Play  Song

October 23, 2001. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, summoned a small group of media-related and music industry-minded individuals to the Apple Town Hall in Cupertino California to hear about the future of how people listen to digital music. Up until this date, people knew Apple for their Macintosh computer and iBook, both of which revolutionized the way people interacted with the digital world, but after this particular announcement Apple would be known worldwide for its innovations in music. I was six years old when Jobs announced “the 21^st century Walkman,” also known as the iPod. At the time I didn’t grasp the magnitude of the impact the iPod was about to have on the music world, and to go even further, society and the world at large, but I did grasp the concept that music, at the very least, played an integral role in everyone’s life to some extent. Jobs capitalized on just this concept as he rattled off all the restrictions and impracticalities of the then-current music-listening devices. With that said, Jobs introduced the iPod, a pocket-sized mp3 player with a sleek and intuitive interface as well as a 5-gigabyte mp3 storage capacity. With the introduction of the iPod into society, Apple had forever changed the way a majority of the population of the world would listen to music. Now, Kevin Kelly would assert, with the following statement being aligned with the views he expresses in his book What Technology Wants, that the progression of the mp3 player in the form of the iPod has had a greater positive impact on society rather than negative. Most people would probably agree with that statement as it’s been shown that the iPod has been used for many noble causes. For example, the iPod has been used as a quality-of-life enhancing tool, which is an extremely beneficial aspect of the iPod. Many people tend to overlook the more negative and darker attributes of the device, such as its toxicity to the environment and its effect on human social behavior, to even worse negative impacts such as its role in the heavy decline of the music industry. To me, the Apple iPod impact could be best summed up as being good, bad, and then just straight-up ugly. Thus, I would argue that the Apple iPod’s negative impacts out weigh that of its positive impacts because of the degree of severity of its adverse environmental, social, and worse yet, industry-killing effects.

Excerpt of Steve Jobs iPod Key Note Address Video

I don’t entirely disagree with the following statement by Kelly in regards to progress: “I think the balance settles out at higher than 50 percent positive, even if only slightly higher”(77). I agree that there are positive impacts associated with the progression of the mp3 player in the form of the iPod, but I don’t agree with Kelly’s assessment that progression in regards to that of technological devices has been more beneficial for society than it has been negative. With that said, I can’t lay down my counter to Kelly’s argument without exploring all aspects of the impact of the device both positively and negatively.

The good. When the schematics of the iPod were introduced to society, many individuals saw it as a tool that could be utilized for the benefit of human society, or to be  more specific, a quality-of-life enhancing tool. Heather Holmes would fall under this category of individuals. Holmes, a member of the Good Samaritan Society as well a therapy-teaching Professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, saw potential in the iPod’s customizable music playlist feature, specifically in that the feature could be used therapeutically. Through the implementation of personalized music programs, Holmes and her crew, “create an experience [through the usage of the iPod], and all of a sudden, someone in the group [that is a part of the program] will have a moment when they speak five or six words—like ‘I remember dancing at my wedding.” Keep in mind that the people who take part in these programs have severe cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s, both of which impair their ability to recollect memories greatly. I believe that in respect to the therapeutic field, that only the iPod as a mp3-playing device has the capability to “create a[] [memory triggering] experience” like the one Holmes describes. I sincerely believe that listening to music, especially music that I sincerely enjoy, has a therapeutic impact on my mental psyche, and the progression of the mp3 player in the form of the iPod caters to just that impact exactly.

The bad. People tend to skip over the underlying negative environmental facets of a device because they propose unsettling thoughts and scenarios. For instance, a majority of society tends to not realize or flat out ignore the fact that the energy used to power society’s music storage devices is derived from the burning of coal—an activity “that leads to air pollution, climate change, and other problems tucked neatly away behind an electronic screen”(Biello, “How Toxic Is Your iPod?”). David Biello alerts his listeners to the environmental problems associated with the original iPod in the following podcast.

