Mean What You Say and Say What You Meme

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Think Outside the App

Unit 2 Blog

In Unit 2, we learned all about utilizing social media platforms. Building off of Unit 1, when we learned the good, the bad, and the ugly about social media, the topic for Unit 2 was all about how you can use and manipulate (in a good way) social media platforms in order to relay the message you want to project to your audience. For example, on Twitter, you can utilize your 280 character limit in order to write a short post that are guaranteed not to lose people’s attention or, if you have more information to relay, you have the option of using a thread where you can organize your information into categories per tweet. Also, gifs, memes, and polls are readily available for you to use when you are composing your tweet. These graphics make your tweets livelier and more interactive with your audience.

The social media presentations may have told us information that we already knew about media platforms however, they also gave the class some insight on how to think outside of the box for our projects. For instance, the group that presented on Instagram used the saved stories feature in order to organize their information into “folders” where it was readily available to present. Likewise, the group that presented on snapchat used Bitmojis to illustrate their slides.

For my social media project, I am doing a food memoire since food is the overall theme of my projects for Writing for Digital Media. I am planning on making nine posts so that my Instagram page is visually appeasing to people reading the story. My first post will begin the story so that you would have to scroll all the way down first and make your way up to the end. In order to tell my audience that the posts are multiple parts of a story, I will first acknowledge the fact that I am telling a story on my first post. Additionally, I will label all my posts as numbers out of nine in the post (ex. 1/9,5/9).

My first post will begin with some of my favorite meals. Then, I will chronologically begin giving a short story about myself based on meals. For instance, I will talk about some of my favorite meals as a child, some cultural influences involving food that are important to me, how I became interested in cooking, where I am today in terms of my journey with learning how to cook, and where I want to be in the future.

Another part of Instagram I am planning on utilizing is saved stories. In this portion of my page, I will post some of the recipes of meals I posted to tell my story. I think that I will have a separate saved story for each meal that I want to offer the recipe for and each one will be structured so that there is a cover photo giving the name of the recipe, another photo of the recipe, ingredients, and, finally, directions on how to cook the meal.

From Unit 2, I have learned how you can get creative when using social media platforms. Full utilization of a platform can not only be appealing to your audience but can also aid in keeping your audience engaged and inspired. In order to fully utilize a platform, must first think about what formats are available to you. Then, you must think outside of the app!

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Unit 1 Blog

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Unit 1 Blog

Unit 1 has taught me various skills and tips about writing professionally on a web-based platform. For instance, I had no idea that people tend to skim the left-hand side of an article to find information that interests them before deciding to read a certain portion of the article they are viewing. I believe this information is beneficial to keep a note of because you want your article to be as eye catching and appeasing to the reader as possible. Another tip I learned in this unit is that you never want to center your text on a web-based platform instead, always left align it or justify it because it will read better on this particular platform.

One thing in particular that I learned within Unit 1 is to dissect the use of memes in our culture. We are in an age where memes are a prominent source of communication whether we realize it or not. Because of this, it is useful to weigh the pros and cons of the effectiveness, usefulness, and inclusivity of memes. For instance, there can be some memes that are highly specific to a hobby, show, or interest that a group shares that strengthens the bond between its members. However, these types of memes can feel exclusive to those outside of the in-group. For example, Pitt-Johnstown memes may strengthen a sense of unity between UPJ students however, students from other universities will miss out on understanding these memes. Fortunately, there can also be more general memes that are relatable to a broader audience of people. For example, Kermit the Frog memes.

I never realized how many nitty gritty organizational details went into writing a blog post prior to taking this class. For instance, if you are writing a listicle you have to take into consideration aspects of it such as:

What order are your listed items going to be in?
Are you taking a more opinionated approach or factual?
If you are taking an opinionated approach, how are you going to mention that in your article and where? (Usually in the introduction)
You need to have a catchy title to draw readers in

Is your listicle going to be text heavy per item or are you going to rely on more visuals?
What kind of images, gifs, and memes are appropriate and tailored to your topic?
Who is your audience?
Why are you writing about this particular topic/what does it mean to you?
Is your listicle beneficial or engaging to the reader?

