For my tweaking project, I decided to mainly tweak text, and see what all I could change. I went for a bit humor but also sarcasm and fear of what each website brings to it’s users.

Turns out you can directly edit the text of tweets, so that was something I immediately tried to do. This was originally about the Super Bowl, but Kylie dropped her baby info (finally I guess) and the internet exploded. Interesting that she did that on the day of the Super Bowl? This is about what a lot of tweets looked like, only everyone knew she was pregnant.

This was more about what I feel Facebook really wants you to do when it asks you for your status. What information will it collect from each status you input? What can it figure out about each user? Does each status let it become closer to cloning us?

This one is slightly more about humor but also how we could be watched by NSA agents, more likely if we are persons of interest. There have been jokes about how they are there to take care of us, in a way, and I chose this email request to show how they might try and push you to be more careful with your information.

Ahh Ebay. This one is pretty self explanatory, but I wanted to show that sometimes buying from random people like it’s a regular shop isn’t the greatest idea. It’s way more of a gamble than normal online shopping. If you buy something off Amazon, it may not be what you wanted, but at least you can really hold them accountable and possibly return it for a new item whereas with Ebay, probably not. Ebay doesn’t really care, in my opinion.

Wikipedia probably should have over 1,000+ different degrees in high school and college. It has saved many of our lives and I just wanted to reflect it’s gold status in our lives. “Don’t use Wikipedia as a source” they said. “I’m not going to” I say, as I source all the references at the bottom of the Wiki page. I changed the background on this one for fun, mainly thinking of Jeopardy and how we use it to solve the little trivia in our lives. I’ll take, “Baseball history” for 500 Alex.

I just wanted to show what we really wanted to see this Super Bowl; the winner of the Puppy Bowl.

My project 0 this time is more based on something that happens behind the scenes that we don’t see but can encounter without realizing it. Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, and mining cryptocurrency has become widely popular. I know of it but not too much about it. A basic run down is that it is currency that doesn’t exist, or isn’t at all physical, and isn’t regulated by any government. Computers can “mine” for it by solving equations (or something similar) and using it’s own power to find the currency. Now, when you go to websites, the owners of that website can use your processing power to mine for cryptocurrency. Amazingly smart, I must say, but that sucks as a user. Your computer slows trying to do too many things at once, which may be the first indication that someone is using your computer to mine. The only way I knew this was happening was because I use an chrome extension called Ghostery. Ghostery is really nice (this isn’t sponsored, I promise) and had an article on their website saying their the extension stops websites from using your computer to mine. The Pirate Bay is one of these websites that stated using such techniques to mine. Coinhive is one service that will mine for you on your website.

This software isn’t one that constructs a user to be a certain way, but I think that with it’s stealthy ways, innocent users will blame their own software or hardware on their slow speeds. Users would consider checking everything on their side as wrong, rather than assuming the website is abusing its power. If you think about it, Cryptocurrency is really the thing controlling people, going so far as to steal website users processing power. People are obsessing over something that is so volatile, it could crash at any minute, yet people are willing to spend so much money on equipment for it.

I tried to implement my project in a few different ways. My idea was to show the picture of a picture, what was behind the camera. I posted mainly to Instagram, a photo platform where it would be a bit weird to show what goes on behind the scenes when what is usually shown is the final product. I commented on the posts like normal. I posted my first one also to Facebook to see if I could get any reactions from people not following me on Instagram. Since I hadn’t posted to Instagram in a while, I hoped the algorithm would be on my side and post closer to the top of people’s threads than if I had just constantly posting but I don’t really have that much control over it.

Over all, I didn’t get any responses questioning anything or even commenting on them. Most of my friends just liked it and maybe thought I was just being me. Since I noticed this, on the third and final day, I used a different phone in the final one to hopefully get a different response but now I realize I was probably fighting the algorithm and it might now have even shown up in order on people’s timelines. I think Instagram was the right platform but not this Instagram, maybe a past version without the algorithm. Maybe Snapchat would have been the better option for this. Since my account is public, random people can find me and random people that don’t follow me liked some of the photos.

Although this wasn’t as “successful” as I hoped it would be, it has given me ideas for future projects. How many steps back can I take this? How many phones can I get involved into this project? I think asking random people, whether I know them or not, to use their phone to take a picture of my phone or vice versa is a performance in itself. I tried not to explain what I was doing but they seemed interested in it once they saw me snap the picture. I think I would like to continue this series and try different ways of showing the weird perspective of taking pictures for social media.

We have talked about the “…” when texting or messaging, but this one is specific to commenting. I’m in a lot of Facebook groups and tend to post a lot of funny comments (that may be subjective but I digress). When I post something funny, or a question, or even something that may get people mad, this “…” really makes me anxious. I want someone to respond to me and I don’t know who it is or what they are going to say at all. The dots jump and change from grey to black. The box itself just comes up when anyone is typing. It used to say “a friend is typing” or something similar to that but now these dots just seem to follow me everywhere in social media. The bouncing almost mimics typing in a way but still leaves me wonder who is typing and what they are typing and if they are even responding to me. It drives me nuts it’s almost as bad as checking from “likes” or “reactions” as they are called now. If they don’t respond and decide against commenting, I never get the closure I’m waiting for. I wonder how many times I’ve done that to someone else.

To me, these dots are different from the normal dots we see when messaging personally. These are open to anyone, more “anonymous”. I feel more like a stand up comedian who can’t see the audience and if anyone laughed at the joke I just said. It’s more of an open platform and just as nerve wracking as the personal message “…”.