Play Podcast

Although, as Biello puts it in his podcast, “Apple is more brown than green. But it’s getting greener” (Biello, “How Toxic is Your iPod?”), the fact that iPod is still overall “brown,” meaning bad for the environment, is cause for concern seeing as recently the consequences of the continual promotion of climate change through anthropological actions, such as the burning of coal, have a detrimental impact on the future of human society. Another phenomenon that can be attributed to the iPod is that it promotes a static human behavior, or to be more specific, promotes what Tom de Castella refers to as “headphone culture”. “Headphone culture” is best described as the generational movement of isolating oneself by listening to digital music via headphones linked to an mp3 player, in this case the iPod. The statements of psychologist Oliver James best sum up the psychological, antisocial impact the iPod causes. James argues that the iPod puts people in a “self-absorbed and atomized” state of mind, which causes people to prefer being alone in their own bubble (Castella, “Has the iPod made us Anti-Social”). I find this assessment of where the collective mental state that society is moving towards by Oliver James as being very similar to that of the future collective mental state of society E.M. Forster suggests in his book The Machine Stops. Forster describes in his book the future of human society’s preference of technological isolation in what Forster describes as “a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee”(1). Although the iPod doesn’t create an actual physical cell that blocks people from their human counterparts, the iPod does create an intangible social barrier that removes people from their human surroundings. Both the collective psychological and environmental impact the iPod has on society is overtly detrimental. It is hard to believe that this is also only the tip of this big, bad iceberg.

The ugly. What most music fans, and people in general, will point at, as the largest negative impact attributed to the progression of the mp3 player in the form of the iPod is its role in the rapid decline of the sale of physical records by music stores. NBC News author Rosa Golijan elaborates on the iPod’s role by stating, “Once you had an iPod, the iTunes Store had you. Who wanted to purchase an overpriced CD, go home, pop it into a computer, rip the tunes and then sync them to a gadget? The iPod allowed Apple to make its mobile computing revolution, with a little help from its red-hot media store.”(Golijan, “iTunes turns 10: How Apple Music Store Killed Old Music Industry”). The answer to Golijan’s rhetoric question is not many people as illustrated by the pie chart below.

As the data of the pie chart above suggests, the revenue stream of the U.S. music industry has experienced a gigantic shift in its landscape in just the last eight years. With this information in mind, it’s not hard to understand why “Tower Records, a hallowed music store chain with a 46-year history, shuttered its doors at the end of 2006”(Golijan, “iTunes turns 10: How Apple Music Store Killed Old Music Industry”). Some editorials such as The Nation went as far as to say that the day Tower Records “shuttered its doors” was “The Day the Music Died,” because all of the events that transpired that caused this collapse of a record giant can be traced back to Apple’s initial introduction of the iPod. If the mp3 player had never progressed into what is the iPod, record stores such as Tower Records may still be bustling with business today. I personally hold this to be true seeing as I would have never discarded my first CD player if the iPod had not captivated me with its dazzling and versatile features, and I think a lot of people would agree with me. Once the iPod had entered my life paired with iTunes, I lost the desire to purchase entire albums and ultimately saw buying albums as economically impractical because most of the time I didn’t enjoy every track on an album and thus moved in favor of just purchasing one or a couple of my favorite cuts off of an album. Thus, the iPod effectively conditioned my generation as a whole into purchasing music in a much different format than that of past generations, which were conditioned in the way to buy music by the record labels. Apple had flipped the music industry’s record selling model on its head, and not surprisingly, the industry declined because of the rapid increase of volatility in the market.

Now that I have touched on the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of the iPod in my analysis, I think it is hard for one to disagree with my argument that the Apple iPod’s negative impacts outweigh its positive ones because of its adverse environmental, social, and worse yet, industry-killing effects. The continued distress of the music industry and the increasing anti-social behavior of society to this day make me wonder if society would have been better off without the iPod. It’s a steep claim, but at the same time, taking in all the evidence I have presented, it is an understandable one. Maybe in the case of the progress of technology the positive-negative balance nature of it comes out to a slightly more positive impact on human society, but in the case of the iPod, I would argue that this is not the case. The progress of technological devices and instruments is a tricky thing, which we as humans have yet to perfect; we still make mistakes that set us back. Ultimately, we can learn from the progression of the iPod to weigh the impacts of certain creations more carefully in the future. If we don’t, we might witness the disillusionment of an industry like that of the record industry once again.

Works Cited:

Forster, E. M. The Machine Stops. London: Penguin, 2011. Print.

“Full Access to IPods Enhances Quality of Life at Good Samaritan Society-Millard.” Music and Memory. Web. 25 Oct. 2014. <http://musicandmemory.org/2013/04/23/full-access-to-ipods-enhances-quality-of-life-at-good-samaritan-society-millard/>.

“Has the IPod Made Us Anti-social?” BBC News. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15066957>.

“How Toxic Is Your IPod?” Scientific American Global RSS. Web. 23 Oct. 2014. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-toxic-is-your-ipod-08-10-15/>.

Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Print.

Miller, Jared T. “The IPod Turns 10: How It Shaped Music History | TIME.com.” Time. Time. Web. 24 Oct. 2014. <http://techland.time.com/2011/10/21/the-ipod-turns-10-how-it-shaped-music-history/>.

“ITunes Turns 10: How Apple Music Store Killed Old Music Industry – NBC News.” NBC News. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/itunes-turns-10-how-apple-music-store-killed-old-music-f6C9633923>.