Formatting is also a crucial part of what makes your blog or listicle worth reading. No one wants to read a blog post that is disorderly, chaotic, bare, or bland. You want to play around with text so that your page looks more lively and vivid rather than a research paper you wrote at 3 a.m. with a can of Red Bull by your side. Another aspect of formatting that can be worked with is use of colors. If used efficiently and consistently, colors can be used to color code, or organize your blog entry as well as highlighting important information that you want your reader to pay attention to.

Unit one has taught me how to pay close attention to minute details that make a page come together such as the use of memes, organizational details, and formatting. The functional use of memes can decorate a page, serve as a break in text, and serve as a fresh form of communicating your message to your reader. Organization, on the other hand, ensures that your reader an accurately find information they are looking for with ease. Finally, formatting brings a page to life so that it looks less like a research paper and more like an enticing article that people want to become engaged in.

Unit 4: Life of Enforced Introversion

I will be the first person to admit that I am an introvert. I love being with people, but after about two or three hours or so, I am exhausted and ready to be in my self-isolation cocoon at home. That being said, quarantine is driving me insane. I never thought that I would miss human interaction as much as I do during this time. It feels as though we are being held back on a leash while trying to run away and once we think we are going to be let free, the leash tightens up more.

Being that I do not really need a planner for my classes anymore, I turned my planner into a pandemic journal. It is actually funny how drastic my journal entries changed in just a couple of weeks. On day five of quarantine, I wrote about how upset I was that I could not see out the year with my best friends (my roommates). They are my rock. One of my roommates had her 21^st birthday upcoming at this time. She was unbelievably depressed when we had to evacuate our townhouse on campus because this meant that there was very little chance she could spend her birthday with us, being that we all live so far apart (me being the farthest, five hours away in New Jersey). I promised her that I would pick up my other two roommates and drive down to Pittsburgh to see her on her birthday, fully intending to keep that promise. However, as the days went by it seemed as though breathing was becoming impossible without a fine let alone keeping that promise. Long story short, I was unable to keep my promise.

As the days went by, we were now two weeks in quarantine. Things were getting bleak and there started to be no clear light at the end of the tunnel when we could all return to as normal of life as we could with doing schoolwork from home. My mom, who works in a dental office, was ordered by the New Jersey Government to stay home as her job was too hazardous to keep performing. So, my quiet haven I had to do schoolwork was kind of bombarded now. My mom was overly excited that she got to spend more time with me, granted I am five hours away for the better part of the year; however, it was starting to become increasingly difficult to get work done. Eventually, I had to create a workspace for myself and tell my mom that I need a couple of hours a day to do some work. This did not go over so smoothly, but luckily, I taught her how to work Hulu and Netflix so she has become a cavewoman in her room for the most part.

Week two of quarantine, New Jersey residents were only allowed to be out from the hours of 5 am to 8 pm. My dad, who is a shop foreman at an autobody repair shop, had his uncle (my great uncle)’s car and had to go to his house to help him fill out insurance information as he does not speak English very well. I decided to go with him. Uncle João is one of my favorite people from my dad’s side of the family and I hadn’t seen him in a while. A little background on Uncle João, he single handedly sponsored over 20 people (including my dad) to come to America from Portugal to live. He is also referred to as the king of the Ironbound section of Newark (the Portuguese district) and owns two restaurants that are the center of the community. It is kind of safe to say that he does not take crap from anyone so when he greeted us with an elbow bump, my dad and I were shocked because we did not think he would comply with the Corona Virus orders.

