Becoming Anonymous Online

(Image via Tom Salazar)

Sveiki!

This week we read an excerpt by Nakamura on identity tourism and we were divided up into groups to discuss different ideas from the text. In our group we discussed whether or not it even is a choice- choosing to leave race, gender, ethnicity out of your description online. The excerpt makes a good point by saying, that by omitting this information, people still automatically assume you’re part of the major public, so usually you’re assumed to be white, male, straight, etc.

Just like most people of my generation, I too, have many social media platforms. After reading this excerpt, I started thinking about how strangers who come across my profiles might perceive me. I don’t think there’s too much anonymity to my profiles, and I also don’t consider myself to overshare online, so I think I give a pretty clear image as to who I am and who they’re talking to. It’s hard to hide general information like race and gender on sites like Facebook and Instagram, especially if you’re using them to post updates on your life, since they are vital parts of what makes you who you are. But then where can we take away gender and race and even slightly hope to be perceived as raceless and genderless?

I think that the best chances of achieving this are not through social media, but through : video games, online anonymous chat rooms, forums, online games like “Clubpenguin” and virtual reality games. In all of these you have to choose a username, which you can use to display your real name, an alter ego name or something descriptive about who you are if you want to do so. Some of these also make you choose a character, but this also is an opportunity to lose the race and gender classifications and just become an alien or a pink penguin.

The online world does give you a chance to escape the everyday classifications, but it doesn’t really give you a chance to escape the general stereotypes and associations people may have. It’s disappointing that it is that way, but I don’t know what would have to happen to change that. I think it’s subjective to what surroundings each person is raised in, so in order to change our perceptions of people online we would have to change the surroundings each person is raised in.

The Sims Effect

Sveiki!

Having read Sherry Turkle’s essay “Who Am We?”, I came across this quote: “we are moving from “a modernist culture of calculation toward a postmodernist culture of simulation.” That life on the screen permits us to “project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star….””. While in the past we used to try to calculate and predict what was going to happen in the future, have we come to a place in time, where we don’t even have to do that anymore, we can just create our own simulation of what we want our world to be like?

Taking from the same quote the topic of dramas, this week has been very rough, so in order to escape reality, I attempted to play “The Sims” again. I hadn’t played it in like 7/8 years and I found it to be such a good escape and strangely addicting. I created a family, a crazy big family and got very invested in their lives, it became more important for me to attend to their needs rather than my own at times.

My main conclusion from this mini-experiment was not even the fact that virtual reality games are addicting, it was the fact that they can also be a very good source of therapy. Since I am not a person who likes to go look for help from people this was a way to just distract my brain from anything going on in the real world and focus just on these imagined characters. I could live vicariously through them, and I think it’s good sometimes to live in a different universe, to get your brain to just “turn-off” from all serious things in life and just think about how to name your imaginary Sims dog, what style bed will my Sims want and what are the cheat codes to get more fake money for my Sims?

This week’s post didn’t have much to do with my Latvian background, but I think it’s important for any general human to find a way to escape all of their identities and attachments for a bit. It makes you mentally healthier and happier, which is what anyone- Latvian/ American/ etc.- wants.

Body Language

Sveiki! Kā[â] tev iet? -The second phrase means “how are you”.

This week I decided to show you how to say “how are you” in Latvian, since the different possible responses to this question segue us into today’s topic about nonverbal cues and how they give away our true feelings and emotional state. Feelings and emotions are hard to hide in general, they make up our personality and help create our identity.

We recently learned about identity. Each of us have multiple identities, and we show each identity at different times. To help understand which identity we are at each moment we have identity cues, which enable us to signal who we are to potential interaction partners. These cues can be divided into “cues given” and “cues given off”. “Cues given” are the obvious ones, like what we say and what we do, “cues given off”, however are more discreet, they are nonverbal cues, that aren’t obvious such as body language, facial expressions, etc. I’ve always found it fascinating trying to read people’s body language, I thought of it as a sort of lie detector superpower, so, after learning about “cues given off” I remembered this article I read a while back, which discusses all of the things that body language can reveal.

It talks about “microexpressions”, which we unknowingly reveal through subconscious facial expressions, as well as all the other possible movements we make with our bodies, when feeling a certain way. This raised the question- how easy or hard is it to hide these subconscious acts with the help of social media?

Of course it depends on the media you use, if we use texting or a phone call, there is no way of telling if you are hiding something. However, many forms of social media such as- Snapchat, FaceTime, Skype, Instagram, even Facebook- can give us a chance to spot and interpret the “cues given off”, while not actually coming into contact with the person.