In our current era of ubiquitous social media use, there is much debate about the potential uses of new media for purposeful information distribution and social justice rather than solely economic purposes. The boom of smartphones in the last 8 years or so has catalyzed the app industry with the Apple App Store boasting over a million apps and 60 billion downloads to date. Due to the potential for mass exposure, developers race to come up with the next successful mobile application and make it big. According to a study by 148Apps, games make up a bit over 20% of all mobile apps, clearly showing where the profit lies. It is difficult to combine activism with revenue yet more and more apps dedicated to making the world a better place continue to pop up.

The use of mobile apps began long ago in the prehistoric era of the 1990’s. Back then, apps were mostly used for simple tasks and were pre-programmed into the handsets. Tools like calculators, calendars and basic games, such as Snake, were labeled as mobile applications. In time, users began to demand more functionality, but mobile phone companies weren’t willing to open up the handsets’ code to outside developers. Up to this point, all app builds had been done in-house, with company coders, to minimize security risks. Lacking the financial motivation to fund these applications themselves, the companies sought a safe way to allow outside developers to build them. Their solution for these early phones was a dumbed down version of a web browser, since data rates were exorbitant and the hardware couldn’t handle regular HTTP pages. However, WML, as it was called, did not work for long. While the mobile phone companies raked in large profits from the data charges (less than what it would’ve been if they tried to run HTTP, but still very high), developers and consumers, on the other hand, got the short end of the stick. The primitive and simplified language limited the complexity of the online applications, rendered it impossible to adjust the viewing experience for different models of phones and made billing a struggle for the user, hence limiting developer revenue. Everything changed, though, around 2008 when mobile phone companies like Apple and Android (Google-owned) began releasing Software Development Kits (SDKs) to the public so that anyone could develop an application. These SDKs had the API frameworks that allowed developers to test their products and assure that they worked on different handsets. This jump-started the app industry because the range of options available with native apps, as opposed to web and in-browser apps, was humongous. The mobile phone companies reviewed the apps before releasing them and took a 30% or more commission from all revenue, so unregulated marketplaces sprung up in “jailbroken”, or unlocked, phones. The companies, however, mitigated this loss of clientele by voiding the warranties for any device which had been jailbroken, and the number of unlocked devices subsequently decreased substantially. 

Mobile applications provide a plethora of educational, informational and productivity tools, yet the majority are inaccessible without an Internet connection. A large part of media justice is ensuring Internet access to as many people in the world as possible. One app developer working to solve this problem is Open Garden, based in San Francisco. They offer a free platform for “mesh networking,” where users share their Internet connection with others nearby. This isn’t much different than the concept of mobile hotspots, but it circumvents the hefty fees that mobile carriers tend to charge for users to share their connection. Additionally, Open Garden users can activate Fire Chat, which allows them to connect with nearby users without the need for a connectivity infrastructure. Fire Chat also allows for the creation of a network between devices, a “free, secret web” of sorts that is very conducive to activism. In Taiwan, for example, protesters organizing about a trade agreement with China feared that the government would shut down the Internet and decided to set up a humongous (and hidden) Fire Chat. (cite) This tool is especially useful in countries where free speech is limited and consequences for speaking out can be lethal. To those under the radar of ‘big brother’, this is a blessing. A decentralization of Internet access is beneficial to many more than if the power distribution remains at status quo.

Boycotts are often ineffective; not enough people join the cause and after a while the fervor fades and many forget. Marketing and branding influence many of our spending habits and decisions, but they never tell the whole story. An app founded in Berkeley, California by UCB students and faculty is seeking to change the way consumers make their spending decisions on a day-to-day basis. GoodGuide is a website, and mobile app, that rates and scores consumer products from cars to shampoos. One can even scan the bar code of an item while grocery shopping to see more information about it. This intensifies corporate responsibility because the average, uninformed consumer can choose to support a company that aligns more closely with their desires about social and environmental impact. In fact, GoodGuide offers a system where one can select which corporate responsibilities they feel are most important, after which it provides suggestions as well as alternatives to less responsible products. Their 0 to 10 rating scale is intuitive, their platform sleek, simple and attractive and their research well founded. Another example of this sort of crowdsourcing social activism is the Human Rights Center app with a workplace equality guide. This guide, with a focus on LGBTQ rights, allows users to select products and view their producers’ standing on workplace equality, with detailed breakdowns on which policies are affecting the score.

