digitalcommunitiesclass22

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

The Sims 4 Community

Sul Sul! (Hello for Simlish).

I’m sure you’ve heard the many variations of the game Sims as the game has a couple of franchises to explore upon. The game is about a simulated world where you, a Sim, get to interact with NPC (non-player characters) and function in the bizarre hyper realistic world. Additionally, a huge community backs the game with Youtubers surrounding their channel around the game and creators making custom content for Sims users to download and add to their game. 

There is an online community built for sims users to share gameplay, discuss content and gameplay. The Sims being a single player game would usually limit the amount of communication being exerted, but the Sims community is strong through different platforms and forums that allow access to conversations and niche referencing to those dedicating themselves to the game (Taylor, 2021).

What is comical about the community is the dissatisfaction with content from the Sims 4 (2016). A lot of the socialisation with other users is the complaints on the game bugging out and the lack of diverse options (Alyse, 2022). A lot of content creators that stream the Sims speak out about the game's absence of creating characters that are non-white or have a darker skin tone. As well, there was a lack of queer representation in the game with only binary pronouns being an option.  Most of EA content was targeted towards Caucasian races and there was a lack of diversity and ethnicity in the Sims 4 which is a game for expressing one's true self. (Fleur & DeWinter, 2021).

 It’s pretty amazing to be a part of a community who pushes for better and more inclusive experiences for other Sims players. It also opens a door for power dynamics to be challenged, where players interacting with the game can make a change and push for better gameplay which can usually be neglected by other Game corporations. Communities are stronger together.

 References:

Taylor, TL 2018, ‘Broadcasting ourselves’ (chapter 1), in Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, pp.1-23

Fleur, AS & deWinter, J 2021, ‘“Unfiltered and True to Itself”: How Content Creators Represent the Black Community in The Sims 4’, American journal of play, vol. 13, no. 2-3, The Strong, Rochester, pp. 297–319.

2022. The Sims Video Games - Official EA Site. Electronic Arts Inc. Available at: https://www.ea.com/en-au/games/the-sims

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

Digitised Dysmorphia, not Catfishing

I’ve been on social media since I was about 9 years old, and I have identified a toxic perception of myself and how I look. After years and years of constant scrolling through women with the “perfect body” and “ideal face”. Most of the time, the images we scroll through are augmented through apps like Photoshop and Perfect365 because no one is ever perfect. Critiquing our bodies in mirrors has now been transformed into digitally altering our appearances, virtually modifying what we dislike resulting in our “perfect selves” (Sinha, M & Srivastava, 2022).   

Trading the material body for a photographic copy, representing who they want to be, who they could be and who they need to be according to Western societal expectations. Many filters expand across different social media platforms, but ones that I have noticed which many users online call attention to are skin lightening filters. Not only do they bleach the skin and look brighter and paler, they adjust the eye colouring to blue and lighter eye colouring and draw in facial features to make them smaller. People are wanting to look more youthful in their imagery but there is also an underlying issue of white washing, where western societal standards don't just stop at tweaking arm shapes (Youn, 2019). 

At the end of the day, social media is a place to present a digital identity that has been transformed to show yourself at your best, but there comes a point where the obsession with changing yourself becomes so unrecognisable is dangerous. It is harmful not only to kids but any grown adult as it has a negative effect for everyone. The female body is continuously fighting in a battlefield of diverging concepts, regulations, value and modifications (Sinha & Srivastava, 2022) that it becomes a harsh reality for too many to be augmenting themselves to the point in which body dysmorphia has taken over.

References:

Sinha, M & Srivastava, M 2022, ‘Augmented Reality-Enabled Instagram Game Filters: Key to Engaging Customers’, Journal of promotion management, vol. 28, no. 4, Routledge, Binghamton, pp. 467–486.

Youn, A 2019, ‘What Is the Ideal Instagram Filter?’, Aesthetic surgery journal. Open forum, vol. 1, no. 2, Oxford University Press, England, pp. Ojz019–ojz019. 

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

InstagramHub

Instagram, one of the biggest social media platforms that use aesthetics and photo sharing to communicate and connect with others online. Over the years, Instagram has transformed into an advertisement model to present people as products as well as ways women are portrayed. Much of the advertisement or imagery on Instagram relies on the ‘ideal body’ and the way women act on social media. Much of the behaviour is to cater towards a male audience, with soft porn being illustrated to sell certain products like vitamins, clothing lines and makeup.

Many young girls who've used social media from a very young age are trained in micro celebrity culture and pornification of themselves and others. The term digital natives refer to people who grew up using certain technologies from a young age, where it almost becomes a second language to them. 

