See ya Later, Alligator.

As this is probably the last assignment I will write (Ever!) The meaning ‘wrap up post’ really works well for me here. I’ll be talking about my experiences with the subject and how learning in my own time made quite a bit of difference. Social Technologies has been the subject that has sat patiently in the corner waiting, undemanding, while I slaved away at my other subjects. When I was ready, it was there waiting. It’s been nice knowing you, Social Technologies. Let’s wrap it up.

You can Create a Sense of Community Online

So what have I learned this semester? It is possible to create a community online. Google+ is a social community. It contains real people and our experiences are mostly done on this online space. The Google+ community can also be described as a Personal Learning Network. It can be described as a PLN based on its user’s aim to learn from others in an online space. In an era of “Networked Media” the way information is able to flow is different. For a class like Social Technologies, it makes perfect sense to allow the students to take to networks to branch out for help, information and to gain a sense of human interaction online. I have always liked Google+ and think it worked well for this class. It achieved it’s aims of connecting similar users. Google+ is like a Facebook page, but regardless of the network tool used I believe the overall community found there would be similar; however small changes to how Google+ operates (links on the side, hashtags, posting ability) makes it better for a structured learning environment like a class.

What I Liked 

Overall, I really enjoyed this unit. As mentioned, I liked how undemanding it was of my time; and adding to that, how much it allowed me the freedom to pick topics that interested me, which reflected in the work I produced. Social Technologies picked topics that did interest young, knowledgeable tech students using forms they already understood (hashtags, activism, memes, networks) and expanded our knowledge by learning through the assessment (rather than by assessed learning!).

Some topics were based on modern controversy and some sparked a little controversy of their own. This made writing very interesting. As someone who is not a natural creative writer, writing a thoughtful reflection on a subject I both cared about and had researched made for an interesting read and made me learn something every time, even when I thought I knew everything there was to know on a certain topic. Some topics made me super interested, such as citizen journalism (a macro version of the networking in this subject)

What drives Networks and Social Networks. from http://blog.heartland.org/

What I Didn’t Like

Social Technologies can be a bit of an oxymoron. We’re here to socialize based on topics, but can it really be natural “socialization” when everything we do is for a mark? In several subject I’ve had similar to this one (blogging and interacting) I have despised the forced earnestness of posting a new comment, or creating discussion for marks. In this subject, I’ve seen it done as best as it possibly can be, with people (including myself) often posting and commenting (in Google+ for the sole purpose of social gain. However, I still struggled to write comments on blog posts, especially when the only reason I am doing it is through force, and not because I want to. Melissa wrote my thoughts on this subject perfectly in her blog post Hindsight is a Wonderful Thing.

Speaking of social interaction, the student body was often disappointing, with very few students showing up to class, interacting online or even submitting assessed work. I imagine the class would have been an even better learning environment if we had even 50% of students interacting on a daily bases, rather than the 5% it felt like. Hopefully trial and error will fix a few of the bugs here, but I suspect when you give students the option to willingly interact, they will not most of the time.

In Conclusion

Overall, this was a great unit. The assessment and weekly activities always asked for a little of my personal touch to every piece I wrote or posted, Assessment 1 being at the crux of this. I learned how I use the technologies available to me on a daily basis and the creation between some of the biggest internet movements we are seeing right now, such as activism, citizen journalists and hashivism. I’ve learned how a social aspect can drive activity and spark ideas, be it a cool post on IAB260 or an inspiring tweet with thousands of likes and millions of views. It’s all connected! I’ve enjoyed my time in this unit immensely and has raised my attention to how we socialize online, even in the smallest of details (such as sharing a meme with a friend on Facebook). This is now our modern world.. and this is a very very relevant topic. I would certainly recommend this subject to all my student friends I’ll be leaving behind.

Come with Me, and We’ll be in a World of (Mostly Imagination).

Social Media has become one of the big baddies of the internet; driven by the hive mind that is human beings, social media is often condemned for its effect on the daily out of proportion social situation.

Forbes noted in a 2009 survey that people trust the internet for the news much more, around 37% listed it as their top choice, with TV (17%) newspapers (16%) and radio (13%) flailing behind. People are ‘infatuated’ with the way the internet gave give us instant gratification.