The Internet has brought massive amounts of information to the individuals’ fingertips, but with this comes responsibility. The primary focus should be to guarantee Internet access to anyone who desires it across the globe; financial constraints should not be an issue. With this in hand, the dated establishment of technology as a social construct will fall, making way for a truly global community. With many free online resources to learn coding, individuals across the world will continue to express themselves through the creation of mobile applications that find innovative methods to tackle social issues.

Tumblr is a social network that is apart from other networks because it is driven by content and not by the social graph, harboring different communities of shared interests (Cheshire). Sufferers and victims of depression, eating disorders, anxiety and so forth can especially find blogs that expound and understand their problems helpful and supportive. It can have a therapeutic effect as such individuals can gain acceptance and avoid the alienation that they usually experience in the outside world.

Tumblr has played an incredibly positive role in my life. It’s posts of inspiration and self-acceptance really helped me during my battle with depression. They encouraged me to believe in the optimism of life and to see myself in a positively different way. However, lately I have been observing that there has been an increase in the number of depression-related posts that express tragic and suicidal messages that frankly serve to worsen depression if not actually causing it. There are also ‘pro-ana’ blogs that promote the eating disorder anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice, which I found truly horrifying, as I have suffered from anorexia nervosa because of my depression. Such blogs also help in causing depression and inculcate the belief that starving yourself is a beneficial choice. Hence girls who are not able to adopt these ideas can have low self-esteem, which may progress into depression. I chose the topic of depression because not only do I have personal experience dealing with it, but also because I am curious to know whether Tumblr that helped me in my recovery is actually at the root of the problem. It is my opinion that Tumblr actually creates a paradox – it certainly helps people gain acceptance and achieve freedom of self-expression, but it can also inflict and exacerbate psychological and emotional damage and cultivate a community of victims.

There has been a growing online cultivation of beautiful sadness related to depression on Tumblr: users can take a photo, manipulate it into black and white, pair it with a quote about misconstrued grief, and instantly be consoled with compassion and sympathy by other bloggers (Figure 1) (Bine). However, this has serious psychological ramifications. According to Dr. Mark Reinecke, a chief psychologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, it is tempting for adolescents during their vulnerable years to seek out self-affirmation and recognition from others, this hope of being recognized as strong, beautiful and mysterious by Tumblr followers. But more often than not, it results in more teenagers believing they are depressed, self-pitying, and self-harming. It is very easy for such glorification of self-pity to occur on Tumblr (Bine). The aforementioned ‘reblogging’ mechanism makes it very easy to proliferate pictures and graphic gifs. The exhibition of suicide, depression, self-harm or self-loathing under the assumption that it is beautiful, romantic and deep has resulted in a flourishing community of people feeding off each other’s emotions (Bine).

FIGURE 1. EXAMPLES OF ‘BEAUTIFUL SADNESS’ POSTS ON TUMBLR

Therefore, searching the “depression” tag on Tumblr produces a disclaimer at the top of the page: “If you or someone you know is dealing with an eating disorder, self harm issues, or suicidal thoughts, please visit our Counseling & Prevention Resources page for a list of services that may be able to help” (Bine).

However, the word depression is slowly losing its meaning on Tumblr and in people’s minds. There is a critical lack of understanding as adolescents confuse normal, everyday challenges with clinical disorders such as depression. This over-diagnosis has become a social trend on Tumblr (Bine). This phenomena can acutely observed in teenage girls: between 2008 and 2010, 12 percent of teenage girls aged between 12 and 17 suffered from a major depressive episode, which is three times higher than the rate of teenage boys (4 percent), according to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in 2012 (Bine).

In my opinion, the increase in depressive episodes can be a direct cause of social media like Tumblr because of the content that tends to circulate. Certainly teenagers might delve into self-pitying and glorification of depression on Tumblr, but they are also subjected to images and posts that continually reiterate the same message that are not necessarily positive and uplifting. Examples of messages include “I want to be skinny”, “I want to die” and one pretty abysmal one: “Happiness is for beautiful people. Not me.” Such messages show that Tumblr does not always inspire or help others. It might just worsen the very problem it tries to solve through self-expression. Moreover, I disagree to some extent with Bine’s view that there has been an over-diagnosis of depression as teenagers have a misguided notion of what entails depression. These tragic and desolate messages are a strong indication that depression is a serious problem. I think classifying it as some misunderstood idea conceived by teenagers severely undermines the grave need to address the root cause of depression. Unfortunately, popular social media such as Tumblr might just be one of the plenitude of reasons that trigger depression in these adolescents.

