Viral Trend 5

Facebook has recently released a new way of showing what the most popular topics are all over the world. Instead of using a hashtag like Twitter does, they use a little area on the top, right side of the Facebook page that says, “Trending”.  The “Trending” icon is a zigzag, lightning bolt-shaped arrow, and it also can show up on the news feed of Facebook. Next to the icon, it shows a brief comment about what it is that is trending. It is a fast, simple way to access what is going on around the world in media and is a good source for when boredom strikes. Sometimes the topics are something that you have never heard of and something that you would not understand why it is trending. When one of the topics is clicked, it leads to another page that has an article about the topic, and underneath, are statuses that use the trending word in them. This is an important resource on Facebook because many people do not read the newspaper or watch the news, and this is so easily accessible and has a lot of important news; it kind of acts as a virtual newspaper.  According to the article “Facebook Rolls Out Its Version of Trending Topics” by Vindu Goel the topics are based on the user’s interest and three other criteria: the authority of the people commenting on the topic, how recently the topic has surged on Facebook and how much users are engaging with it.

                The usage of trending topics is becoming widely used on social media. It is important that the people of the world learn about other worldly topics rather than just information about what their friends or family are thinking or doing. World information is really important to the well-being of society because we would be in the dark about a lot of things if all we did was pay attention to social networks. According to an article by Katerina Eva Mats and Amy Mitchell at journalism.org, Facebook gives more news to “more Americans than any other social media site, overall, three in ten adults get at least some news while on Facebook.”

Sites:  

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2323751/Facebook-Adds-Trending-Topics

http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/26/8-key-takeaways-about-social-media-and-news/

Reflection on Multimedial Composition

In English 2269, I learned how to use a blog, which I have never used before, and I am glad I actually did because it is a really good source to share information or interesting topics to whoever I want. This class taught me about the use of rhetorical topics in world media. I had no idea how important rhetoric is until I took this class and looked through the readings that were posted to Carmen. I have realized how much I subconsciously analyze viral trends more deeply now.

I learned how to use certain editing applications, such as Photoshop, PowerPoint, iMovie, and Prezi. I had never used Photoshop previously and attending this class taught me the usage of the tools in it. We edited our photo that included either a poem we made or the Twitter story we created. Also, I had never used PowerPoint before, and I never realized how hard it was to create people in it using just the shapes that PowerPoint provides. I thought that it was a good way of showing how to use the resources that we are given within an application using our knowledge.

I think that making the iMovie was a lot harder than it seemed. It was time consuming and took a lot of work and thought, but altogether I think it was a good thing to learn because it can be used for the future. Even just background music and exporting or importing methods were good to learn for future projects. The iMovie was a really good way to grab a viewer’s attention since our society is so entertained by movement and sound. The iMovie was also challenging because it was supposed to be shown within 60 seconds including introduction title and credits, so fitting a story that is clear is difficult to do within such a little time frame.

The last project we did was within the presentation application called “Prezi”. I have never used Prezi before, and I thought it was a really cool tool to use other than PowerPoint because it is easier to make it look like you did more work even though you really did not. I did not know exactly how to use certain tools on Prezi, but I am sure it could be made to look really neat. I will probably use a Prezi for future presentations because I think it looks more interesting than PowerPoint.

All in all, I thought this class was really different, and I have never taken a class like it before. I would strongly recommend it to other students that do not have much experience with computer technology outside of the internet and typing papers. I would also recommend it to other students who do know how to use this technology because others who do not know what they are doing could learn from the students that do know. 

Weekly Viral Trend 4

Throughout the past few years, “Woman Crush Wednesday” has been trending on Twitter every week. Almost every guy has used #wcw at one point in time; even girls have posted a #wcw. It is probably one of the most popular trends overall. Another trend similar to #wcw is #mcm, which is “Man Crush Monday”. This trend is used often on Instagram and Tumblr as well. It seems that at least one person will post photos of their mcm or wcw almost every week. People will photo on Instagram saying that they will post their wcw or mcm out of whoever likes their photo. It will often say something like this: “Like and I will choose my wcw for the week.” A lot of the time people will post celebrities as their wcw, such as Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Lawrence, Selena Gomez, etc. Other than celebrities other women, such as girlfriends or friends, will be often posted as wcw. Also, these pictures are not always of human women. Sometimes there will be photos of animals or famous icons.

