1. How do you think you did on the assignment?
Overall, I think our group ended up with a final project that we really put a lot of effort into and that we were enthusiastic about creating. Each of us maintained a social media account for Mackenzie and were sure to keep her character traits consistent. I think that having an actual person to pose as our catfish also added an element of believability to Mackenzie, rather than just creating accounts and speaking as though we were another person but never showing any photos of this person. I think we could have worked on rounding out Mackenzie’s character and speaking more about her personal life and her emotions, but it was actually very interesting to create such a superficial persona.
2. What could you have done to improve the project?
I think that I got a little too enthusiastic about the chance to use Tumblr as a platform to be someone totally different from myself. Tumblr is something I’ve been using for years as a place to post about my life and my feelings, so I was very set on the idea of doing something the complete opposite of that. I wanted Mackenzie to be just the token obnoxious-rich-girl character and I didn’t think much about adding anymore personality to her. My aim was to make her seem as superficial as possible and see how many people I could irritate. On the one hand, this was an interesting way to find out just how easily you can trick people into: a) believing anything they see on the internet, and b) hating something with a passion. On the other hand, I think Mackenzie could have been rounded out more as a character if I had portrayed some deeper emotions in her journal entires and on her blog.
