Responding to the Text’s Argument

Initial Response:

I think that I mostly agree with this guy’s argument. “We live in a confessional society, promoting self exposure.” Even more now than in 2012 we are socially pressured to put our lives on instagram and other social networks. I think my generation especially understands this – for a long time when I was younger I felt a need to have this image of my whole life on facebook. That was a more specific aspect of the phenomenon that social media is. When he said, “One can use axes to hew wood or to cut heads” I think that it summed up what his argument was. I would say that by finishing his article this way it makes it seem like he believes that social media can be good or bad – it depends on how you use it. But this is countered by the fact that the article began with establishing the “official American establishment(‘s point of view)” that social media is liberating for oppressed people. I think that I agree with him… we should be countering this idea that social media is good for the people of an oppressed regime, and beyond that looking for alternatives systems that are not so easily surveilled and exploited by advertisers. I think that people generally understand this better in this day and age of social media as it is almost 2019.

 

Response, Revisited

“One can use axes to hew wood or to cut heads.” To me, this phrase summed up Bauman’s argument. By finishing his article with this quotation it seems like he believes social media can be equally good or bad – depending on how we use it. But neutrality is countered by the fact that the article begins by laying out the “official American establishment‘s” opinion that social media is liberating for people living under and oppressive regime.

“We live in a confessional society, promoting self exposure.” Even more now than in 2012 we are socially pressured to put our lives on instagram and other social networks. I think my generation especially understands this – when I was younger I felt a need to have an image of my whole life on Facebook.

We should be countering this idea that social media is necessarily good for the people of an oppressed regime. We should be challenging the social expectation to participate in twitter, etc., and looking for alternative systems that are not so easily surveilled and exploited by advertisers. For instance the crowdsourced, internet-free, peer to peer messaging application Firechat. Firechat probably isn’t perfect, but it’s a start. People are beginning to catch on to the darker aspects of social media. It’s definitely not 2012 anymore, but we still have aways to go.

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