I’ve talked about the phenomena of Journalism vs. citizen journalism before. The average blogger (eye witness to an event, or commenting on an event) is often an innocent user, and will report on information with the standard of keeping others informed out of the ‘goodness’ of their own hearts. Generally, any false information is due to trust in a higher power, say, the news at large, TV or trusted word of mouth. A journalist, however, must run a business. Often false news is leaked. I will admit that it happens way more often on the average blog, but a blog could never hope to reach some of the masses that large companies such as ABC and SBS can reach. What makes “The News” at large so much more reliable than any other news forum? All news stations, and many news businesses have been known to spread false and biased information (see to your right).

Perhaps its better we trust social media outlets. People power does a good job at quickly shutting down the false spread of information (sometimes over dramatically)

We aren’t idiots though: anyone older than 12 on the internet know better than to open a spam email, or link sent by a treacherous friend, or silly over-shared pictures you see make the rounds through facebook, twitter, pinterest and emails every season.

During the recent IAB260 workshop, Peter Bruza told us about how he worked on a study proving the deception of images, modifying the source and seeing how the test subject’s trust level changed when presented with the subject matter. People often reacted strongly to a different source, despite the picture being modified in no way.

What we’ve learned from Peter’s example is we are cautious internet users and most people at least have an idea of what to trust. More than just soaking up information from one news source (say, a news company that dictates to TV, newspapers and radio) we are developing important critical thinking skills.

But one thing is true: with so much information out there, fact checking is becoming hard. Sometimes, way too hard for the average Joe; to read methodology, research, critically analyse, see from several perspectives and oh I don’t give a sh*t about any of this anyhow. Sometimes, articles *with* sources are re-posted because they look credible, but what’s to stop someone not citing correctly at all? The most popular of news websites may be sourced because of the credible way they act, not are. At the end of hundreds of sources must be concrete evidence of authenticity.

I am certainly not equipped to judging every post, and take most with a huge grain of salt. Generally I turn to voices of authority (often Brisbane City Council, Brisbane City Police or Huffington Post) to back up latest news. What’s the importance of being informed? Because Malicious Fabrication or poor judgement (paired with the internet’s insurmountable ability to spread information like a virus) often leads to so many of  societies social blunders.

In conclusion, there’s a big wide internet out there, so pack well and remember to critically analyse. Also:

• Read with skepticism.
• Accept that sometimes the facts are wrong.
• Trust your gut.
• Find a concrete source or find your way outta the conversation!

And to answer the question, yes, I believe social media can be trusted, based on the fact that social media are our fellow brothers and sisters and I believe very few are maliciously spreading false content. Just remember to not glibly step into any rumor puddles.

Like this car. 

forgive me lord

What a Meme is and why Only the Good Die Young.

In early 2012, when I was a fresh bloomed uni student (way back in the day!) I had a different internet hangout to what I have now. Think of it as a different clique. Back at this time, I frequented the 4chan board /fit/. In case you are unaware how 4chan works, /fit/ was, as you might have guessed, a fitness based board. You may remember the cacophony of joy that was Do you even lift. I remember it to be a small chuckle-inducing in-joke on a tiny fitness board on 4chan, but years later, after I left 4chan and filled my time with other things, DYEL started to pop up everywhere. Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit… even those I knew in real life started to copy the chant.

An internet meme is a cultural phenomenon, In every case, a personal experience or a package of culture spreads among people in a virus-like fashion; traveling from one person to another swiftly until it takes on a life of its own; a term coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.

Normies (according to Know Your Meme) is a pejorative label for an individual who is deemed to be boringly conventional or mainstream. It had been funny, an in joke when kept to /fit/ alone, but once DYEL started to enter mainstream life it became normal.. a boring, conventional and ceaseless joke.  Encyclopedia Dramatica recounts a wildly entertaining article on Memes, which can only be called the definitive source on the subject.

As Encyclopedia Dramatica respectfully puts it, “A meme cannot be made by any one person. Every noob tries this over 9000 times…A meme is created by the reaction to, not the invention of, a subject (typically an image). In fact, the best memes are created by accident and are the result of a particularly lulzworthy image being seen by the right people at the right time”. 

I had an argument over what truly made a meme in the car with my boyfriend the other day. Turns out, its a rather hard, but extremely interesting concept to wrap your head around, which is what makes the phenomena so intriguing. Unlike a funny video, internet joke or saying, a meme is unique because of the specific circumstances it can be created in.