The encouragement for girls to present themselves online with hyper sexualised content is covered up to be empowering for people and illustrate it as a personal body choice. When in fact, a 12-year-old posting scandalous photos of themselves half naked is more disturbing to see and is evidential that they have been groomed by the internet to believe it's emancipating. The portrayal of porn chic on places like Instagram comes from make audiences reinforcing heteronormative advertising models (Dreren et Al). The ideal body a woman should have been normalised which tends to justify the sexual objectification of women. Sexualised labour has women presenting in certain ways through their body, the language they use online and how they should behave (Dorfman, 2018).

Most of this is encouraged by Micro celebrity culture, with social media influencers advertising sexualised content with certain products to place themselves as a selling point over the actual product.   Depicting themselves as older and more mature than they really are to align with the porn chic aesthetic while it is still obvious, they are children and minors.

This again does not mean women aren’t allowed to present themselves in certain ways online, but it is clearly stated that there is a selling point when it comes to Instagram and looking a certain way to gain more following and attraction from digital users.

 References:

Robert G Dorfman, Elbert E Vaca, Eitezaz Mahmood, Neil A Fine and Clark F Schierle, ‘Plastic Surgery-Related Hashtag Utilisation on Instagram: Implications for Education and Marketing’, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3, March 2018, pp 332–338

Drenten et al ‘Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention’ Gender, Work and Organization 

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

Digital Harassment through Online Games

Social media governance follows the world in which online digital communities can be presented as threats to digital citizens. Gaming culture highlights the aspects of toxic nature and technology violence that alludes to threats and harassment that can be deemed very serious and as threatening as some communicating online and in real life.

Games have been around for decades starting from Pong, an arcade game in the 70’s to hyper realistic social interactive games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.

While most of these games do have chat functions to connect with online players, it is common to find a forum on social media platforms that further the community of games. Although some communities for games act out of line for digital citizens. Multiple studies have indeed found that women, on average, spend less time playing video games than men do (Paaßen, B, Morgenroth, T & Stratemeyer, M 2016). Game culture is unfortunately male dominated as many of the games produced appeal to a very masculine audience. In any case this does not mean that other people like women aren’t allowed to enjoy the games however the marketing and advertisement of these games can also have a misogynistic approach to getting male users to engage with the game. When women speak out against the evidential catering towards men for video games, there is a surge of hate and death threats that follow along to places.

Gaslighting, a term defined as abuse techniques, leading victims to have their reality distorted and ponder the question of their sanity (Gleeson, 2018). Such abusive techniques are used to demoralise people into thinking they are in the wrong or have made a poor judgement on their behalf. In most cases, the perpetrator of the gaslighting is in the wrong.

Current research suggests a link between negative attitudes towards women and the media they condition with enables unjust behaviour (Rose 2012). There are Rape Myths that described the secret desire for women to be raped that justify male sexual aggression against women. Thus, the myth is accepted and internalised through negative attitudes.

While I myself do enjoy the classic battle royal, I tend to hide myself from online communication and communities for the knowledge that I will be called sexist names and be bombarded with hate, as I have in the past playing games like Fortnite. There should be bigger action called upon platforms that produce the game as well as a better tactical plan to stop in-game harassment by enrolling values that remove such immoral behaviour.

References:

Alice E. Marwick & Robyn Caplan, 'Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment’ Feminist Media Studies Volume 18, 2018 - Issue 4: Pages 543-559

Jessamy Gleeson, Research Officer, School of Global, Urban & Social Studies, RMIT University, 'What does Gaslighting Mean?' The Conversation, 2018  

Beck, VS, Boys, S, Rose, C & Beck, E 2012, ‘Violence Against Women in Video Games: A Prequel or Sequel to Rape Myth Acceptance?’, Journal of interpersonal violence, vol. 27, no. 15, SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 3016–3031.

Paaßen, B, Morgenroth, T & Stratemeyer, M 2016, ‘What is a True Gamer? The Male Gamer Stereotype and the Marginalization of Women in Video Game Culture’, Sex roles, vol. 76, no. 7-8, Springer US, New York, pp. 421–435.

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

Fashion Pandemic Crisis

In the beginning of the pandemic there was a high demand for online retail. As everyone was stuck in lockdown avoiding COVID-19, there wasn’t much to turn to except retail therapy. With April 2020 peaking at its highest income for online retail (ABS 2020), fast fashion had its breakout with companies like Shein becoming incredibly successful off the pandemic. With flash sales at insanely cheap prices, it’s hard to pass up on what seems to be a good deal.

With being a digital citizen, there are responsibilities and ethics to follow to ensure you are a good digital citizen. In the world of online fashion, keeping sustainable and encouraging the slow movement is not only exclusive to consumers, but also to corporate companies having a social responsibility to promote slow fashion movements.