In order to keep in touch with my family back home I usually use Whatsapp, which can easily both hide these “cues” and help exhibit them. Because of the need to keep in touch, combined with the time difference, I’ve noticed how I am actually subconsciously aware of these “cues” and take them into account, when communicating with my family. Whenever I have little to no energy, I always resort to texting, because I don’t want them to see me in a bad mood or tired, because I know that even if I video-call them and try to smile, they’ll be able to still tell, based on my facial expression, that it’s fake. However, whenever I’m in a good mood, and the time difference works out, I always resort to calling them.

It’s interesting to think about how obvious “cues given off” are to different people. Could two people meeting for the first time tell if the other was happy about the conversation or just faking it? Maybe it’s better if we can’t tell? Can you tell which of these photos seem genuine and which don’t as much? Why? What are the “giveaways”?

Size Matters

Sveiki!

This week is midterm week for the RHMS 270 class! And I noticed for the first time how social media brought the class together. I received e-mails and tweets from classmates suggesting to work together to create study guides and form study groups in preparation. This got me thinking about the different communities we are part of. Like we discussed in one of our classes, we are all part of many communities of different sizes. For me, I am part of the International community, the Latvian community, the LC community, the RHMS270 community and many more real and online.

Earlier in class we had to read an article about a small town community in Mt. Grove, where a new forum called Topix had taken off. It had given people the anonymity and power to write all the gossip they could think of. Since this was a small town, everyone was part of this online community and everyone knew each other. This is a good example of technological determinism, where technology changes us, as it changed this community from purely innocent gossip, to a destructive community of bullying and shaming. This forum resulted in horrible consequences such as suicide.

Back home, in Latvia, we had a similar forum introduced, that me and all of my classmates immediately signed up for. It was called “Formspring.me”. I’m not sure if this site still exists, but the concept was- you could anonymously ask any question to anyone you wanted. This didn’t result nearly as badly, but it did become the source of online bullying and insecurity for many people and classmates.

I think both of these examples illustrate how size does matter,in certain sized communities, social media and online forums can be dangerous. But it is very hard to determine the size of when it becomes dangerous. When it’s a tiny community of just friends, then bullying and such negative consequences don’t usually happen, because you know you’ll have to face the person later. When it’s a huge community, then the bullying and rumors disappear after a while because of all the new information coming in each minute. So what is the size of a community for which it is dangerous to bring in social media and access to anonymity?

Side note- In continuation on my search to find a community of Latvians through Facebook, I very successfully and easily came across The Oregon Latvian Society. By simply writing “Latvians in Portland” in the Facebook search section I was able to find my local Latvian community!

Community

“I hate Facebook, just come to the room and we’ll talk!”     -This is the phrase that my roommate yelled right as I was about to start writing this week’s blog post. So, what is this week’s theme? -Facebook!

I joined Facebook in 2010, when I wasn’t even sure what the use of it was, all I knew is that a Latvian community network called “draugiem.lv” similar to it had been losing popularity and this was the only way to keep in touch with lots of friends. Since then I have learned about so many cool functions and ways of updating everyone through Facebook. However, after reading this article, I started thinking- could Facebook be just another “draugiem.lv”? Does everything on the Internet have an expiration date? The article describes how Facebook users have stopped using Facebook for personal sharing, since it has become less trustworthy. To reverse this decline in personal sharing Facebook has attempted to introduce new opportunities and ways for people to share, such as: new language to prompt more personal status updates, new reactions beyond the “like” button, Facebook live video and I’ve heard of rumors about a feature similar to Tinder potentially being introduced.

This summer I worked with a company that represented Baltic music. And from my experience there I concluded that this article does ring true. The company I worked for used all of these newly introduced options (except for the Tinder option) to promote their business and news about music.

Facebook has become very promotional and a mode of spreading information. It has become fairly rare to post a status update or a new photo gallery. However, this article also raises a good point- Facebook may have lost the personal touches that it used to have, but the sense of community is still fairly strong. As this article shows, Facebook still is one of the farthest reaching and broadest networking sites, it is one of the best ways to find groups of people going through similar experiences and connect with them.

Linking this back to Latvians in Portland, unfortunately I haven’t connected with any of them through Facebook, but that’s probably because I haven’t looked yet. I’m sure that once I start searching there is definitely a Facebook page for Latvians to connect with each other in the US. I’ll leave this blog as a “very exciting” cliff hanger and will attempt to do some research about Latvian Facebook pages, and post about what I found next week!

(23 August 1989, “The Baltic Way” The human chain connecting the three Baltic capitals –Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius)- an example in Latvian history of community coming together without the use of social media.

Sveiki everyone!