Furthermore, emotional and psychological harm in the form of depression is also perpetuated by another overt mechanism of Tumblr: the “trigger warning.” These are tags attached to posts that may contain content that might be viscerally disturbing to some users (Bell). For example, if a post mentions depression, the writer will add a tag saying “trigger warning: depression.” Issues such as rape and self-harming also carry trigger warnings (Figure 2). Such warnings are justified, as survivors would not want reminders of their experiences. However, it is possible that such trigger warnings are possibly contributing to the creation of a community of victims (Bell). The existence of these warnings heightens the reader’s sense of danger and also pre-empts psychic pain and behave in a similar way as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder briefings. Studies have shown that debriefing people during disasters and terrorist attack on PTSD resulted in more people qualifying for the disorder and feel depressed and anxious (Bell). In other words, early interventions were actually hindering the brain’s natural recovery process. The trigger warnings in their attempt to protect the users are more likely to increase feelings of fear and victimization. Warning people of potential trauma is a self-fulfilling promise of trauma (Bell). Therefore, Tumblr’s attempt to create a utopian safe community is actually creating one of entitled victims.

Overall, Tumblr can be a platform where different kinds of people find their community and avoid the humiliation and alienation they may experience in the external world. It can psychologically and emotionally support them. But one must also be wary of Tumblr. The microblogging website might actually cause emotional harm as posts relating to depression keep circulating and trigger warnings inflict more pain on emotionally vulnerable people.

WORKS CITED

Bell, Lenor. “Trigger Warnings: Sex, Lies and Social Justice Utopia on Tumblr.” 6.1 (2013): n. pag. Print. (Im)Personal Desires: Pornography, Sexuality And Social Networks Of Desire.

Bine, Anne-Sophie. “Social Media Is Redefining ‘Depression.’” The Atlantic. N.p., 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Cheshire, Tom. “Tumbling on Success: How Tumblr’s David Karp Built a £500 Million Empire (Wired UK).” Wired UK. N.p., 2 Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.

Everything is so lovely. So why do I feel so sad? Digital image. Blogger, 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://huishan0420.blogspot.com/2013/04/im-lucky-because-im-surrounded-by.html>.

Stedeford, Sarah Louise. Amelia Zadro Smoke Break Outtake. Digital image. Sarah Louise Stedeford. Tumblr, 30 Sept. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://sarahstedeford.tumblr.com/post/62718243127/amelia-zadro-smoke-break-outtake-by-sarah-louise>.

Trigger warning of alcohol. Digital image. AMERICAblog. AMERICAblog News, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://americablog.com/2014/04/trigger-warning-article-critical-trigger-warnings.html>.

Trigger warnings of homophobic slurs. Digital image. AMERICAblog. AMERICAblog News, 3 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://americablog.com/2014/04/trigger-warning-article-critical-trigger-warnings.html>.

Privacy and Gender within Tumblr and Modern Blogging

In the 7 years that Tumblr has existed, it has evolved into quite the site for social activism and recording; it was a location for people to feel comfortable and secure partly due to the originally ad free environment.  Although I’ve come across a variety of discussions of social issues during my Tumblr usage, I’d like to focus on the rise of the LGBTQ community within and throughout the Tumblr-verse, specifically those who are collectively comfortable with admitting openly that they are gender queer, transsexual, or any other disposition that defies the binary gender domain of popular media. It was created for many reasons, but has become a place for interest driven groups of people to coalesce and throw together their vastly different individual backgrounds in one spot. As people find and view things they like (this may range from animated gifs of cats to news articles to transsexual porn and back to cute gifs), they either ‘like’ or ‘reblog’ a post with the click of a button, moving it to display on their dashboards (the homepage) along with the dashboards of any blog that follows them. Though this is the central form of communication, which functions in a fashion similar to a stream of consciousness, there are other ways to privately message blogs or people. The people that make it up have come a long way and the dynamic between them and the new media site becomes even more peculiar when one considers the fact that Tumblr was sold to Yahoo! in 2013, a corporation known for its policies of data collection (a method of advertisement that completely goes against the Tumblr first established in 2007).

Figure 1 – A comedic introduction to the website.

Throughout my high school life, Tumblr very quickly became popular among females around 2011 (my sophomore year), or at least this was when I first noticed its ubiquity. I myself had already created one because of my sister’s influence the year prior, but rarely used it until this time. As the feminist movement and LGBTQ life spread to the site, I started hearing the circulation of terms such as ‘Tumblr feminism(ist)’ and ‘SJW(Social Justice Warrior)’ being used in ways to deride the overt beliefs of avid Tumblr users. I’ve realized that these groups have retreated to this social media website in particular because of the safety and security it harbors from the prevailing society around them, which many of this type deem to be a ‘patriarchy’.  I don’t necessarily think this is true (though I do think males have clearly had the upper hand in society for far too long), and it seems more likely that many Tumblr users resort to generalizing men in society as being misogynistic and patriarchal because these incredibly broad terms provide a simple way to paint a group as the enemy. I think there is clearly truth in the assertion, but it’s much easier to point at the world around you and claim it to be the source of your problems and insecurities than it is to take responsibility for those issues yourself.