This is a common way to share photos when there is not really anything else to post. Sometimes the hashtag is used to attract more followers or used to link to other pages and photos with that same hashtag. This trend has become so popular in social media that many males and females have become desperate to be someone’s wcw or mcm, as if it is an accomplishment to be a crush and become more known to other people. This is what social media has done to the young people of the world. People are being pressured into certain looks and popular “Woman/Man Crush Wednesdays” that if they are not chosen as one, they do not feel accomplished through social media perspective.

In addition to these hashtags, there are different hashtags used for different days including #selfiesunday, #summersunday, #transformationtuesday, #throwbackthursday/#tbt/#tt, #flashbackfriday, etc. These are some of the most commonly used hashtags, but sometimes people will make up their own hashtags. These are mostly used on Instagram and give people something to look at when there is not anything else to post. 

Prezi of What I Learned

http://prezi.com/pc0mecwbni0s/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Viral Trend 3

The Twitter trend that has been trending for the past few months is #StopWhitePeople2014. Most of the posts are vines or photos of white people doing really strange or stupid things. It is usually tweeted for other people’s entertainment because they can sometimes be funny. The photos include really weird family photos, people dressed in extremely strange clothing, children with tattoos and wearing inappropriate clothing, etc. There are other trends that are similar to this trend, such as #stopmexicangirls2014, #stopwhitegirls2014, #stopmexicanboys, etc. There are multiple profiles with these names because they are so popular. This is the type of trend that people really have interest in because it contains such stupidity and stupidity is often funny to people in the United States society. Some people believe this is a racist tag, but many white people themselves use this tag on Twitter and Vine. It really just shows the stupid things that people do regardless of race. Who are these posts directed toward? Could it be to actually “stop” the people doing these strange actions? Or is it to make people laugh?  #stopwhitegirls is a popular trend and often makes fun of the fact that white girls take pictures of themselves a.k.a. “selfie”. The photos often are made fun of because they are doing a peace sign, a duck face, twerking, or something of the like. They are also considered “basic” when they wear certain clothing, such as UGGs, yoga pants, and flip-flops in the winter. Also they are considered basic when they buy Starbucks. Starbucks has become the definition of a white girl’s favorite drink. On the page @Stopwhtegirls, there are multiple photos of girls, and guys, with multiple cups of Starbucks beverages. These are just a few examples of how white people and women are made a big deal about in terms of comedy in modern society and social media. Is this trend really trying to stop white people with what they are doing? It is not only white people that do such extremely strange and bazaar things. The posts in all reality are to grasp the followers’ attention. 

storyboard for 60 second video

Weekly Viral Trend 2

I came across this trend, #rapecultureiswhen, that has been trending on Twitter about the topic of “Rape Culture” and weather it is real or not. I was amazed by what I found and how many people out there have been pressured into rape situations that society pushes aside as “not rape” or the fact that the rape victim was basically asking for it. Rape Culture is a society in which sexual violence is tolerated and over-looked.

The person that made this tweet claims that Rape Culture is when “a rapist doesn’t even know he’s a rapist.” This shows the fact that many people out there are not educated on what a legitimate rape is. People, other than men, will believe that because a girl or woman is wearing “slutty” clothing, flirting, or intoxicated that they are “asking for rape”. But what people do not know is that it is extremely untrue. As the photo says, “it could have been them”. Some people just do not see both sides of another person’s life. When an individual says, “no” to sex, it is rape, regardless of what or how that individual is behaving or wearing. Often because a person is in a relationship, he/she thinks it is allowed to have sex, but if the person says, “no”, it means no and therefore it would be rape if there is no consent.

Who is the audience that this tweet is trying to push this idea through about Rape Culture?  It looks like this trend is trying to raise awareness about rape and it being very real and how many people actually get raped and are pressured into thinking that maybe it was their own fault that they were a victim. The photo looks like the woman is trying to show this writing to parents of the rapist. Rapists are often not aware about what it means to rape someone.  It is unfair that a victim has to go through something that was not consented but have no support by society because society thinks that if you portray yourself as a “slut”, then you deserve it. That is not true. 

This is a post off of Tumblr that has been reblogged a number of times. It shows a good analogy of how people do not realize why rape is wrong. Just because someone acts a certain way that makes it rape seem right, does not make it right to rape that person without consent. This viral trend going around seems to want to reach out to those who have been raped and even those who are uneducated about Rape Culture. It seems that posts in this society say, “Don’t get raped” rather than “Don’t rape”. There is a distinct difference. Trying not to get raped only goes so far, not raping could end rape in general, though the world will most likely always have issues like this, it would be comforting to know that it is rare and can be prevented. This trend is still popular on Twitter with about five new tweets every minute. If this awareness can spread so fast on social media, it could spread fast through parents and students.