For this project 0 it is of how Amazon phone app and how takes advantage of an upcoming holiday for them to advertise products that a user would maybe want. I think a key component in this is the word “deal” saying that they are better off purchasing from their site than any other location and they just kinda put it there at the top of your feed for you to see

Also, I find it no coincidence that all the top results and a lot of the ones that are under the ones that are in the screenshot are all amazon prime items. This is Amazon’s way of trying to put up how convenient Prime is right in the user’s face and probably take advantage of how some people might have forgotten to buy their SO something and need a way to get something delivered very quickly. Sneaky sneaky prime people.

When scrolling through instagram I noticed this “Popular Hashtags” post placed in between the posts of people that I actually follow. One thing that I think is interesting about this project is that I am paying more attention to everything that pops up on every piece of social media that I use, and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this popular hashtag post in my feed before. Next, the phrasing of it itself stands out to me because it says that these searches are popular, and although they might be popular for a very specific audience, it’s clearly just searches directed at me rather than what is actually popular. For example, #nofilter has 216,267,715 posts and what I am being shown (#igbulldogs) has 588,442 posts. If I was really being recommended hashtags that are popular I would be seeing completely different images. This shows how instagram is keeping track of who I follow and what I search, like other sites and advertisements. Finally the follow button catches my attention because I have never followed a hashtag before. Instagram has recommended users show up all the time that they want me to follow, but I’ve never seen recommended hashtags to follow. I don’t even know what this would do, would I just see every single post that shows up in the tag on my feed? Why would I want to do that?

As I mentioned previously in class, I stay logged out of Facebook on my phone whenever I’m not intentionally using the app. Whenever I decide to use the mobile app I have to manually enter my password (this is enough of a pain to do that it keeps me from mindlessly scrolling my Facebook feed – something I used to do regularly, but once I realized it made me feel pretty crappy I decided to cut it out as much as possible). I don’t think Facebook likes this very much. At least once a week, after logging into the app, Facebook will pull up the window on the right to “helpfully” provide me with faster ways to log into the app. This past week I tried to log into a separate app account with my Facebook account (and consequentially, the logged-out app), but since it failed I actually received an email from Facebook encouraging me to log in. Facebook wants me to have their app easily accessible so that I will use it more. Facebook needs users to produce and consume the content on their platform, but by leaving my account logged out I am actively avoiding both producing and consuming. Facebook then tries to pester me back into using their platform. This also reminds me of the phrase where “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” Facebook wants to reengage any users that aren’t as active on their platform because without those users they lose value in their company, and they choose to act friendly and helpful in order to appease their users.

i maybe obsess over my screen space? not sure how else to explain the quiet rage that i feel when i do this every day. i guess it’s more of an invasion and interruption of privacy, space, thought, etc, and that’s what really gets me. so a parallel between screen space and personal space.

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.

At least once a week, often times more, Facebook likes to notify me when it is someone’s birthday; about 85% of the time it is someone I have rarely or never talked to and know by association. I find it interesting, yet annoying that Facebook notifies me of birthdays that I do not care about. Facebook is trying to acknowledge a celebratory event for someone’s life, which is a good thing, but alerting people who have no connection to said person’s birthday just become irritated (me). I also find it interesting because this specific person is someone I went to high school with, never really interacted much with, and have not seen in almost 4 years. I feel like Facebook wants me to reminisce on the past, which I don’t particularly want to do.

For this week I wanted to call attention to the Facebook Notification menu. When you log into facebook you will almost always see a bright red number next to the icon of the earth to let you know that you have new notifications. Your eye is drawn to it and you click on it. Often it won’t even be things that pertain to you specifically, it will be things that your friends have posted or things that they are doing near you. It’s like facebook is so desperate to get you to pay attention to it that it will find the most ridiculous reasons to give you notifications.

This week I noticed how I was scrolling and scrolling (and scrolling) through Pinterest. More specifically, I was obsessed with seeing the entire picture of each pin. As you can see in my screenshot below, you can’t actually see the entire image for any of the pins. This caused me to scroll up and down the screen to view them. The scrolling caused more partial images to show. This then led me to begin the cycle again. I also noticed that a lot of the pins were the same pin, but that didn’t stop me from scrolling through to see if there were any different pins. After a while, and due to the repetitive nature of the pins, I was able to pull myself away from the screen.

The choice of layout for the pins definitely aids in my habitual scrolling, but the interesting part is that the pin sizes are largely determined by the people who upload the pins, not by Pinterest. There is a width limit of 238 px, which is determined by Pinterest, but the height is proportionally adjusted based on the image you upload.

I wasn’t really sure what to do as a performance nor was I confident on choosing any social media. So I decided to use the big four in the industry; Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. I posted really wack and boring pictures on each social media platform but also uploaded it to my Snap story. With over 500 friends on Facebook, 300+ followers on Instagram, 100+ friends on Snapchat, and 200 followers on Twitter, I wanted to see what response I would get, if any, to see which post gains most attention and if any can influence the other. Based of the total amounts of followers, I figured that if everyone viewed my story they would possibly view the post on instagram or facebook. I felt like using Snapchat as a spotlight for all these weird posts. With 70 views on my story, I got 1 like on instagram and one “what the fuck is this shit,” in response to my Snapchat story.

So it seems like no one really cared what they saw on my story and bothered checking it out on the social media platform. No one really went and gave it a like. No one questioned the weirdness or random posts, because I believe that I already have a long history or being random and posting literally dumb shit and hashtags everywhere. I thought it was interesting to see in total all these followers in social media and just not really interact or question what we do on social media.