Generally, communities have their own idea of what’s ‘funny’. However, sometimes one websites makes up such a large faction of internet activity that it’s inside jokes are copied ceaselessly – a sad state of affairs which illustrates the death of original content and the viral effect any recycled garbage can be on the internet. Most Oldusers of the internet, such as myself despair of the overuse and collosal popularity of every Meme to ever exist – but Memes have had more people power than any other social phenomena on earth. The most viewed Youtube video ever is Gangham Style- which we all remember as being a huge hit in 2012. Silly Internet phenomena is particularly good at becoming viral, because hilarious and easy to understand content is the type of thing we want to share. The Meme is a blooming global culture- used to create conversation and spread ideas, behaviors and style between people. Now many business have cottoned on, trying to get “in the now” by “creating memes” (an oxymoron, as explained above) to get with the crowd. This always backfires hilariously.

As Fastcompany.com’s Jason Feifer put it, ” LIKE THE MENTALLY CHALLENGED LENNIE IN OF MICE AND MEN, BRANDS HAVE YET AGAIN PICKED UP SOMETHING CUTE AND SQUISHED IT TO DEATH” With any trend, Meme or not, chasing an internet fad and forcing it down people’s throats is desperate, lazy and wholly unfunny, but that doesn’t stop companies. Even while searching the history of the Meme today my search feed was full of tips and tricks to make the most out of the current Meme.. generally written by bloggers who had just finished explaining the specificity of the Meme phenomena. Hilariously, they never seem to cotton on to the irony. “If it’s trending, you already missed the moment,” says Jake Katz, VP of audience insights and strategy at the TV network Revolt. “You cannot give the people what they already have.”

So Meme’s have started particularly odd rat race; originally created as an inside joke on a tiny, squalor part of the internet becomes first the property of all…and ends its life as a weak and contrite husk of its original self, to be shoved into the faces of throngs of uninterested internet users for years and years to come.

An actual advertising campaign from KIA.

As the internet is no stranger to giving people hate for doing something unfavorable, you’d think business advertising Memes to the masses would’ve ended years ago. It seems that these horribly un-tech savvy companies are just as oblivious to our feedback as they are everything else.

The Baltimore Riots and the Voices of Many.

Today I’ll be writing about events and movements which have been documented by the online public. Recently, places such as Twitter, Tumblr and Youtube have allowed microbloggers to get messages out to mass amounts of people at a time. Tweeting a live notice from a place of interest on a public account (and using the right hashtags) makes for such a succinct bit of news that tweets are now often used in daily news articles as a better way of describing current and ongoing events.

Recently, I was curious to the hashtags and vague news articles I had been seeing on Facebook. After a google search and finding the top news article, I came across a Baltimore Local paper which had described the scene, painting a picture of a town of thugs who were rioting, looting and destroying the city for no apparent reason other than violence itself. The paper also mentions that the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who was so severely injured in police custody that he died. The paper goes to say that capt. Eric Kowalczyk “Would not speculate on whether the incident was related to Gray’s death”, despite the fact that fliers circulating the area days before had Freddie’s image printed on them.

If you were to take a turn toward other forms of social media, to individuals who have no affiliation to the media or the practice of journalism; you would see a different turn of events. Tumblr is a great place for sourced and accumulated data, from photos, eye witness accounts and facebook and twitter posts live from the event area.

Posts such as these do more than give a different perspective- they give the reader a certain response – often anger, fear, happiness; because the message conveys emotion that a lot of professional journalism lacks. The two forces fight bitterly, as often the two disagree. Misinformation published by a journalist is often shouted down by bloggers and the journalist or newspaper seen as corrupt or to never be trusted again. Carolynne Burkholder, of Journalism Ethics told of how  citizen journalists had it easier – with no need for a structured verification process, mistakes, while criticized, can be fixed and forgotten. However, Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis of The Media Centre said citizen journalism could “provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”

Citizen journalism also gives journalists in their own right a chance to fight against misinformation:

Here, senior journalist from The Guardian Jon Swaine calls out false information given by Baltimore Police. If this had been information given in a speech or public news article, it would be hard to shout down the misinformation. The call out has now received double the retweets of the original post. Between 1994 and 2001, about 20% of 1,500 newspaper journalists practiced Civic journalism in their own time, and almost all said it had a positive impact on their community. While still a monitored form of journalism, it does increase the outreach and empowers the every day writer. Traditional journalism becomes a mediator [pg. 9 – PDF] for discussion, rather than a lecturer of information.