In the Tumblr domain, “queer trans tumblrs have facilitated collective departures from cis and trans norms in ways that illuminate the range of possibilities online” (Fink and Miller 621). What these authors meant was that Tumblr provided a place for people to incorporate sexuality, and very individual interpretations of gender, into normal daily life and interests and simultaneously “in the intertextual spaces carved out by the links between tumblrs, genderqueer and queer trans self-representations integrate seamlessly with lesbian, gay, bi, pan, poly, and asexual culture” (Fink and Miller 621). This goes hand in hand with the concept of ‘NSFW’ or ‘Not Safe For Work’, which categorizes mostly sexually explicit content that could be littered within other random images and content. Considering the lack of corporate intrusion upon Tumblr users and the design aesthetic of the site, which promotes intimate yet momentary posting of ones thoughts, ideas, or interests, it only makes sense that this specific community has been built in this specific habitat. They now have a home for content that outsiders (who would otherwise outcast them as sexual miscreants) can no longer find unless they truly want to understand the LGBTQ community and become a helpful part in it.

Another important factor in the construction of a home for trans and gender queers within Tumblr had to do specifically with how the website itself was built and the way people view other people and make a name for themselves. I know from experience with the site that it’s difficult to make an impression unless you really devote time to getting involved in your interest areas (or what you make them seem to be). You cannot become an essential cog in the machine of a Tumblr community by simply reblogging and liking random posts. To delve into gender related groups, or anything for that matter, you must normally post authentic content, which can range from picture sets to videos to (often) short text posts. Depending on who likes or reblogs your post, and what they like and post, and what their followers like and post, it’s a long and intricate map of tangential connections based solely on interest and paying attention to who’s who. As said by Fink and Miller, “these elements make tumblr’s taste-based subcultures different from the profiles on a site like Facebook in that, to thrive within Tumblr’s format, you need to labor and gain credibility according to particularly intense systems of distinction” (615). I believe the secret to Tumblr’s intimacy lies in this delicate mapping of individuals who are hopefully accepting and in similar situations to you. By looking through another blog, you’ll sometimes find deep, insightful knowledge, heartbreaking tales of struggle, or perhaps hilarious internet memes. Whatever it is, there’s often a close bond that forms just by looking through someone’s posts, which happens to be something that’s much harder to find on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The next step comes with the Ask function, which works on the surface as a private messaging system, yet can be sent anonymously and in order to respond, the blog owner must either choose to ignore it or post a response publicly, and with that the deep web of connections is fertilized even further.

As an essential aspect of the information era, social media and social networking have been labeled by some as “the most revolutionary technological [developments] since the invention of the printing press” (Blakely 343).  As of right now, Tumblr is at the forefront of the social networking scene, along with Facebook and Twitter, being one of the most popular blogging platforms. Robert Scheer states it quite clearly and concisely when he says that the appeal of Tumblr comes from the fact that it is “a six year-old social blogging service that has yet to earn much money because it has shunned advertising, thereby gaining the trust of its users, who willingly share massive amounts of private data”. Although it’s hard to believe that Tumblr strayed away from all forms of advertising, this was true in reference to the design and aesthetics of the actual site. It’s almost never cluttered on the sides except for the main dashboard, which constantly refreshes with posts from blogs that you follow. In my usage of the site, I rarely discovered any ad material except from commercial blogs, but sometimes I will also find content which I doubt is real. “This sneaky fake user-generated content proliferates on other corporate owned sites like Facebook, and issues of where content comes from and in whose interests content grows now comes further to the fore” (Fink and Miller 613). Even so, my generation has been bred to look past this and look past the entirety of demographical data collection as we are so intimately comfortable with the internet and general sharing of what was once private information. We have grown idle and instead of making something like encryption required learning for all, we “readily allow others to trace [our] movements, purchases, reading and viewing practices, as well as contacts with friends and associates” (Scheer). Corporations and web companies like Yahoo! will easily take advantage of this, and as it’s been shown before, “data is at the heart of Yahoo!’s ability to sell online advertising across its sites, based on what it knows about its people’s interests,” (Scheer). Though this sense of false security is the catalyst for Tumblr’s success with groups of individuals who have never had the notion of a collective before they created their tumblr blog, it could also be frighteningly detrimental when keeping in mind what Yahoo!’s been known to do in order for commercial success.

