions About Sharing

 

What do you take for granted or assume about sharing?

What I assume/take for granted about sharing is the idea that people who post stuff online, usually do it to be heard and seen. Whether it be for their close friends and families, or on a more public platform. In some extreme cases, some people will post stuff online in hopes to become internet famous, or the next big influencer. In other words, people use social media to share their thoughts and opinions on various topics. People also use social media as a way to “show off” a window into their lives. The food they’re eating, where they visited, who they hang out with, all get shared on social media. Most do it for fun or recreationally, while others do it as their main source of income, or try to. For example, a woman by the name of Lissette Calveiro, put herself into $10,000 in debt trying to become an Instagram influencer. She bought expensive clothes, and traveling to different locations all for Instagram. The payoff of her debt? 23,000 followers. While this may be a lot to most people, 23,000 followers are peanuts compared to influencer titans such as; Huda Kattan or James Charles, who have well over a million subscribers. Certainly not worth going into debt over either.

 

What other information do you need to consider to better understand sharing?

One of the biggest things that you need to consider, if you plan on sharing stuff on the internet, is that once you post something on the internet, it stays there. Even if you were to delete the original post, it never really goes away. In other words, the internet never forgets. Once you post something on the internet or on social media, you run the risk of not only exposing that part of your life, but also open the world to make copies. For example, whenever I think about sharing on the internet, I always think back to an old commercial about a middle/high school girl posting a physical picture of herself onto her school's bulletin board. Through out the day students (and even a janitor) kept taking copies of her photo for whatever reason. Then when the girl realizes her mistake she tries to take the picture down all she kept getting were copies while the picture kept reappearing on the bulletin board. While this was a commercial and not a real life example, I believe that this perfectly exemplifies the ramifications on sharing on social media.

Whenever I think about sharing on social media, I always think back to this old commercial that has haunted me to this day.

The purpose of the assignment is to understand the ramifications on oversharing, and even just general sharing, on the internet.  

The key question at the heart of the assignment is are you guilty of oversharing on the internet? If so, what are some ways to prevent you from doing so in the future?