For now, the roles traditional and citizen journalism run fair; for news article comes a few thousand posts, sub-tweets and comments which saturate the user with information. Citizen Journalism has become so ragingly popular due to its readability and accessibility; anyone with proper tools such as a phone or computer can become one. Degree no longer necessary! In Korea, a site called Ohmynews.kr (note: in Korean) became the most influential news site in the country after becoming the first site where users not only read the news- they also write it. The citizen journalist created website became a direct challenge to traditional media outlets.

For many current events, such as #blacklivesmatter, #yesallwomen, #illridewithyou and #baltimoreriots we’ve seen posts and tweets take active, hands on approach to current news. For me, I have seen bigger and more emotionally diverse range of news flood my news space. Fast journalism can give you the facts, but citizen journalism has made news reading an emotional and personally deep activity. Together, they complement and arrive at a place between seminar and conversation, educating and creating engaging discussion for all.

Has your local social media outlet given you a different perspective to what you originally had? Do you feel a closer bond to citizen journalism than traditional journalism, as I do? Thanks for reading!

Assignment 1: Persona Poster

Assignment 1: Identity Map

My Identity Map! For reference, the white one that says ‘HUB’ down on the right side is something I don’t expect any of you to recognize. My job has its own social media website where every employee, worker, boss, IT dude you can think of posts just like facebook. It’s only accessed by Grilld members, so just thought I’d give you some insight.

Assignment 1 Critical Reflection: The Evolution of Social Media (aka, My Journey to Better Things)

With a huge percentage of the population now online (72% of men and 76% of women) it’s no wonder the social websites have become as important to individuals as real life has. The general population have begun to expect that you have social media connections of some kind, and many users consider businesses and individuals without at least three social media connections to be odd. Users are also more likely to have more close ties and be less socially isolated than the average person if they have a social networking profile.

Ironically, social media presence now plays a significant part in your humanization to those you interact with. Once you’ve gained a socially acceptable level of social media presence, you are free to roam as you please. Some help build relationships, or use it as a tool to gain popularity, a professional presence, advertise a product or themselves. Personally, I both give and gain from the tools I use; but the tools I use are ever-changing marvels, ebbing and flowing like the masses of internet users it works for; who as a whole decide what become popular and what fades from relevancy. Micro-blogging, a new category of social media, is rapidly taking off. Even ten years ago, we could not have imagined such a technique could exist, let alone grow to make up some of the most popular media sites of all time (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+) establishing itself as a unique and all-encompassing social media tool and relationship builder within its own right.

I will be reflecting on my journey as a social user; my experiences with social media as an individual and how I  embraced micro-blogging as a means of expression that has re-written how I present myself and my information to my online audience.

Painting the Perfect Picture of Yourself

So how do I present myself? My strategy is certainly nowhere near as exciting as the average business or power hungry internet user. On Facebook, I make an effort to post interesting content; funny, interesting or personally important to my life, with the intention of keeping my online friends entertained and informed with my presence.

I don’t make a huge effort here. Facebook I consider home base – who I am. My aim is when a new friend sees my page they can see my recent life highlights. Things I have achieved and enjoyed while being an engaging user. Since Facebook introduced the timeline in 2012, it’s been easier to see Facebook as life summary than just another profile; which is why it’s also become particularly important to make sure there is nothing your potential employer could have fault with- half the reason I post sparingly to mine.

The other half is my lack of love for Facebook. Facebook is a social tool; but one that doesn’t provide me with much. My top use for Facebook is as a convenient communication tool, but I can without a doubt say my messages from the past three months are 100% work or university related. My contacts simply aren’t interested in using Facebook to communicate or keep up to date. And with no motivation, I do the same. Slowly, in the space of two years or so, Facebook has gone from my number one to one of my least favorite social media platforms.

My number one goal when using social media is to engage with others, Enrich my need to connect and to receive empathy and acknowledgement from what I post.

I’m a busy bee type person; the kind who has no foreseeable days off and juggles work between university and often stays up til three am to do assignments after finishing work at midnight. Often, I like to vent. Work, team mates, computers can be frustrating. I’ve had Tumblr for a long time and have always seen it as my go-to platform to voice my thoughts and troubles. However, as time went on I noticed anything I posted would get very little attention, maybe a few dozen likes at best. Even good friends of mine would often ignore (or not see) my personal posts. This is frustrating, as what I was really looking for was some acknowledgement, even a small amount.

As I’ve mentioned before, I see Facebook as a professional tool and felt uncomfortable posting personal thoughts, even if it was just to rant about how a program wouldn’t load. Around this time I started getting into Instagram. As another micro-blogging platform, it truly involved me and I started to follow lots of users who started to use it as their primary blog; yes, sometimes even posting 100-150 word captions with their photos.