Tumblr as a social media and blogging device provides the perfect combination of privacy for intimate thought and information with interpersonal connection and it is this dynamic duo that so healthily fostered the growth of not only an LGBTQ community in recent years, but specifically the growth of a trans and gender queer population that is no longer afraid to be open about their unique sexualities. Throughout my research, I have discovered the key to this as being the development of the site with the lack of corporate ads, but unfortunately that may not be the case anymore as Yahoo! has taken over in the past year. It was apparent to me the last time I logged on to my Tumblr that not too much had changed, but of course there was no way for me to tell for sure if data harvesting and collection had become more prominent there (as there has been no significant evidence released to point to this fact). No matter what the case, I’ve decided the only information I want to leak about myself will be from messages, and now I rarely post openly on social media sites. I appreciate Tumblr for what it is, but it’s no longer for me and I think it’s time more people stop asking “well why is it a problem if corporations know everything about me as long as I’ve done nothing wrong?” and begin to be more vigilant about protecting their personal freedoms, because there’s no telling what a business or government agency will do with your information.

Sources

Blakley, Johanna. “Media In Our Image.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 40.1/2, VIRAL (2012): 341-50. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/23333465?ref=no-x-route:9c371754d96262a78a61ef52c61c56fe>.

Fink, Marty, and Quinn Miller. “Trans Media Moments: Tumblr, 2011–2013.” Sage Journals. SAGE, 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/15/7/611.full.pdf+html>.

Matteson, Adrienne. “Do You Tumble? Tumblr could Change the Way You Blog.” School Library Monthly 27.5 (2011): 54-6. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.

“Reddit and Tumblr among Websites Protesting NSA Surveillance.” Telegraph.co.ukFeb 11 2014. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014 .

Scheer, Robert. “Tumblr’s Exploitative Potential Sells.” Columbia Daily TribuneMay 23 2013. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014 .

Figure 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-e4PgiVfM

Figure 2 – http://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2013/05/30/b4a33040-f07b-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/5694d30097531c5efe85acc68d117933/tumblr_2.png

In this day and age it is unfortunate that the idea of new media, specifically the internet, and sexual assault is not uncommon. This happens far more often than one would think, especially with websites like Chatroulette, YouTube, and Reddit. These websites usually come with screen names, which leads to the idea of anonymity. Anonymous Reddit users are exploiting women without their consent while anonymous girls come out to say they have been raped by popular internet personalities. These sorts of things are happening on a daily basis, and no matter how people try to justify these actions as “okay”, they definitely are not. Sexual harassment has been occurring for hundreds of years and social media has only made it easier for the culprit to attain the means for harassment and assault.

Because of people posting rude and crude things online anonymously, there has been major controversy over the question of people being able to keep their online identity a secret. In 2013 Google decided to link Youtube accounts to Google Plus. This means that instead of a username showing up, whatever name you have linked to your Google Plus or Gmail account will show up on YouTube. This ended in Google getting a ton of backlash and making it so that you can still have a username as opposed to your real name (Humphrey). Why were people so upset at the loss of their anonymity? Anonymity online is used for a plethora of things, some good and some bad. Some people use screen names to make uncomfortable topics more comfortable, like abuse, medical conditions, etc. However some people use screen names to make other people uncomfortable. Bullying, hurtful comments, and other forms of online abuse have become a part of everyday life. It is impossible to click on a YouTube video without seeing multiple negative comments below it. Although they do exist, the positive factors outweigh the negative factors. Anonymity enables basic freedom of speech. When people are behind a screen name, they are more likely to say how they are truly feeling. This is proven beneficial through organizations like Emotional Health Anonymous and many anonymous suicide hotlines. Anonymity allows people to feel more comfortable while expressing their views, whereas if they were not anonymous they might be more hesitant. Many people would refute this argument claiming that online anonymity has led to cyber bullying. However, anonymity is actually not too common in cyber bullying.  A study done by Harvard’s Berkman Center shows that 73% of the participants who were victims of cyber bullying knew the real identity of the person/people bullying them (Collier).

September 22, 2014 was the day Sam Pepper, a popular YouTuber with nearly 2.5 million subscribers, uploaded a video entitled “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank” in which he walked around pinching female’s bottoms without their consent.

This so-called “prank” video left not only the Youtube community in horror and outrage, but became a viral topic. Pepper took the video down, claiming it was a “social experiment”, but it was too late to save his nice-guy facade (McCamley).Though this event was not the first case of popular YouTube personalities committing sexual assault crimes, this particular case began to bring attention to all of the other YouTubers who have been using their status to take advantage of young girls.