For many companies, there are no ethics for companies like Shein as they rely on influencers for marketing to appeal to young women on a budget (Good on You, 2021). Feasting on people for their cheap allowances is how they tempt their customers.

It’s easy for big fashion companies to appeal with flashy branding, advertising and photography, as well as keeping their poor garment factory workers and their working conditions off the agenda (Minney, S 2016).

 Fortunately, there are other alternatives to these unethical fashion companies. 

Big Sister Swap is an online swapping service where you send them your unwanted pieces of clothing in exchange for a fresh wardrobe. Founded by Hudi Charin, she encourages the slow fashion movement with her business. Getting the idea from the lack of options to refresh your wardrobe without dipping into savings and harming the environment, she explained “Every truly sustainable option was quite pricey, and every affordable option wasn’t that sustainable” (Glamour, 2022).

Sister Swap takes customers' clothing and returns a new wardrobe requested from the customer in certain style, size and/or colours.

She encourages swapping over shopping, giving clothes a new life to prevent landfill. As well, being size inclusive and fashionable to anyone with affordability being included.

 There is hope for the slow fashion industry to become more influential as word moves around about the toxic and dangerous environments that fast fashion companies promote. Being aware of the issues they create will hopefully encourage people to change to slow fashion through digital citizenship and social media influence.

References:

Minney, S 2016, Slow fashion: aesthetics meets ethics, New Internationalist, Oxford.

Wolfe, I 2022, How good is Shein?, Good on you, https://goodonyou.eco/how-ethical-is-shein/ 

Online sales, October 2020 - Supplementary COVID-19 analysis, Australian Bureau of Statistics

Morgan, L 2022, It's time to get to know Big Sister Swap, AKA the personalised clothes swapping service that everyone is talking about, Glamour Magazine, https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/big-sister-swap 

Big Sister Swap, 2022. https://bigsisterswap.co.uk/ 

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

The Trend of Staying Woke

On May 25th of 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in broad daylight in front of people. This horrific day sparked the uprising of outrage for people across The United States with protests and marches flooding the streets and online. The Black Lives Matter movement has been tackling police brutalities for Black Americans for many years but after Floyd’s death, they had their biggest outbreak with the digital media publicising all the events. 

Performative activism is where we are able to see the foul imagery that social media has created off of people. Presenting a digital citizenship that aligns with the majority is what many micro celebrities involved themselves in (Ray, 2020). The desperate desire to be a part of the majority in political activism without caring about the cause has become more prevalent and the question remains of whether this follows to being a good digital citizen. If you are at least sharing a black square on Instagram, this claims you aren’t racist? A good digital citizen is a person with the skills and knowledge to effectively use digital technologies in a positive way, participating online with other digital citizens to communicate, consume and participate in digital content (Office of the eSafety Commissioner, NSW Department of Education). What is presented here is the bigger fear of being perceived badly than actively working to be a good digital citizen. 

As well, social corporations evoke language of politics on their platform and present themselves as utilities to provide users with a medium to use. They are also responsible for what a person is allowed to spread on social media too. This platformization opens room for digitals publics to present hate speech and online violence. (Vromen, 2017).

Hashtag publics present social media activity of related content, experiences and events organised within networks and platforms. Shaping the experiences of events online like the hashtag #BLM, standing with the movement Black Lives Matter.

While the spread of important matters being spread across digital platforms invites better understanding of significant issues, there are some that have the lack of commitment to better consume what the message is about (Ray, 2020). BLM isn’t a trend; it's the crisis of Black American’s being murdered by the people in the country who vowed to keep them safe.

References:

Ray, R 2020, ‘Setting the     record straight on the Movement for Black Lives’, Ethnic and racial     studies, vol. 43, no. 8, Routledge, pp. 1393–1401. 

Ariadne Vromen (2017) Digital     Citizenship and Political Engagement The Challenge from Online Campaigning     and Advocacy Organisations London : Palgrave Macmillan

Office of the eSafety Commissioner, NSW     Department of Education www.digitalcitizenship.nsw.edu.au

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

The Guilty Pleasures of Reality TV

There seems to be a lot of shame for admitting enjoyment of watching the genre of Reality TV. While the view ratings disagree, there is a consistency of dislike for the genre saying it is the public’s least favourite genre. Is this because of the hyper real melodramatic interactions between 'normal people'? Or is it the unpredictability of behavioural transgressions that thrill the audience with excitement or anger? (Nabi 2007).

With social media taking over everyones lives as well as media companies, television has no choice but to participate in utilising the platform for their benefit to stay in the timeline of changing media. Using hashtags and polls on places like twitter, Instagram and Facebook, this begins to create the digital public for Reality TV, with producing ideas around political, social and dominant ideologies that spark conversation within the shows.