That day I went home with a 12 bottle case of wine, a hunk of prosciutto, a Portuguese sausage, and yes, a huge filet mignon. Now whenever my dad had Uncle João’s car, it was known that he was going to call him about it at least four to five times a day. When that was not the case, we were worried. There was no answer when my dad called him so, he called his sons who informed him that he was in the hospital and had suffered a stroke and broken arm due to a fall caused by corona virus complications. About a week later, he passed away. Apparently, he had already had the virus when my dad and I went to visit him. The saddest part for me was that we had to throw away all the food he gave us which was the last thing we had left to remember him by. Uncle João is one of the reasons why I took such a passion for cooking. I was always so mesmerized and excited whenever I would go to his restaurants, always asking questions about what ingredients were used to cook the food on the table and admiring the chefs for having such passion for what they do.

When Uncle João died, it really put this pandemic into perspective for me. I no longer complain about staying home, I do so voluntarily and will continue to do so to keep everyone around me safe. Even if that means I cannot see my boyfriend (who I typically don’t get to spend a lot of time with during the school year because of distance). I feel a lot better knowing that I am keeping him, his family, and my family safe by distance than trying to defy the social distancing order. I hope that everyone takes the social distancing order seriously. Whenever you choose to go out, you are choosing to put yourself and everyone around you in harm’s way. We are all in this together. We all think this sucks. So, what I am asking is that we don’t prolong this and make it suck even more for ourselves in prolonged future.

Stay safe, stay home.

Unit 3: Wikipedia Workshopping

It has been engrained in our memory that Wikipedia is the enemy. How many times have we been brainwashed by teachers and professors our whole academic career never EVER to cite Wikipedia? Well, just like learning contractions and coming to college just to be told they are improper, I am here to change your whole perspective on citing Wikipedia.

Wikipedia pages are edited every second of every day by thousands of volunteer collaborators who work together to improve pages of interest. When a page is edited by a collaborator, every single previous version of the page is still safely stored in case other collaborators feel as though a previous version is more accurate or better organized. There is even a “talk” page where collaborators can not only converse with one another, but give supporting research or evidence for changes that should, or have been, made to the page.

This idea that anyone can edit a Wikipedia page is what truly disturbs teachers to their core. Well, they are partially right to believe that the accuracy of some pages is not top quality. However, what some teachers (especially in middle school and high school) do not tell you is that there are ways in which to determine what is good Wikipedia page versus what is essentially questionable when it comes to credibility of information.

Wikipedia pages that are deemed to be more credible by Wikipedia editors are often marked as so. These pages will have some kind of mark or notice on the top of the page to let the reader know that this page has been thoroughly reviewed. Additionally, anyone who edits a Wikipedia page must provide citations to their work. Any uncited work will go noticed and will be deleted by other collaborators. References can be found on the bottom of any given Wikipedia page as well as in the “View History” tab. Also, some pages are protected with a lock on the top right of the article which denies access to just anyone to be able to edit.

As well as learning about how to distinguish a reliable Wikipedia page from an unreliable page, I also learned the behind the scenes on how to actually edit a page. Before you begin editing away, you must first make an account (that way your work can be accredited to someone and you will be responsible for what you contribute). Once you have made an account, there is a training period where you learn ethics, format, and coding to use Wikipedia. After you have finished this, you are ready to find an interesting topic and sources to accompany it!

Before you begin the drafting process, you should first see what your article does well at explaining and what could use fixing. Once you know what you want to work on, you can start brainstorming some work in Sandbox. In Sandbox, your work will not be published to the public until you finish your work and upload it yourself. Basically, it is a place to practice and perfect your rough draft until it is polished enough to be a final draft. Once you are ready to upload your final work, there is particular code you can use to accomplish such things as: in text citations, references, images etc.

I guess the main point I am trying to make is to give poor Wikipedia a chance! It works so hard to make sure that it is the best version of itself as possible for you! In fact, every time you refresh a page, think about how hundreds of Wikipedia pages have just been edited to be the best it can be.