After Pepper’s video went viral, many girls came forward to say that his actions did not surprise them. Upwards of ten girls came out to admit that Pepper had either asked them for nude photos, inappropriately touched them, and even raped them. The majority of these girls came out anonymously. One girl, who was raped by Pepper, filmed a video of herself telling her story. She does not give out her name, and does not show her full face. Her Google Plus account is under “I’m Anonymous”. She states that “she is still scared to say her name and show her face, but she is not afraid to tell her story.” If this girl was not able to tell her story, she would be doing the world a disservice. Because the internet is allowing her to be anonymous, she has the courage to share her story with the world. In the video, she claims that she never told anyone about what he did to her because she was scared. She never filed a police report because she was “too scared to file a police report against a celebrity…Scared of backlash, scared of people not believing [her], people telling [her] she was seeking attention, being told [she] was a liar. Scared of never having a career in this industry. Scared that [she] would lose [her] job, scared that [her] friends would take his side because they were all his fans” (I’m Anonymous).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vIh2-q0NTs

This statement clearly demonstrates how people put famous YouTubers on a pedestal and make it seem like they can do no wrong. However in this case, we can see the obvious damage that has been done.

After these girls admitted what Pepper did to them, other girls came out to accuse over 15 other YouTubers of sexual assault. When all of these cases came into the public eye, many people were left with the same question: how have these people gotten away with such disgusting acts and for such a long time? YouTube is no longer just a place for viral videos, but functions very similarly to television. Structured programming has become the force of the website (Smith). Because the site has taken a turn from cat videos to mini-series’, many people look at these people with millions of subscribers as a different kind of celebrity. They aren’t big-screen celebrities, they are self-made from filming videos of themselves doing skits in their bedrooms. They are celebrities on a more relatable level.

Sam Pepper at a fan meet-and-greet in LA.

When watching their videos, they make it seem as if you are actually friends with them. People don’t like to see their friends in bad positions or doing poorly. This is no different with YouTubers. Subscribers put their favorite YouTubers on a pedestal and think that they can do no wrong, so these subscribers just shake off any rumors they have heard. Even though they know the rumors might be true, they don’t want to believe their “friends” could do such horrible things. This is why no one came forward about being abused and assaulted by popular YouTubers until Pepper uploaded a video clearly demonstrating that he was assaulting girls without their consent.

Similarly to Youtube, Reddit has also recently been a part of a cause of assault. The website, another social networking site primarily used for entertainment, has had multiple assault scandals under the anonymous user Violentacrez. Violentacrez created and moderated numerous sub-Reddit sections violating women.“Jailbait” was a sub-Reddit in which people posted pictures of minors in very little clothing. This sub-Reddit became increasingly popular until it ended up on the news and was eventually banned. Another sub-Reddit entitled “Creepshots” was not created by Violentacrez, but once it started gaining attention the user was brought on as a moderator. Creepshots was a section in which users posted secret photos they had taken of women’s private parts. The question here is very similar to the question about the YouTubers: how was he getting away with this? Reddit allows for free speech, and Violentacrez took the idea of free speech to another level. However what was unknown by most is that he had connections to many administrators. He was almost an unpaid employee, helping them work out the early kinks of the website (“Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web”). Although he did not specifically go against anything in Reddit’s official policy, these connections allowed him to seriously push the boundaries of what is actually allowed.

In 2012, Adrian Chen outed Violentacrez as Michael Brutsch. As a consequence of his disgusting actions, Brutsch lost his job at the programming company he had worked for for almost 10 years (“Reddit’s Biggest Troll Fired From His Real-World Job; Reddit Continues to Censor Gawker Articles”).

Sexual assault through media has become all too common. YouTube and Reddit are just a few of the websites this has been occurring on. Women are exploited on a daily basis and social media has only made it easier for the culprit to obtain the materials used for harassment.

Works Cited

Chen, Adrian. “Reddit’s Biggest Troll Fired From His Real-World Job; Reddit Continues to Censor Gawker Articles.” Gawker. N.p., 15 Oct. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Chen, Adrian. “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web.” Gawker. N.p., 12 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Collier, Anne. ”The Pros and Cons of Online Anonymity.” The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 21 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Humphrey, Michael. “You Can Still Be Anonymous on YouTube, But When You Comment…” Forbes. Forbes, 14 Nov. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Jaworski, Michael. “More Women Are Coming Forward to Accuse Sam Pepper of Rape.” The Daily Dot. N.p., 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

McCamley, Frankie. “YouTube Star Sam Pepper Faces Sexual Harassment Claims.” BBC News. BBC, 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

“Sam Pepper – The Real “Reveal”” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

Smith, Grady. “How YouTube Is Boldly Becoming More like TV.” EW.com. Entertainment Weekly, 30 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2014.