Consuming these digital spaces are important for the fact of understanding the embedded moments that are found in everyday life that defines someone's digital citizenship. Defining your digital citizenship through engagement with platforms, communities and online forums help understand how you are wanting to be portrayed online. 

Reality TV is a quotation of people’s life experience. Cooking shows like Master Chef, exploit our avocational activities and culture around competitiveness. Shows like Survivor, Big Brother that fall under ‘real unscripted’ television are our capitalist culture and competitive hierarchy (Lenig, 2017). Initially, Reality TV replicates moments or events of our past, something that we might have witnessed, done or experienced before is being displayed for us through television.

The way audiences consume such content suggest that there are deeper connections with such entertainment that involve experiences that are in spaces and places of regular routine, family rituals and cultural memories (Hill, 2019).

An interesting case of Reality TV influence that I will touch on is The Kardashians. Building a family empire from being a comedicly mocked family to pop culture royalty. They have evolved the idea of Reality TV to be more desirable than ridiculed. Each episode is really the family showing off their privileged lifestyle, getting into a squabble with one another and ending with a monologue that reinforces the importance of family (McClain, 2014).  With audiences consuming the Kardashians, there seems to be a barrier in which there is some sense of understandable reality such as quarrelling with family members, and then the reality of  most of them being billionaires living in the hills of Los Angeles. However they mask the idea that they are in different worlds then most audiences watching reality TV while still parading their luxurious lifestyle. 

The impact of reality TV is phenomenally changing from higher demand for more realistic media and people that bring up the ethical ideas that surround recording someone's entire  personal life, whether it be scripted or not. They become a product of ludicrous hyper realistic shows that we as audience members keep watching. 

Lenig, S 2017, The bizarre world of reality television, Greenwood, Santa Barbara, California,  [United States]

Hill, A 2019, Media experiences : engaging with drama and reality television, Routledge, London, [England]

Nabi, RL 2007, ‘Determining Dimensions of Reality: A Concept Mapping of the Reality TV Landscape’, Journal of broadcasting & electronic media, vol. 51, no. 2, Taylor & Francis Group

McClain, AS 2014, Keeping up the Kardashian brand : celebrity, materialism, and sexuality, Lexington Books, Lanham.

[digitalcommunitiesclass22]

The Digital Community of Tumblr… on Tumblr.

Not driving in the same lane as big social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, Tumblr has been a solid online platform for an extraordinary amount of communities since 2007. With the platform being a generally safe space for marginalised groups, mainly queer individuals are a high majority of users on Tumblr. 

Tumblr is prominently considered a safe space for users generally from marginalised groups, mainly queer individuals. Built through the platform vernacular with its unique form of communication, Tumblr promotes a very left wing form of critique with activism for leftist ideologies. Although, its tightly knit community gives opportunity for them to be targets of heavy misinformed discussions and potential online harassment. 

The early days of the internet were imagined to be a lawless world in which the regulation of nations were erased (Daniels 2009).

Digital communities have power as well as trust within each other. Based on shared experiences, commonality with loved media or queer support groups, Tumblr provides a place for a vast grouping of people that users will eventually seep into one of those groups dedicated to a piece of media or real life experiences. What is issued with some of these communities is the harmful intent that online users can inflict on other users. From personal experience with digital communities, there seems to be a large situation regarding misinformation and deception within communities as majority of the time, it is young minors contributing to the communities. Sending out information about unhealthy and damaging ways to perceive yourself can take effect through only one comment someone has made online. Sharing topics of suicide and self harm and utilising it in either a form of aesthetics or treating the subject lightly, becoming  triggering to others. With users such as myself viewing this content at a very young age, this kind of community talk can have very negative effects as these topics should not be shared entirely on sites that promote aesthetics. I have no intention of taking away from some communities that are able to reach out to one another and provide support via our digital world, there just sometimes seems to be slip ups of what is ethical and valued as support in a community which could become unintentional harmful misinformation.

While compared to many other platforms like Facebook that promote more of a “default publicness” that becomes harmful for young queer communities (Byron, 2019), Tumblr presents itself to be open to discussions that become flagged on other platform. All together, online communities have their dangers and risks when people are open with their digital identities.

Daniels, J 2009, “Cyber racism white supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights”, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Md: 160-162

Byron, P., Brady Robards, B. Hanckel, S. Vivienne and B. Churchill. “"Hey, i'm having these experiences": Tumblr use and young people's queer (dis)connections.” International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 2239-2259.

Jessalynn Keller, “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms, Social Media + Society Volume: 5 issue: 3, 2019.

Reeve, E. 2016 'The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens', New Republic