Soon, I started to want to do the same. I noticed far more reception to my Instagram posts from close friends than I had ever had in my 6+ years on Tumblr. The much larger amount of close friends I had on Instagram is what initially drove me towards Tumblr, but it was those same friends who drew me back. This probably wasn’t Instagram inventor Kevin Systrom’s plan when he designed the original app, but the adaptive nature of human beings has made it so.

However, all my facebook friends are also on Instagram. What’s the difference? Why do I see such a difference between the same people on a different medium? In my opinion, the age of written blogs is gone (so 90’s!) Having been exposed to rich content in small packages, users crave more information with every post and more reward for their efforts online.

Twitter is another micro-blogging platform and by far the best known example of the phenomena. However, the development of part time, “one handed” blogging has not drawn me to twitter’s blue gates. The reason is that no one in my social circle uses the website. I should mention that I have never been one to simply go where the masses go- instead, I adapt to the social environment where those I want to stay in contact with are most prevalent. But Twitter, a site with 232 million active users could not interest me or any of my friends; to me it is a social community full of strangers.

Adapting to the Flow

Instagram has 90% of its user’s under 30. This makes Instagram great for small businesses, brands and also micro-bloggers: who want to absorb lots of information fast with minimal effort. I consider myself a micro-blogger, someone who has very little time for hobbies and no talent for creative writing. My compatriots of Instagram are likewise; with millions of pictures uploaded per day, content posted has to be pretty interesting to garner significant attention; but if it’s too much of the same thing it will be ignored.

Many users make micro-blogging into an art form. This is a common trend, it’s easy to see: a profile with sloppy, uninteresting and un-anaesthetic pictures will have a poor amount of followers (tell us how you really feel Issy!) but some profiles, often photographers, businesses or users with lots of time on their hands put as much effort as you’d put into a traditional written blog as they do Instagram. But like a small community, even the tiniest of posts can full of comments from close friends.

Some examples of people who have transformed their Instragram accounts aesthetically- with the goal of being visually pleasing and attracting an audience.

Once introduced to Instagram, writing to create effect became a thing of the past. I developed a new identity in the form of stylised, attractive photos which collectively create an endearing and intimate portrait. My audience wanted faster updates, and the return I got from my Instagram posts was enough to tell me that being simple, personally engaging and visually gratifying is the identity that works for me.

Seeing others interests and adding my own spin is what has made Instagram a personal (and ever growing!) success for me.

Through several series of micro-posts, a reader can develop an accurate and intimate picture of the bloggers life. Michael Haenlein called this phenomena ambient awareness. This is why media-rich sites like Twitter or Tumblr provide a high level of social presence (the acoustic, visual, and physical contact that can be achieved between two individuals (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976)); and media richness, defined as the amount of information that can be transmitted in a given time interval (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Markopoulos, de Ruyter, & Mackay (2007) reported that “Awareness systems such as these … can lead to increased effectiveness, stronger social-relationships and overall improved well-being”. This has certainly been my experience. Using short and quick up-to date posts, I am engaging my followers constantly and am so engaging them more than a traditional blog would- by means of “continuously engaging in strategic activities to convey an impression to others which is within their self-interest” (Goffman, 1959)

What have I learned?

Social media is about connection. I have discovered that sites that have fallen flat for me personally (Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter) are ones where a social connection couldn’t be made without significant effort. Through my social media moves, I have been displaying the natural human motive: to go where the people are. A great example of an en-masse version of this happened to social media sites like Myspace or Bebo. In 2011, Myspace was reported to have lost 50 million users in a year, and 10 million in just the month of February. The mass exit from Myspace is so well known it is known as the ‘Myspace effect’ (Zach Whittaker, 2011).

As a time constrained person, I don’t have the time to blog in any traditional means (vlogging, wordpress or picture based blogs) But still desire to enrich my social life in some way. Micro-blogging has worked at personalizing my blogging experience to fit my needs and in the process I have adapted to fully utilize new platforms.

PDF, Article and Book References that are Otherwise not Previously Cited

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Press.

Andreas M. Kaplan , Michael Haenlein. (2011). The early bird catches the news: Nine things you should know about micro-blogging. Kelley School of Business.

Zach Whittaker, 2011. MySpace lost 10 million users in a month; Close within the year? http://www.zdnet.com/article/myspace-lost-10-million-users-in-a-month-close-within-the-year/.

Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness, and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554—571.

Markopoulos, P., de Ruyter, B., & Mackay, W. (2007). Introduction to this special issue on awareness systems design. HumanComputer Interaction, 22(1), 1—6.

Draft Persona Poster

Just a draft for my persona poster. My theme is related to my quote – “You can tell a lot about a woman from the inside of her purse” so all the things inside are ~bag things that I work off of. Still quite a bit to do in terms of making it legible, adding more info etc. Let me know some feedback!

May your Internet never cap, and your browsing be Ad-free.

This has been a wildly busy week for me. As any student knows, assignments due means significant time spent in front of a computer screen. For me, this meant 8-10 hours a day sat, glazed-eye at my dual screens and wiggling in my uncomfortable, crummy little desk chair. Of course I must confess that not everything that happens during study time is study… the tiniest achievement after hours of work deserves a moment of relaxation.

So where does a student go during hours and hours of computer work? One day, I let myself roam free. Afterward, I tracked everywhere I had gone. It’s like starting at the Wikipedia page “Red Panda” and ending up on “Japanese serial killers of the late 80’s”… You never know where you’ll end up.

11am- Start working on my web building assignment. Unfortunately for you all, I appear to have become the student my parents always wanted me to be. Up until 12:30, I spent barely any time on the internet at all, save for googling the problems I had.

1pm- My boyfriend came over so assignment work had to be put aside. He’s an actor, and wanted to know if he could build his own website (rather than use a hosting-building service) I said yes, but couldn’t remember how you published your website. Some searching around led me to instructables.com, a little site i used to LOVE back in the day (ie 2009/10) but had totally forgotten about. They’ll teach you how to make lots of stuff; mainly tech related nifty things. I spent quite a bit of time browsing here.

Really cool!

Also really cool!

2 pm- I started back with my assignment for IAB260. I was having a hard time thinking of how I wanted my overall theme to look, so I looked on my favorite inspo website ever – pinterest.com. The interesting part of Pinterest (heh) is the search function- which is highly technical given a huge amount of their users are republican house wives. Here, I can search key words individually, and it suggests me words people generally search for.

Here, with cute pictures behind the words!

My searching led me to a board called Knolling, which I had never heard of til this day. Apparently ‘knolling’ is when you arrange objects in parallel to each other. I had seen this phenomena quite a bit but never heard the actual name. Looks a bit like this:

I would try hard to find a better adjective but, well.. it’s cool. And gave me quite of inspiration towards my own poster design, as I really love tiny, cute things and designs such as this. If not for pinterest I would have never found the concept, and started ‘liking’ several posts so that I could come back and make a special assignment board later.

After this I went to work for 8 hours, so was away from my computer. When I got back, I very much didn’t feel like doing work as it was midnight. I spent a few hours goofing off on tumblr. I noticed one of my friends was doing a giveaway if you subscribed to her website/blog, so I snuck a peek over there too. I finally wrapped down with my favorite activity of all time, r/letsnotmeet. A real life ‘creepy story’ thread basically. This kept me up for a while.

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Promptly after this I went to bed. Looking back, I learned a little about my online habits. I’ll share them with you:

When I want to do work, I do work- Whenever I was stuck on an assignment, I was really stuck- I didn’t do anything un-work related for hours, at a time. This is a trend I noticed over several days. And this wasn’t out of panic as the assignment was due soon; it was out of sheer will! I ended up submitting that assignment in 5 days early. This steers me to my next conclusion…

When I’m bored, I browse the most – Off work at midnight, I didn’t want to do any uni work. In fact, I knew any work I wanted to do would be horrible as I was very tired. But not tired enough to sleep right away! Whenever I am bored is when I end up in places I don’t expect, or discovering old, useless things I liked ages ago; such as browsing instructables.com for an hour with no intention of making anything on it.

While on the computer, I am a lurker- I spent plenty of time this day talking to my parents, boyfriend, co workers, hundreds of customers.. but didn’t make a single comment, like or post on facebook or my other major social media sites. I barely even had them open.

What does that mean? It’s certainly not something I do a lot. During the holidays I’m known to love facebook and talk to people often, but I guess work got in the way of social life. My parents will be proud.

Hope you all had fun reading about my typical work day- And I mean typical! my shortest shift is 8 hours so this is one of the biggest “internet days” I have in my week. Let me know what you think – did I answer the prompt correctly? Do YOU spend so much time at your desk actually working? Thanks!