This week was a fun week in rhetoric and media studies class! Some classmates were paired up and given the same, very simple conversation, which each of the pairs had to act out with the use of different social cues. They basically had to act out the same conversation in different ways (in a bar, after a divorce, as two random strangers, etc), while the rest of the class had to guess what situation they were reenacting based on the social cues. We were generally able to tell apart the general emotion of each situation based on posture, smile, intonation, etc.

This made me remember an article I had read a while back on emotions as a universal language. A professor at UCL had conducted a study on this matter, in which she eventually proved that there are 6 basic emotions that are the most easily recognizable: anger, fear, disgust, amusement, sadness and surprise. This made me think about how much easier it would be to make genuine friends if those were the only emotions we had and were capable of expressing. However, even with the capability of cross-culturally recognizing certain emotions, we still can run into some confusions.

These confusions can arise from something as simple as an emoji misinterpretation. I had assumed that they have the same or similar meaning worldwide, but turns out that is not the case. After listening to this podcast, I found out that emojis I had already been using in assumption that I knew their meaning, like the angry face with smoke coming out of its’ nose , had different meanings entirely. This emoji, for example, in reality (in China) is meant to symbolize something triumphant, while I had been using it to express extreme anger and frustration.

Emojis are like an alphabet, there are so many of them and with emotions it is similar, there are tons. Does it really come down to only 6 base emotions that we can communicate cross-culturally? If that is a fact, then do we even have emojis for these 6 emotions that are understood to mean these same emotions worldwide?

The Snapchat Story

Sveiki!

A whole week has passed since my first attempt at blogging and so far so good. We recently read an article for rhetoric and media studies class on smartphones and their effect on our generation, you can read more about it here. I found a lot of very relatable scenarios to my life as a millennial. However, the social media app mentioned in the article that caught  my attention most was Snapchat. It is also the first form of social media that I was newly exposed to in the US.

Before coming to the States I had little to no use of this app. When I got here though, I very quickly came into contact with the situation of people not asking me for my phone number as I had been used to, but instead asking me for my Snapchat. I had barely ever even heard about it. I felt like a grandma. I had always assumed it was an app for people to send “private” photos of certain “things” to their “special” friends. So, when someone I barely knew asked me for my Snapchat, I was fairly traumatized. We quickly cleared up the situation, but the fact remained, I had always thought that I was well-educated on most parts of the Internet, but suddenly I was falling behind in everyday social life, just because I didn’t use an app. I quickly downloaded it again and began using it, and within a few days, I was addicted.

The article mentions Snapchat as a good way of keeping in touch with friends over the summer and with family on a daily basis, but it isn’t. I found myself sending photos of walls, the floor, my crocs to people just to keep up streaks. It was ridiculous, suddenly my biggest priority went from getting a good education and making friends, to keeping up a Snapchat streak. I didn’t realize I was addicted until at one point I noticed that I can’t be without my phone for even a few minutes of the day. The sad part is, I only realized this, when I had gone home for winter break. That means I had already spent half a year addicted. After I realized this I deleted the app for a while, I then noticed how much less anxious I was and how much more people I met.

Long story short, I’m not saying that you should permanently delete Snapchat, but try deleting it for a couple of days, even one day, especially if you’re an anxious person like me. It makes a huge difference on your mental health.

Sveiki!

Hi everyone or “sveiki” as you say it in Latvian,

It is not a commonly known fact, but since Putin is planning to take over Latvia, Latvians are slowly taking over Portland! This is not at all a proven fact with evidence to back it up at all, but since I came here in August of 2016 I have been contacted by multiple Latvians in the local area inviting me to Latvian events in Portland. You may ask- what does this have to do with a blog? Everything. I decided to create a blog to write about and document how it is possible to find family anywhere, even on the opposite side of the globe, and how social media can play a huge part in connecting us.

I came here around this time last year, leaving home for the first time. I grew up in Latvia, which is located next to Belarus, in between Estonia and Lithuania. We often get confused with Lithuanians and many people often assume that we speak Latin for some reason, which is odd, since Latin is verging on being a dead language. In reality we speak Latvian, which is a completely different language and is part of the Indo-European language family.

Why am I a Latvian in the U.S.? Because I study at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. Personally, I was not too worried about being away from home but my family was instantly in a panic. So as soon as they found out , they told me about all the possible relatives and connections I might encounter here. They gave me many e-mail addresses and names which, of course, I managed to lose in the whole chaos of moving away. However, despite my poor organizational skills, the first thing waiting for me upon my arrival in Portland, was a huge pile of e-mails from various Latvian families reaching out to me. I was overwhelmed, I felt so welcome and accepted already, while I had barely even stepped off the plane. Gradually, with the help of social media and my family, I came to find another, smaller Latvia within the big USA.